This provided a unique opportunity to study both toys and household stylings of particular time periods, helping me to build up an arsenal of visual imagery to use within my experimental research.
The archive, housed within the university's Research Collections, belongs to the Kays Heritage Group; with kind permission from the Research & Development Librarian I was able to inspect and digitally photograph items from the collection. (I'd also like to thank the Research Cataloguer for her assistance & accommodation.)
I focused on 1960 to 2004, sampling at 5-year intervals. With catalogues published twice-a-year, I opted for the Autumn/Winter ones because of the bigger toy sections.
This blog is not the place to reproduce everything that I found, but I'd like to give a feel for some of the more interesting items.
1960s: Guns
I'm too young to remember the Johnny Seven OMA but some of my colleagues have very fond memories of this plastic weapon.
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| Copyright © Kays Heritage Group Digital photo of item from the University of Worcester Research Collections, reproduced for not-for-profit educational use. |
'OMA' stands for One-Man Army and it's a pretty accurate description! It's a twelve-bullet rifle, equipped with a grenade launcher, rat-a-tat machine gun noise, armour-piercing shells and even an anti-tank rocket. This photo gives an idea of the stupendous size of the thing:
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| StuffWeLove's Phil Wingfield re-living his childhood. |
"I have talked with other veterans of the sixties street wars of the possibility of it being remanufactured. But I think it is too much for today’s world where innocence is sometimes hard to come by and in parts of the globe, child soldiers are a grim reality. Lets face it; it would [not] be the same with orange stoppers on the barrels and day-glo missiles so as not to be mistaken for the real thing. Johnny Seven belongs to the sixties or to the display shelves of grown up men who won the war in 1964." (Phil Wingfield)The Johnny Seven OMA should be a highly-recognisable item for boys from that period and, with so many features, would probably work well in a video game.
1970s: Cars
A number of brands had a firmly established place in the toy car market, such as Corgi, Dinky & Matchbox. Even Airfix had started to wander into this market, as evidenced in the photo below.
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| Copyright © Kays Heritage Group Digital photo of item from the University of Worcester Research Collections, reproduced for not-for-profit educational use. |
Merchandised toys were big sellers. The catalogue photo shows Kojak, Batman, Star Trek and Space:1999 (I just love Eagle Transporters). Some items were clearly not authentic (e.g. green Eagle Transporter or Bat-copter produced using the same die-cast as the Hughes 368 police helicopter pictured alongside) but, as kids, we didn't care so long.
The photo also illustrates self-owned Intellectual Property (IP), such as the Superkings Aircraft Transporter from Matchbox's 'kingsize' range. This popular toy was unlike any real vehicle but part of a stylised range which included car carriers, mobile cranes, and even military versions of the same.
Sometimes, while carrying out research, I've experienced "woah!" moments that stop me in my tracks unexpectedly. This photo from the 1977-78 catalogue shows why.
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| Copyright © Kays Heritage Group Digital photo of item from the University of Worcester Research Collections, reproduced for not-for-profit educational use. |
I'd forgotten totally that radio control was legally complex until 1981, when the Wireless Telegraphy Act was modified to exempt toys on certain radio frequencies.
It's bad enough needing batteries. Imagine opening a toy car at Christmas only to find out that you have to contact the Government to request a licence to use it? Wow!
1980s: Trivia
Stepping through the years, a number of fashion trends emerge. One such trend was the emergence of home quiz games in the following the enormous popularity of Trivial Pursuit. These games were perfect for merchandising or branding.
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| Copyright © Kays Heritage Group Digital photo of item from the University of Worcester Research Collections, reproduced for not-for-profit educational use. |
The catalogue photo shows that you could even part with £14.99 -- £35 in today's money! -- to purchase a cardboard case (decorated with the faces of Michael Parkinson, Una Stubbs & Lionel Blair) containing 2,352 clues and mime them in front of friends & family (if they haven't all left the room by that point).
1990s: Character brands
The 1990s saw an explosion of cynical marketing of existing brands aimed at children, including Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles and WWF Wrestling. Simultaneously, there occurred a major revival of interest in Thunderbirds (handled a lot less slickly than the American products).
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| Copyright © Kays Heritage Group Digital photo of item from the University of Worcester Research Collections, reproduced for not-for-profit educational use. |
2000s: Nothing to see here. Move along!
I've not included any photos from the 2004 catalogue because the toys & games section had shrunk to a pitiful size by that stage -- home slides & swings and long-running popular board games -- dwarfed by a burgeoning video games market. The age of the toy was over, and kids had moved to a new digital age.
This made quite a sad conclusion to the exercise. Yes, the kids of today have a wonderfully rich diary of future nostalgia to look forward to, but (save for a handful of Bakugan Battle-Brawlers) most of it is virtual. However, I'm sure they'll find their own equivalent of the tactile wonder of things like the Johnny Seven or the weight of a die-cast Thunderbird 2 in your hands.