Ah, another rough diamond from the school of “training the housewives of tomorrow”. Many are the generations of little girls that were saddled with “mini-mum” plastic ironing boards and carpet sweepers from an early age (all the better to brain your little brother with), and many the house that was cluttered with all the paraphernalia of pretend cleaning without any real cleaning actually getting done. ... more>>>

Bluebird was founded on two very solid principles. Small girls like doll’s houses. Small girls also like plastic tea sets for serving cups of invisible tea to their dollies. Then someone fell into a filing cabinet at the office Christmas party and came up with the bizarre idea of crossbreeding the two. Yes, this was a doll’s house, but made of yellow plastic and shaped like a huge teapot. ... more>>>

Another one of those somewhat macabre girls’ toys destined to lie around the house and strike fear into the hearts of visiting relatives who didn’t have their glasses on. You’ve seen that bit at the end of Se7en, haven’t you? That’s the sort of thing we mean. Oh, sorry, have we just spoiled it? ... more>>>

Out of any of the toys and games in our catalogue, this was probably the one that was most consistently denied us in our youth. Paradoxically, Mr Frosty is neither a toy nor a game. It’s just a thing we wanted, though it was very much situated somewhere within the last forty-or-so pages of Freemans, so it counts. The parental argument went something like this: it’ll join that collection of stuff you only use once and then leave in the back of the cupboard forever. This, of course, was completely correct (as anyone who’s ever owned a Soda Stream will be able to corroborate). ... more>>>

When the pre-Christmas Powers-That-Be ran out of ideas for training the housewives of tomorrow (see, amongst others, the “A La Cart Kitchen”), someone had a bright idea: let’s train the secretaries of tomorrow! But let’s do it covertly, so that they don’t know what they’re doing. Actually manufactured by Byron International (itself a division of super-conglomerate mining corp. Dobson Park Industries), the Petite brand was a front for a range of portable toys including cash registers, sewing machines, and various pretend shop fronts which all came in suspiciously typewriter-shaped cases. ... more>>>

Are there any vintage girls’ toys out there that aren’t just plain creepy? The vacant-eyed, H20-seeping Tiny Tears is yet another case in point. A kind of cross between Play School’s Hamble and a hospice in-patient, Palitoy’s innovative doll was nevertheless an acknowledged Rolls Royce in the field of plastic surrogate children. ... more>>>