Retro style blows out the tin toy collection heat: review the tin toy past and present

Guide: Tin frog, metal robot , iron locomotive... In the era when the material is much scarcer than now, these simple-style domestic tin toys have accompanied countless children and spent their simple and happy childhood. In the past two years, the retro nostalgic trend has swept across the country, and many people have begun to re-collect all kinds of old-made iron toys as a good memory for the childhood.

Iron frog

From childhood "playmates" to nostalgic collections

The so-called tin toy refers to a toy that prints a pattern on the surface after stamping the iron material. Before the appearance of Transformers and Barbie , the childhood of Chinese children has been occupied by tin toys. People born in the 1980s may never forget a tin frog with a clockwork, as well as locomotives, submachine guns, tractors, and Ferris wheels that seem to be easy to roll with iron edges and cut the skin.

With the popularity of high-tech plastic toys , domestic tin toys have gradually withdrawn from the mainstream toy market. In the course of the previous move, most of them were rusted and discarded as scrap iron. Today, the domestic tin toys that have long faded out of people’s vision have become a collection of vintages that carry people’s retro nostalgia. When the domestic iron-wine clockwork toy of seven or eight dollars was affixed with the label of “nostalgia”, the price suddenly increased by tens or even hundreds of times. Many toy vendors have seen the opportunities, and then re-open the production line, "Xtreme" a nostalgic tin toys for adults over 30 years old.

The charm of domestic tin toys

The most attractive part of domestic tin toys is that they are all products of the planned economy. Unlike today's designs that need to cater to the market and the taste of their customers, they have the most unpredictable imagination and a distinctive brand of the times. At the same time, social changes and the advancement of the times have gradually brought people nostalgic feelings and tone. The tin toy meets the requirements of people for the contact with the device and the history of the history. It creates the carrier that reflects the change of time from the object, and the sense of returning to the basics.

In addition, as a big country in the production of tin toys, China has had more than 50 metal toy factories with high technology and technology, producing a large number of different kinds of metal toys. Later, due to the rise of plastic toys, these factories have closed down and the production process has been lost. Non-renewability and rarity are fundamental to the appreciation of all collectibles, and domestic tin toys are no exception. For example, among the many domestic tin toys, the most exaggerated price is probably an engine toy model of the 1960s, which is said to be a success in celebrating the advanced engineering technology independently developed by China. Although the toy design ideas were so scarce at that time, the monotonous and boring engine was used as a plaything for children, but the current market price of this engine is said to have reached 100,000 yuan.

"Little Bear Photograph" Tin Toy

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Past and present of domestic tin toys

In the 1920s, Shanghai Kangyuan Can Making Factory began to produce clockwork toys. The earliest variety produced was “Chicken Eating Rice”. After the spring was wound, the chickens jumped and made the action of glutinous rice.

In 1934, Kangyuan Can Factory opened the Kangyuan Toys Department, which used the advantages of printing iron equipment to produce metal toys from the corners of the cans. There are more than 100 employees, the largest toy manufacturer in China at that time. Soon, the factory used clockwork as a driving force to make clockwork toys with mechanical movements, and the sales were quite prosperous.

After the founding of New China, in the 1950s, Shanghai Kangyuan Toys Factory and Shengtai Toys Factory successively produced successful inertial metal toys, making metal toys a big step on the basis of static and clockwork. Such varieties include inertia cars, tanks and aircraft, and are exported to Eastern Europe and other places.

In 1958, Kangyuan Toys Factory launched a new design and craftsmanship electric toy convertible.

In the 1960s, Huayuan Company held a China Toys Exhibition in Hong Kong, a number of new toys such as “mother and chicken”, electric “news camera car”, “return wheel”, “reverse car” and “caught bear photo” produced in Shanghai. The variety participated in the exhibition, reflecting the strength and level of the Shanghai toy industry.

In 1965, there were more than 1,000 varieties, including a variety of new varieties such as off-road motorcycles, bear photos, supersonic aircraft, smoking locomotives, hens and eggs, and spacecraft. The “hens lay eggs” with the battery as the energy source, and the hens can make a sound while walking, while continuously laying eggs. The "Bear Shooting" is driven by the clockwork. The bear can rotate from left to right. After a while, it will stop, lift the camera with the flash to take a picture, and the flash will flash. It was an excellent work of clockwork toys at the time.

In the 1970s, electric toy casings used plastics, and many electric toys combined with metal and plastic appeared.

In the 1980s, the status of metal toys in the international market was gradually replaced by plastic toys. The Shanghai toy industry adjusted its product structure in a timely manner. Following the Shanghai Toys 15th Factory, more than 20 companies including Shanghai Toys No.1, Kangyuan Toys Factory, Shanghai Toys No.3, Shanghai Toys Eight and Shanghai Shuguang Toys Factory also produced plastics. toy.

At the beginning of 1986, Shanghai Toys 15 Factory designed and manufactured two toy assembly lines by itself, which improved the assembly efficiency and quality of products, and gradually developed the products to medium and high-end.

After the Shanghai Toys 15th Factory, most of the factories that originally produced metal toys also developed plastic mobile toys. There were not many new metal toys developed in the 1980s. Most of the tin toys produced at that time were products of the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1989, China introduced the animated masterpiece "Transformers", and the toys around Transformers flooded the market, indicating that the tin toys eventually fell.

Nowadays, tin toys are classified as unsafe toys. Because they are easy to scratch children's young hands, there are not many metal toys produced except for foreign trade products produced in the name of "adults only" and "for collection only".