The other day I posted this 1966 advertisement for a Lady Penelope toys competition.
Two things came to mind.
1. Does anyone have the results? They would be in a Lady Penelope comic after October 8th 1966?
2. It'd be fun to find out more about some of the more unusual toys in this advert -
That's were the fun really started!
Deploying Sacramento reader Jim's suggestion of magnifying the above picture and the description, below, I made a start.
I began with the "Cosmeti-Kit" pictured far right
This is the description
The description described two sets; skin cream and shampoo/bath. They allowed kids to make their own cosmetics. There are two boxes shown in the ad so presumably they're one of each.
So who made them?
Unusually the description doesn't say.
Web power stepped in at this point and I managed to find a reference to Cosmeti Kits.
This toy catalogue cover includes the words Cosmeti kit on it, so it would appear that they were made by Mettoy Playcraft in 1966.
I could find no other online information whatsoever about this toy and the above image was a googlewack, a single google result, a list of one!
This would prove to be a similar story for much of the more unusual stuff pictured in the ad, but more on that later
My conclusion would be that these Cosmeti Kits are seriously rare children's 'toys' nowadays, as hardly any have appeared online.
I know that making cosmetics would have meant that the box and contents probably got thrown away after use but I did expect some ex- shop stock to have survived and have been auctioned off somewhere.
Anyone got anymore info about them?
Can't help with that I'm afraid, Woodsy, but kudos on getting it a step further.
ReplyDeleteI was interested to see on that catalogue cover that Mettoy must've distributed Sio Montage kits. These are from Holland, and are Meccano-type construction sets consisting of (much larger) strips of perforated wood with plastic nuts and bolts all in bright colours. Used in schools as well, there won't have been a boy my age in Holland that won't have played with them. I now have one small set I bought just for the joy of seeing it again decades later.
Best -- Paul
Cheers Paul. It was hard going. As for Sio Montage, I've never heard of it but I hadn't heard of Cosmeti Kits either. I know I had large plastic nuts and bolts but I'm pretty sure the rods and strip were brightly coloured plastic too along with plastic spanners. The perforated wood is a good idea for a kit. I bet there are still some sets in dusty old cupboards in Dutch schools! I've just googled it and unlike the Cosmeti Kit, there are dozens and dozens of pictures, clearly a hugely popular toy on the Continent! There is also a series of newspaper articles in Dutch which I think are about the factory shutting.
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