A Visit to the Toy Shop

 

Growing up, a trip to the local toyshop was a much anticipated treat – even if we did, on the whole, go there almost every Saturday. In the 1960s and 70s, most provincial towns included at least one specialist retailer of toys: these were always independent traders, occasionally with branches in a couple of locations, but more usually confined to one retail premises. There were no chainstores such as Toys R Us, and all were of relatively modest proportions.

From the age of six months to six years, I lived in the cathedral city of Lichfield. To call it a city is to overstate its modest dimensions – at the time, it was merely a small market town that was, in the post-war era, being slowly enlarged to offer overspill housing to people from Birmingham – which is how my parents came to move there in September 1961. For such a small place, Lichfield was remarkably well served by toy retailers. The biggest and arguably the most prestigious of them was W. Osborne’s on Bore Street, a shop we frequented so often that the proprietors would greet us as old friends. Comprised of two connected retail units with separate street doors, Osborne’s sold bicycles and prams from one half of the shop, and toys from the other, the two shops being connected internally by a small archway. We spent most of our time (and a fair amount of our dad’s wages) in the toy shop, which was located to the right as seen from the street. This was the go-to place to find all the latest models from Corgi and Dinky toys, which were typically displayed in a long glass cabinet at the back of the shop that also did service as the counter (around bonfire night it would be crammed with colourful fireworks). Other toys, such as battery-operated models and soft toys were arrayed around shelving, whilst a few steps to the right of the counter led into a narrower back room where still more toys were on view, usually those in larger boxes. I must have been taken to Osborne’s from a very early age indeed, but we were still going in as late as 1971, four years after moving away from Lichfield. Even though we were known to the staff, it was often hard to obtain certain very popular toys. When Action Man was launched in early 1966, we went down to Osborne’s only to find they had sold out of everything bar the sailor. Other toys that proved unobtainable were the Batman outfit, the Thunderbirds outfit (I had to settle for the cap and sash without the tunic and trousers), and a Basil Brush glove puppet which, in 1970, was so desirable that you couldn’t even place an order for one. I well remember the sales lady suggesting we buy the readily available ‘stuffed’ version and turn it into a puppet. The toy was bought but fortunately for Basil, the conversion was never attempted… after all, you can’t leave Basil like that...

Despite these occasional disappointments, Osborne’s were never less than friendly and helpful. Toys were often demonstrated for you, or at the very least removed from their boxes for inspection in the case of toy cars. Sometimes, the demonstration did not result in a sale – I remember being shown a plastic Stingray toy some time around 1965, and being unimpressed by it. I was always put off by the presence of wheels or battery control leads on models, especially in the case of something like Stingray, which didn’t have wheels on television. Similarly, when I was shown a battery-operated Thunderbird One, in another retailer, I passed on the model which, although superbly detailed and in all the correct colours, had huge wheels and was wired up to a control box.

Just around the Corner from Osborne’s, on St. John Street, was ‘The Model Shop’, a retailer that specialised in toys, sports equipment and ‘grown up’ items like motorised model aircraft, with some large and impressive models displayed in their window. They also sold smaller toys, and often carried lines that weren’t available from Osborne’s. After the disappointing plastic Stingray, I was bought two different Stingrays from this retailer – a blue and yellow plastic version and a smaller model with a propeller that was powered by a rubber band and could be sailed in the bath. The shop also stocked Britain’s branded toys, including their range of farm animals, buildings and miniature trees and gardens. From here, our dad bought me a plastic model of a poplar tree – a curious toy to remember, and unusually one that still exists. The Model Shop was always the place to go for anything like yachts or kites. I had both, but, like Charlie Brown, was never able to get my kite up in the air – you need a bigger space than a back garden to fly a kite. The Model Shop seems to have stayed open a little later than others, as I can remember being taken here on an early evening, after dark, and my dad asking the shopkeeper for ‘the big Corgi lorry’ – an articulated Ford Trailer with sliding doors that had just appeared on the market.

Aside from these two retailers, there were still more sources of supply for toys in Lichfield. ‘The Handyman’ was a small DIY store of a kind that was once commonplace before the market became dominated by out-of-town volume retail superstores like B&Q. Located in an extremely old and crooked timber-framed building on Tamworth Street, the Handyman always felt cramped and cranky when you stepped inside: even as a child I was aware of the low ceilings and skewed walls and windows. As well as woodworking tools, the shop always kept a range of model kits in stock, including, in 1965, the famous ‘Quercetti’ Fireball XL5 parachute model, which was bought for me from here after we saw it in the window. The shopkeeper must have liked Fireball XL5 because he also stocked the incredibly rare (even then) ‘Jetmobile’ models, brittle plastic toys which stood little chance of survival in the hands of energetic youngsters. There were two in the range, one ridden by Steve, the other by Venus, the latter being today one of the scarcest toys of its era, with only a couple of examples extant. It was the Venus version I had bought for me, and her armless, balding figure still survives – a vintage toy expert once assured me that even in such a distressed condition, she could still be worth a considerable sum…

Lichfield also had a branch of Woolworths which, in the early 60s, still had all of its original 1920s slanted wooden display counters – but the toys you could get in Woolworths were mostly of inferior quality, usually cheap, poly-bagged plastic models originating in the far east. One occasionally hears sitcom characters like The Likely Lads referring to ‘stealing Dinky Toys from Woolworths’, although in my day, this would have been impossible: high quality die-cast toys like Dinky and Corgi weren’t available from ‘Woolies’ until much later, and in any event, those shops that sold Dinky toys always kept them in locked display cabinets, well out of the way of theiving Terry Colliers...

