View Toy Collections At A Toy Museum

Copyright (c) 2012 Stephan Wallis

A wonderful way to spend an afternoon and walk down memory lane is to view toy collections. A simple search for 'toy museum' online can help anyone looking to find one. Many have collections organized by time period, others by type of toy. Either way, fond memories and stories are bound to surface.

A sense of nostalgia

Viewing a display of toys remembered from childhood allows the mind to reminisce. Long forgotten memories resurface. These stories can and should be shared with children. Although most museums do not allow patrons to touch the older toys, it is easy to point out certain features and explain how they work.

Share personal memories with friends and family, who are bound to have memories of their own. A visit to a toy museum will spark hours of conversation.

A sense of history

Children today who view toys of yesterday are curious and amazed. Toy guns from the 1950s and 1960s look like they are real. Transformer toys were manufactured and played with years before the movie and cartoon television show.

Model cars, trains, motorcycles, and airplanes show the changes in styles and designs over the decades. People tend to be amazed to discover toys that are still around today were produced as toys years ago. Lincoln logs, for example, were first produced as toys in 1916!

A chance to teach

Older toys from the pre-war era evoke many questions from children about how they were played with. Depression era toys can invoke discussion about that period of history. China head dolls are a great way to highlight how children back then were taught to take good care of their toys. Little girls learned how to sew making clothes for their dolls.

Take note of which materials were primarily used to make toys in what time periods. Wood toys, such as rolling hoops, doll houses, and hand carved figures, gave way to metal toys. Basic mechanical toys followed. Hard and soft plastics became the primary building material of toys, and then gradually electronics came into play.

A time of wonder

Looking at all the toys in a toy museum is in many ways similar to window-shopping. There will be items that stand out from the rest. There is the knowledge that the toy is not for sale. The museum is a place to marvel at what toys have been played with in the past, and are an insight into humanity.

Watch the train locomotives pull their cars around the tracks. See the various models of them made over the years, and how they mirrored their full-sized counterparts.

Try to understand the role imagination played with the earlier toys. Discover what inventions adults who played with an Erector set as children created. Read how the Frisbee started out as a pie plate. See how technology such as television changed the toy industry.

There are many things to discover and re-discover in a toy museum. The toy collections contain a priceless reminder of childhood and how a child's imagination can turn into tomorrow's great invention.

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