MORE COLOURFUL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 163, 3 October 1941, Page 5

MORE COLOURFUL

TOYS FOR CHRISTMAS

THE MILITARY TOUGH

Christmas toys for New Zealand children this year will present less of elaborateness?, more of colour and enough variety to please all tastes even before the Avar. Although more expensive than usual, the toys are almost all of the unbreakable, hardwearing type.

Most prominent is a type of toy which will be seen more and more. as time goes on—New Zealand-made wooden toys. Brilliantly painted and of "square-cut" designs, these toys, which range from quaint jointed dolls to miniature wheelbarrows, battleships, tanks, lorries and even larger playthings, are sure to delight to-day's children.

Toy soldiers and miniature war equipment direct from the war zorn? are the latest craze with NeAwZealand children. One of the reasons 's

that they have seen the soldiers taken out by little evacuees from Britain. Toy shops have stocks of all kinds of leaden soldiers in various fighting atfitudes, mostly plain gilt or silvered, but some of the old "redcoat" type which are always popular. ' Tanks and Planes Modern mechanical warfare is reflected in the strong demand for the latest model of tanks, aeroplanes, Bren-gun lorries and motor cycles, and these may be obtained either -in British-made metal or New Zealandmade wooden ones..

Dolls this year are smaller but more cuddly, and therefore twice as lovable, as the old stiff china type. They are made of stuffed cloth dressed in the 1 brightiest gowns giv-* en pleasing names. Even more numerous are stuffed felt animals, elephants, rabbits, dogs and cats, patched in the most fantastic colours, which a child will find much prettier than the original British-made fluffy animals; for very small children.

New Zealand children will not go short of toys this Christmas, but children left behind in Britain are having to go without their toys so that they may be exported to helj> pay for the war. In London the world's largest makers of toy soldiers who used about 300 tons of lead to make 12,500,000 items a year, are now working entirely upon export orders, and many of these nre for New Zealand.

The United States is buying five or six times as many British toyr soldiers as it did before the war, and children there are showing special Interest in the Anzacs fighting m the Near E&st. Young New Zealanders are keenly interested in boxes bf their own infantry regiments.