Toys were also obtainable from our local newsagent – usually the cheapest, plastic kinds, although I remember seeing a large and impressive plastic FAB1 on display. From here, again in 1965, my brother and myself were bought two of the Dalek ‘swappit’ toys, made up from interchangeable, colourful components. It seems an odd choice, since I was afraid of the Daleks in their televisual incarnation. Lichfield also had a department store of sorts, organised on similar lines to a branch of Wilco – indeed, P&D Stores’ premises did eventually end up as a Wilco branch. Inside, one found a mixed range of household goods, linens, and a few toys (it was in here that I saw the battery-operated Thunderbird One). 

All things considered, we were remarkably well served by toy retailers in Lichfield. Then, in the spring of 1967, we moved to Sutton Coldfield where, aside from Woolworths, there was but one toy shop – Gill and Son, or ‘Gill’s’ as it was known. Occupying a corner plot, Gill’s was quite gloomy inside, the display windows being sealed off from the main shop, so that light entered only via the glazed door through which one stepped into a dimly-lit cavern of toys. Most toy shops were arranged so as to display different kinds of toys in different recesses, and my memory of Gill’s is of it being full of such nooks and crannies: railways in one section, model kits in another, dolls and bears elsewhere. Big, impressive toys like Scalextric always seemed to occupy high shelf space, and I’m sure Gill’s was no exception. In 1967, their large plate glass window contained a display of Thunderbirds toys arrayed around a perfectly-scaled wooden model of Tracy Island. I took these buildings for display items but they were, in fact, available to buy and are some of the rarest Thunderbirds toys of the era. In the autumn of 1968, I suddenly developed an interest in prehistoric monsters, and it was from Gill’s that I was bought the first of many plastic dinosaur kits – a Dimetrodon. The kits were stocked in a brightly lit upstairs room, which also found room for railways and slot-car sets including the short-lived Tri-Ang ‘Minic’ range.

Following the move to Sutton Coldfield, we began to make more frequent visits into Birmingham, which boasted several large department stores, each with a whole sales floor dedicated to toys. It was here, in the late 60s, that I saw the ‘Rolls Royce’ of pedal cars… a Rolls Royce, obviously... in metallic champagne finish and with an actual motor, which made it not strictly a pedal car. Priced at around £100, this was a toy for children with rich parents. In such stores, the pedal cars were always impressively displayed along a wall, sometimes hung, more usually arrayed on wide shelves. There weren’t many toys you couldn’t find in Lewis’s or Rackhams, and the stores always had a Father Christmas grotto every year.

Birmingham also had its own specialist toyshop, the glorious Barnbys, situated on a corner of the Great Western Arcade, opposite the derelict shell of the former Snow Hill station. Barnbys had two sales floors, accessed via a wide and impressive stairway, where some of the most impressive toys were on view – giant teddy bears dressed in guardsman’s uniforms, and shiny bicycles and pedal cars. Most toy retailers catered for children from nursery age through to the teens, and Barnbys’ ground floor was dedicated to prams, pushchairs, cycles and pedal cars, whilst a mezzanine ‘landing’ was home to dolls and soft toys. Upon entering, we invariably went straight upstairs to the large sales floor on the top, which was home to the rugged, exciting world of boys’ toys: here could be found the latest Dinky and Corgi toys, along with Tri-Ang Hornby railways, Scalextric, Action Man, and all the large, battery-operated toys and games of the era. I remember being intrigued by a toy I saw in here, a kind of cosmic monorail called ‘Spacenik’. It was typical of Barnby’s to have the very latest technological toys on display, and their upper sales floor was the place to find anything you’d seen demonstrated on Blue Peter or advertised on ITV.

Barnbys, Coventry, pictured in the 1980s, gives a very good idea of how the upper sales floor looked in the Birmingham branch

It couldn’t last, of course, and sadly none of these retailers survived very far into the future, although I was lucky that they all mostly saw out my childhood. The first casualty was The Model Shop, gone before the end of the 60s, and whilst Osborne’s endured into the 1970s, by the mid 80s its place had been taken by one of the many estate agents that colonised Bore Street in this era. Gill’s doesn’t seem to have survived the 1970s, whilst Barnbys, with branches in both Birmingham and Coventry, made it as far as the 1980s. On the whole, independent retailers such as these were either driven out by the rise of chain stores like Toys R Us, or else disappeared with the deaths of their proprietors.

The department stores clung on for a little longer, but by the late 1980s, Lewis’s was reduced to its lower floors only – the days of the big toy departments were over. Lichfield’s P&D Stores, after a period of closure, became Wilco and, during a refit, was revealed to have been, in a much earlier era, a theatre or cinema, with rows of seating discovered in an abandoned rear part of the premises.

Of the shops I’ve named, the longest lasting was The Handyman, which was still going in one form or another well into the 1980s and beyond, increasingly focused on tools and kits for model builders. Every time I passed, I couldn’t help glancing in the window in the futile hope of seeing that Quercetti Fireball XL5. The building, with its old timber frame, is still recognisable today, and since the 1990s has been a shop specialising in decorative nick-nacks for the home.

In future posts, I’ll be delving into my own modest collection of toys from the 1960s and early 70s, many of them original survivors from childhood...