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Revision information, 1 April 2025
Publisher: Brighton Toy and Model Museum, UK Editor: Eric Baird ISSN 2399-1798 9,928 Pages 12,048 Images and other files 71,389 edits since 2011-02 Latest pages - Latest images

1860: "New-Year's Gifts: The Toyshop", by Mason Jackson [image info]

The Brighton Toy and Model Index

The Brighton Toy and Model Index is a regularly-updated knowledgebase for toys and models, and the general and social history of modelmaking and toymaking across the UK and Europe, from the industrial revolution to the middle of the Twentieth Century.

As of March 2025, the Index currently holds over nine thousand pages and over twelve thousand photographs and archive scans.

The rate of accumulation of new material has slowed a bit recently as the Museum directs more resources into refreshing its inventory. Recent changes in the museum itself have included rebuilding the aviation cabinet to include Skybirds and Britains Aircraft collections, and the new pre-War Dinky display includes an incredible collection of rare pre-war Dinky Aircraft from the 1930s. To reflect this, we've been acquiring contemporary material on early aviation to put onto the Index to support these collections. We're also starting to tentatively accumulate some material on the 1960s Apollo space programme, to be ready for Humankind's expected return to the Moon in 2025 2026 2027.

We've also now got our hands on an expanded collection of Budgie Toys and earlier Morestone diecast vehicles (Morestone rebranded and redistributed pieces from a range of little companies in North London before inventing the Budgie brand). So that's another subject area that we are expanding.

Although this encyclopaedia is powered by the same software that runs Wikipedia and (like Wikipedia), is a continually-growing "work in progress", editing is reserved for authorised Museum personnel.

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The Early Toy Record

The early history of toys provides a unique historical record of not only social and technological progress, but also of the collective psyche. Long before modern precision injection moulding and computer-generated tooling, early toys, made using comparatively crude processes, were by necessity highly impressionistic and somewhat abstract.

The early "tinplate wranglers" were not just craftsman and engineers, but artists, striving to distil out the essential feel, identity and character of the originals in objects that might sometimes only have had a passing resemblance to their true proportions and shape. Early toy design was to some extent a form of three-dimensional cartooning or caricature, focussing on and emphasising a thing’s key identifying elements and discarding “unimportant” detail, the result being a slightly surreal and "dreamlike" record not of a thing’s physical shape, but of how it was understood and remembered.

The result is a very human record of how humans saw, perceived and felt towards their surroundings through the period.

The Model Record

In contrast, the history of models provides a more technical and exact record of buildings, styles and (in the case of model engineering) machinery and vehicles from other times. With past modelmakers having acted as "curators" in deciding what was and wasn’t worth recording in model form, old models provide a contemporary record of real life in miniature, allowing us to assemble, for instance, a tiny transport museum showing the breadth of designs across the early British car industry, within the volume of a small room. Static and working models capture details that might not be present in plans or photographs, such as the look of an oiled piston-rod, or actual colours that cannot be reliably determined from early colour photography or black-and-white images.

Significant Updates and Additions, to 2019:

