Clockwork toys!

[Topsy-Turvy]

Enid Blyton often talks about clockwork toys e.g. mice/trains/clowns/cars etc. in her toy stories. You know, where they lose their keys and all that! I'm curious as to who has seen these and if anyone owns them...

I'm unfortunately too young to be of that era...

[Moonraker]

Enid Blyton often talks about clockwork toys e.g. mice/trains/clowns/cars etc. in her toy stories. You know, where they lose their keys and all that! I'm curious as to who has seen these and if anyone owns them...

I'm unfortunately too young to be of that era...

Clockwork mechanisms are now, by and large, an extinct species. Apart from the obvious (clocks!), many things were clockwork. I remember owning a train set, various cars, robots and other toys. It wasn't too much of a catastophe if the key went missing, as most toys used the same key.

I also had a "wind-up" gramophone. One had to be very careful not to "overwind", as the spring would break, and the item would be useless.

Unfortunately, apart from one or two old clocks, I no longer have any of these items.

[Rob Houghton]

I had a lot of clockwork toys when I was younger, such as the inevitable clockwork mouse, a clockwork robot, a clockwork ET (sadly long since made headless and armless! and a clockwork Bigears - also disappeared from the face of the earth.

Sometimes you can still see clockwork Noddy's and Big ears etc in toy shops and on the net.

I always wanted a clockwork train, but sadly all mine were electric!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I remember having a little clockwork rabbit but unfortunately I overwound it on the day I got it and it wouldn't work after that . My daughter has a wind-up musical box but it only plays one tune - not 100 like the one at Moon Castle!

Anita

[Miranda]

Yes, I used to have various clockwork toys in the late 1950's and early 1960's, including a Noddy car - long gone now, I'm afraid. I guess they wouldn't be allowed for children these days under Health & Safety regulations - kids could choke on the keys! How did we survive, I wonder.

You can still buy clockwork toys (although probably not such good quality, and with a warning that they're not suitable for young children). There is a catalogue called Hawkin's Bazaar that comes out around Christmas, and is full of old-fashioned toys that you can't usually buy in shops. The beauty of wind-ups is, you don't need batteries!

[Rob Houghton]

Wonder if the battery makers had anything to do with wind-up toys becoming less common?!

[Miranda]

Hee, hee, yes, I wouldn't be surprised!

[Nair Snehalatha]

Clockwork toys and clocks are far better than today's remote controlled ones . The old clocks had to be wound with a key-- and.tje old grandfather clocks were big enough to hide in.-- as Snubby.did in Rub a dub mystery. All these just remain memories of a golden era gone.by

[Stephen]

I had several wind up toys, but they all had attached twisting controls, rather than separate keys. I had a clockwork Buzby, and I seem to remember having a clockwork Woodstock (the bird in the Charlie Brown cartoons) as well.

I also had a clockwork radio from Fisher Price that played Pop Goes The Weasel!

The funny thing is, even as a child I never really liked the idea of battery toys even though I eventually started getting some. The trouble was batteries inevitably ran out, and you would have to ask the grown ups for some more. But clockwork toys just went on and on without any adult intervention!

[Courtenay]

I had several wind up toys, but they all had attached twisting controls, rather than separate keys.

Yes, that's the sort I had when I was little (1980s). I don't think we had very many of them, but they definitely were around and fairly common. My favourite was a wind-up swimming Mickey Mouse whose arms turned over and over so he could do laps of the bath. Unfortunately after a while he broke and that was the end of it! (I did give him to Dad to fix, as dads do, but he had to admit that he couldn't do it.)

I've just remembered, we had a clockwork Lego car — that is, a base with a wind-up motor and wheels, on which you could build a vehicle of your own design with Lego bricks. That did have a separate key to wind it up with. My dad and my sister bought it at a Lego exhibition in Melbourne. I was ill in bed that day and couldn't go with them — to my huge disappointment, as I loved Lego — but I still remember how impressed I was when they came back with that clockwork car! (I must have been only 3 or 4 years old at the time.)

[Boatbuilder]

My favourite wind-up toy was a train set made by Hornby, which I was probably given for my birthday or Christmas when I was about five, in the early 1950's. It was a larger gauge than the '00' electric ones - the track was probably about double the width of '00' and the engine and tender were really heavy and of a very good quality steel with a separate key for winding the engine up, of course. I wish I had kept hold of it but when I was older, in my early teens probably, I decided to give it to a family across the road for their little boy. I hope they looked after it.

[John Pickup]

My favourite clockwork toy was a tank given to me by my Uncle Jim. He got it from Germany when he was posted there in the army. It was very strongly built of metal and I remember a boy who lived near me was always wanting to play with it but I wouldn't let him.
I haven't got a clue what happened to it. I also had a clockwork train but I don't think it was a Hornby model.

[shadow]

I've got a clockwork Hornby trainset that my dad bought me when I was about 5. It's actually a Woolworths set with the Hornby name on and unfortunately at some point it was overwound and no longer works. Loved playing with it but always wished it was a more interesting track layout than a circle.

[shadow]

It's similar to this

https://images.app.goo.gl/gaZStFSLDRJESP5YA

[Hannah]

I had some small clockwork toys as a child. I remember a penguin that waddled on the table (I think it could swim in the water too, but I'm not sure after so many years) and some animal for the bathtub. They didn't have separate keys though which probably was a good thing because the key would have gone missing within a few days. Or hours .
My brother hat some toy cars that could be drawn back on the floor and when you let them got they would shoot forward quite quickly.