RINKY DINKY

 Just been looking at some old Meccano magazines from the mid-1960's. The Dinky ads on the back pages are great! See what you think.

WORKIN' IN THE CITY

A while ago I posted a mystery City worker I thought was an ARCO figure. 

I managed to find another one online and can now say its actually Meccano and not ARCO.

Result!

Have you any mystery figures?

FRANK HORNBY HERITAGE CENTRE

Just seen a TV clip about the Frank Hornby Heritage Centre in Maghull outside Liverpool, UK. Trying to google it and find a website I was taken to Bootle Leisure Centre where there's no mention of it. Its not easy finding the founder of Meccano, Hornby and Dinky!

Anyway, this is what its meant to look like in the Heritage Centre. They have the very first boxed set, Make and Know, from where the name Meccano came from.

There's also Frank Hornby's house down the road in Southport with a blue plaque.

Has anyone been to these commemorative places to the great Frank Hornby? 

WILL OSBORNE'S MECCANO

Hi Woodsy. It was nice the other week to see Meccano aeroplanes and cars mentioned on the blog . And also your reference to toy boats. I’ve always liked the way they were packaged, all strung in to display the parts to their best aspect, and the beautiful colour labels. Typical of mid 30s packaging. Here are a few pics of some of my Meccano collection. Will O

MECCANO IN THE AIR

Further to the recent mention of Meccano, I never owned any but had a generic brand, the name escapes me, that my mother won several sets for me playing 'Housey, Housey' or Bingo as it's now referred to at the seaside during summer vacations.

I recently visited the Air Museum of New England who had on display along with toy aircraft some actual Meccano.

Terranova47

USA

Did you make Meccano aircraft readers?

TO GO WHERE NO MECCANO HAS GONE BEFORE

Personally I'm not a big Meccano fan and wasn't as a kid. That isn't to say that I don't appreciate the effort put into the hobby by enthusiasts.

This USS Enterprise is one of the best Meccano models I've seen. This was on the Spanish auction site Todocollecion. It reminds me of a blow torch!

Looking at it again I'm not sure it is Meccano. Is it?

MORE PLASTIC MECCANO

Hi

Regarding Plastic Meccano, here are a couple of photos of it that I found on Ebay, very different to the set you showed in a recent post. As a boy I had a New Zealand made Torro construction set, which I think was Plastic Meccano for the NZ market. This would have been early 1970s I think, or perhaps very late 1960s.

Not sure, but mine might be in storage at the moment. So here are a couple of photos from Trade Me, the NZ equivalent of Ebay. Looking at the photos, it appears the shapes are all the same, but the fine surface detail on the NZ sets is different, with more studs than the British sets ? Or did the design change over the years ? This is not my field, so I could be wrong on the finer points.

The set I had, and a few accessory sets, was mainly red, blue, and yellow, but some boxes were black (perhaps smoother than the yellow boxes ? Not sure after all this time), and a few track links in orange. Torro also did building blocks.

Paul Adams from New Zealand

TORRO PLASTIC MECCANO

Hi

Here are the Torro Construction Set photos from Trade Me, which I think is NZ-made Plastic Meccano.

Did you get anything like this one Christmas?

Paul Adams from New Zealand

PLASTIC MECCANO? BAYKO?

 

I saw this on an online sale and saved the pic 'cos I SO remember it, plastic meccano or whatever it was called. I never liked the metal stuff but for some reason really took to plastic and I can still feel the torque of the nuts as I tightened them with the plastic spanner. Happy times!

Did you have plastic meccano?