Tuesday 5 December 2017

back in the saturday romper room

I've been thinking about a huge boxed early years plastic bridge car ferry set I once bought at a car boot sale. 

I've blogged about it before - click the label below. 

http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/random-toy-romper-room-ferry-set.html

Assuming it was Romper Room I've been looking again at that early years toy brand.


Here's a catalogue from 1970 on You Tube.



These were all on a relatively small scale.

How about toys in this TV advert - anything large scale?


Romper Room began as a US TV programme that eventually aired round the world. Long-time contributor and vintage toy fan Arto did some research into Romper Room TV in his native Finland. Arto takes up the story -

"I dug a bit deeper into the Finnish version and came across this full episode of Tenavatuokio or "Kiddies' Hour", hosted by Arja-täti (Aunt Arja). As you can see, the title card mentions also the original American format.


Furthermore, this particular episode, aired in December 5th, 1968 held a special surprise for me! As Arja-täti holds up her Magic Mirror (13.30 on), the third name called is - Arto! 

And seeing this again, I suddenly remembered watching this episode back in 1968 and felt again the shock of being addressed in person by Aunt Arja. That must have been a devastating moment for a four-year-old boy that I was - the TV people, they were real!"

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Having considered all of this I'm now having second thoughts as to whether my large plastic ferry bridge car play set was actually Romper Room. Perhaps it was made by another Seventies early learning toy brand like Galt, Playskool, Big Fun or Chicco [if that was around then].

Until I find a picture of the toy I found at a car boot sale in the early 90's I'll never know the make and its driving me bonkers!

Did you watch Romper Room on TV?

5 comments:

  1. I watched it, but not as regularly as I watched Sesame Street.I looked real close at the catalog and I saw some ring shaped building toys that I had. they came in a can and I think they were called Roundabouts or something.The Romper Stompers were common toys used at recess after lunch at school.Nowadays, there wouldn't be toys like that at school.Someone would get hurt, and the school would get sued.My childhood was a more innocent time...

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    1. yep, I loved these public spirited TV shows for kids. a more innocent time as you say Brian. UK kids just watch you tube now. God knows what they get into on there. At least our TV's weren't interactively connected to people allover the world, some sadly very very iffy.

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    2. Glad to see your earlier avatar back Woodsy :)

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    3. ha ha, I have two because Google locked me out a while back and I had to create a new account with them to get gmail. I forget which avatar I'm signed into most of the time but I do like Batman as he has shone his bat signal since the start. Not noticed any problems yet with blogger now that I have two sign ins!

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  2. Oops, I've switched to Thundercats!

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