Reusable cloth collage kit

This early learning toy was the delight of many an infant school kid mainly due to its simplicity, a highly tactile nature and the opportunity to make rude pictures when teachers weren’t looking. Available in a variety of themes, allowing depictions of any everyday scene from “farmyard” to “ballet”, the typical Fuzzy Felt set comprised a piece of card (about 10” by 6”) with a dark, coloured Velcro-esque material glued to it and a collection of brightly coloured felt shapes (children, birds, trees) to attach to this background.

The significant word here, of course, is “shape”, as the Fuzzy Felt pieces of the ’70s were simply silhouettes, lacking distinctive features or detail. This lent the resulting montages a melancholic air, as though of a world trapped in permanent shadow. Indeed, there is something rather poignant about felt in itself, neglected by the fashion industry in favour of more glamorous cousins such as linen or satin, yet named synaesthetically (“of feeling”, “having had feelings”) but most resolutely in the past tense.

A child with Fuzzy Felt (and it was a hotly contested item at playtime, of that we can vouch) could spend hours fingering the soft felt pieces and create their own, somewhat cluttered renderings of “Swan Lake” or “Sunny Field”. The most-prized shapes were the more individual, identifiable ones, such as the monkey from the Fuzzy Felt Jungle set, although this naturally meant they were more limited in their uses. A monkey is a monkey whichever way you position it, although there is a surreal pleasure in seeing an incongruous farm monkey from time to time.

The most versatile (and therefore most often lost or stolen) piece was the fairly common crescent moon shape, not least because it could be used as a makeshift willy on Fuzzy Felt animals. Despite this susceptibility to the base intent of toddlers, Fuzzy Felt was one of the most pleasant and gentle of toys of the past, though no less popular for that. The most amazing thing is that it sold so well for so long¹, when it amounted to nothing more than a bunch of cheap off-cuts.