Viktor Schreckengost, who died Saturday at 101, was an industrial designer whose graciously modern products, including children’s pedal wagons, flashlights, and dinnerware, were ubiquitous.

While his wasn’t a household name, products he designed were used daily in households across the nation. Schreckengost is credited with producing the cab-over-engine design for trucks and buses that allows for greater towing length and a tighter turning radius. The little red metal wagons that so many children use were also Schreckengost’s brainchild, including the jointed handle that allows the child to steer the wagon while driving.

“He took modern design and he gave it a friendliness that was quite new,” a professor at Case Western University and author of “Viktor Schreckengost and 20th-Century Design,” Henry Adams, said. “It’s hard to think of another artist who made contributions in so many areas.”

An art professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art from the 1930s until his late 90s, Schreckengost established one of the first industrial design departments in the country. Many future auto designers, including Joe Oros who created the 1965 Ford Mustang, took inspiration from his pedal toys for kids.

Schreckengost was born in 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, a commercial pottery town where his father was a potter. Schreckengost began designing ceramics as a teenager, then went to the Cleveland Institute of Art intending to become a cartoonist. He later switched back to ceramics and studied Viennese pottery for a year in Austria. He returned to Cleveland to teach and began a lengthy career as a consulting industrial designer.

Among his earliest assignments was a “jazz bowl” with a New York theme. The resulting large punch bowl, produced for Eleanor Roosevelt and considered a landmark of Art Deco design, is in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt. A copy sold at auction in 2004 for $254,000. Schreckengost continued to produce objets d’art, including watercolors and also took commissions, including the massive sculptures of mammoths and mastodons he created in 1956 for the Pachyderm Building at the Cleveland Zoo.

In the 1930s, Schreckengost developed the cab-over-engine truck design for the White Motor Company of Cleveland. He later turned to designing bicycles and pedal toy vehicles for the Murray Ohio Co. Murray manufactured bicycles for Sears and many other stores, and Schreckengost’s designs sold in the millions. The fat-tire bikes with designs suggesting motorcycles and airplanes appealed to consumers, but they also utilized modern welding technology that cut production costs dramatically. One of his early models, the Murray Mercury, was exhibited at the 1939 World’s Fair.

His innovations in bicycle design went far beyond the aesthetic. He held patents on folding frames and innovative seat designs. In the 1960s, he created the “banana” seat to help kids do wheelies and added the “sissy bar” to keep them from falling off.

Schreckengost introduced modern production techniques to printing presses and lighting fixtures. During World War II, he worked on radar. His Manhattan dinnerware line for American Limoges was the first to go into mass production, according to the American Ceramic Society, which honored him many times during his career. He also designed some of the first riding mowers with covered blades. “Before Victor if you fell off your mower you were basically mincemeat,” Mr. Adams said.

Schreckengost’s design hallmarks included thoughtful details. The dinnerware was designed to fit well in dishwashers; his Pursuit Plane — a jolly children’s pedal vehicle — had irresistible design but the wings were short enough to fit through a standard doorway. When he set out to design a metal lawn chair for Sears, he offered a cup of coffee to anyone willing to sit on a great lump of soft clay.

“Hundreds of fannies did,” he told the American Ceramic Society Bulletin. “And from that, I took the sections, using it as a form for the steel chair.”