American Kazoo

The Original Kazoo Company metal kazoos are hand crafted in America, from American produced materials. The business operates on Main Street in a farm town southwest of Buffalo known as much for its yearly corn festival as kazoos.

The plant opened in 1907 as a sheet metal workshop, producing stove and furnace parts and peanut vending machines. It began making kazoos in 1916 after its owner was approached about creating a metal version of the wooden instrument that had been around since the 1840s.

The same belt and pulley machines that stamped and shaped the world’s first metal kazoos circa 1900 still stamp and shape kazoos today. The machines are still in the same building, making the same ker-thwunk sound as they perforate, fold and shape.

The finished product hasn’t changed, either. The palm-sized, submarine-shaped musical instrument still makes a tinny vibration when someone hums into it.