WALDOBORO – These toys are for adults.

Rin Tin Tin, the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy – children’s heroes all – are the stars at Fawcett’s Antique Toy and Art Museum on U.S. Route 1.

Sure, owner John Fawcett, 65, has items from the Star Wars and Simpsons eras. But the retired art professor said his collection is really more of a draw for adults than children.

Too many are just too young to recall the Green Hornet or Buck Rogers or the Lone Ranger.

For those who do, a tour of the museum, which opens for the season Saturday, is a flashback to childhood.

The collection of antique toys and memorabilia fills many rooms inside the former Aunt Lydia’s Tavern.

Fawcett said his Lone Ranger collection is “the best in the world.”

Besides owning some Lone Ranger pistols, Fawcett displays Brace Beemer’s hat and mask. Beemer was the Lone Ranger radio personality from 1941 through the late ’50s. Clayton Moore played in most of the Lone Ranger television shows, which ran from 1949 to 1957.

Also on view are 1938 black-and-white oil paintings by artist W.A. Smith of the Lone Ranger and his horse, Silver, and the Lone Ranger and Tonto, his Indian friend.

“These are as important as any of the N.C. Wyeth paintings you’ll see at the Farnsworth [Art] Museum,” Fawcett said.

Growing up in Watertown, Mass., Fawcett had a fascination with comic art. After high school, he studied art at Boston University. During a 32-year career as an art professor at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, he created his own work.

He draws on his collection in creating his own art. “I call this an artist’s wallpaper,” he said of his collage of childhood memorabilia.

When Fawcett retired from UConn in 1996, he and his wife, Jacqueline, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, moved to Waldoboro. Fawcett had often visited the state since childhood. Jacqueline Fawcett continues to commute to UMass.

That year, the Fawcetts bought the old tavern, which had plenty of room for his toy collection, and turned it into a museum by the next spring.

The history of the toys and art Fawcett knows by heart, but he doesn’t follow people around the museum unless they want to tap his knowledge.

Remember Betty Boop? Felix the Cat? Barney Google – the guy with the goo-goo-googly eyes – and his horse Spark Plug?

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Popeye, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Shirley Temple, to name a few, are all at the museum in one form or another. There’s a 1935 Buck Rogers rocket ship in mint condition with the original box and a metal Buck Rogers liquid helium water pistol made by Daisy, the BB gun company.

One distinctive Donald Duck piece is from a 1930s French children’s carousel.

Fawcett’s museum also has an exhibit of gray pre-World War II iron toy soldiers, as well as displays of wartime toys made of paper or wood because metal was in demand for the war effort.

“People come back four or five times,” Fawcett said, which is not surprising given the size of the collection.

Fawcett also buys and sells antique toys and art and offers free appraisals on old toys.

“I’m not collecting kids stuff,” he said. “I’m collecting little pieces of art.”

Fawcett’s Antique Toy and Art Museum is on U.S. Route 1 in Waldoboro. Hours are: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. daily, starting Saturday, May 28. The museum is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Hours change from Columbus Day to Christmas. A tour takes about an hour. For information about the museum, call 832-7398 or visit home.gwi.net/%7Efawcetoy/.