Dec 2019 Primus Engineering models – Galleries of catalogue images Nov 2019 Primus Engineering – Early Meccano competitor with both metal and wooden parts (1913-~1916) Oct 2019 Cox – US-built model petrol engines, cars and planes, and electric slotcars (1940s-) Sept 2019 Circuit 24 – Meccano Ltd's French-made slotcar system, big in France (1962-) August 2019 AMT – AMT of Troy, Michigan, plastic model car kits and slotcars (~1948-) June 2019 Lego – The early products of the Lego company, Denmark, including the company's original wooden toys (1932-) May 2019 Scalextric – Britain's most famous slotcar system (1957-) April 2019 Minic Motorways – a large subject, so won't be completed for some time March 2019 Triang Buildings: Model-Land (1963-) Cotswold Village, Countryside Series (1960-), (1961-) February 2019 Modelling materials, clay, and wax, including Plasticine (1897-) Play-Doh (1955-) January 2019 Playcraft and Playcraft brands – 1949- Aurora (1950-) December 2018 Airfix – 1939- Trackside Kits (1956) Railway Kits, Motor Racing (1962) Railway System (1976) November 2018 1:1200 Minic Ships and Harbour Parts – 1960 catalogue images Airfix Building Sets (1957) and Betta Bilda (~1962) October 2018 Jetex Rocket Motors and rocket-powered models – (Wilmot, Mansour & Co., Ltd., ~1948-) September 2018 Further supporting information on Brighton and Hove August 2018 Disappeared Brighton – for the museum lobby's "Brighton" displays and models, Loco Works, Daddy Long-Legs, etc July 2018 Site software updates and improvements – the site may be intermittently offline or odd-looking, as we tinker with it June 2018 Pullman – a "push" on expanding our information on everything Pullman-related – trains, cars, Brighton Belle, etc May 2018 Stuart Turner / Stuart Models stationary engines and castings – much expanded. Some tidying-up still required. April 2018 Stationary Engines: Wormar stationary steam engines Bowman stationary steam engines March 2018 Bowman Boats – steam, clockwork and rubber-band-powered February 2018 Bowman Models – a significant amount of new material added. Section on boats to be added later. January 2018 Traditional German flat lead figures ("zinnfiguren") December 2017 Wooden construction toys category – expanded November 2017 Miniature/Toy Sewing Machines October 2017 Card models, including: ERG Precision Models – 1944- Samlo card building construction sets Superquick Model Kits – ~1960- Trix Card Models September 2017 Jack Odell: Matchbox Series (Lesney) – +1959 Models of Yesteryear – +1959 Lledo Rosebud Kitmaster Ltd – 1959-1962 August 2017 Beyer Peacock and Company Ltd, and Garratt articulated locomotives Märklin guns and artillery – 1930s July 2017 Bowman model railways – 1930s Bowman stationary steam engines – 1930s Märklin spinning-tops – 1930s Märklin miniature vehicles ... Army Vehicles – +1939 June 2017 Lone Star Roadmaster Impy Toys – 1960s Märklin Live Steam – catalogue images, mostly from 1931 May 2017 Dinky Toys "Mechanised Army", and other Dinky military vehicles – 1937-1970 Märklin Bathroom units and accessories – 1930s April 2017 Vogue Steel Construction Sets – 1950s/1960s "Meccano-alike" sets Märklin Rolling Stock – 1931 catalogue images, for Passenger and Goods Trains March 2017 Tremo Models (Treforest Mouldings) – cast metal 1:1200 waterline ship models Hobbies Weekly – selected cover scans Anchor Engineer metal construction sets – F. Ad. Richter, ~1914 February 2017 Sutcliffe Boats Märklin Kitchen – 1936 and 1939 Märklin Passenger Rolling Stock – ~1906, ~1921, ~1925, 1936 and 1939 Märklin Goods Rolling Stock – ~1906, ~1921, ~1925, 1936 and 1939 January 2017 Märklin: Märklin locomotives Märklin miniature vehicles Minex miniature construction sets Märklin Metallbaukasten sets December 2016 Märklin Aeroplane Construction Sets – 1936 Märklin Car Construction Sets – 1936 ELEX and MARBI – 1936 Beyer-Garratt locomotive November 2016: Märklin 00-gauge – 1930s catalogue loco and rolling stock images Britains Floral Garden (Britains) – 1960s, page and catalogue images October 2016: Britains Farm (lead) Triang Arkitex – 1960s Miller Swan & Co. Briklo construction sets Cotswold Village series (Spot-On) – ~1960 Britains Miniature Gardening – ~1931 September 2016: Jenny's Home dollhouse furniture (Rovex) – 1967 Klipit Construction Outfits (Hobbies of Dereham) "Strip-Work" wooden construction outfits (Hobbies of Dereham) Minic Vehicles (Tri-ang)

1892: Parisian street toy-seller [image info] Global Visitor Map for the website (October 2018) [image info] ~1948: A different world: Political globe, immediately post-WW2, made by Chad Valley [image info] 2016: Dollhouse Miniatures leaflet, back [image info]

Some major manufacturers:

Bassett-Lowke    Bing    Britains    Lines Brothers (Tri-ang)    Märklin    Meccano Ltd (Hornby Trains, Dinky Toys)    Steiff Other manufacturers and brands

Sections recently or currently being expanded...

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  Jenny's Home

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  Dollhouse Miniatures

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  Mobaco building

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  Traction engines

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  Brighton Buses and Trams

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  Steamrollers

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  Flying Scotsman

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  Teddybears

Some popular pages

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  Hornby Dublo

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  Bassett-Lowke

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  C19th bulldog "Growler"

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  Hornby Series

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  Hornby Princess Elizabeth

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  "Leader" steam loco prototype

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  ten-foot Spitfire model

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  Oliver Cromwell loco

Visiting Brighton and Hove

Brighton - More pages about relevant Brighton-related subjects. The museum is an official Brighton Tourist Information Point, and supplies free maps to visitors, courtesy of VisitBrighton

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  Brighton

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  Hove

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  Greenway

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  Royal Pavilion

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  Brighton Station

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  West Pier

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  Brighton Palace Pier

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  Brighton Promenade

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  Volks Electric Railway

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