I really only shot these as the Toy Fair 2020 show came a couple of weeks after I'd Blogged the various construction systems on display at the local (Fleet not Woking!) library this Christmas just gone, and it was interesting to see more Meccano-likey! There was nothing else of note on Amerang's stand.
Dr. Who licensed stuff, no one had tied to
build the Dalek, so it was a K9-unit and a TARDIS which were on display, it's a good way to get kids into
construction engineering, and if the original Meccano had read the writing on
the wall and got into Star Wars, after their army-set had come out, they might
have had a very different trajectory to the one they subsequently did have?
I've already seen these in Waterstone's book shops (which are
increasingly Waterstone's books,
games & gifts shops!), and they represent (olong with the previous) the
domination of licensing in the modern toy industry.
There are now trade-magazines and whole
'expo's or shows devoted to licensing rather that the toy makers or sellers,
another good example is the Natural History
Museum dinosaurs we saw from Toyway
the other day, K&M's Wild Republic
are also carrying NHM stuff, but
different stuff from Toyway, the
museum is now a brand, in its own right, with some desirability, and once
you've approached them, got the licence and supplied their gift-shops, you're
free to market them as widely as you like.
Here it's the Imperial War Museum being used to shift some pretty crude
representations of the marques on the box, but, still better than late Meccano - in both meanings of a
deliberately pun-line!
Did I say there was a Dalek in evidence? There was a Dalek
in evidence!
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