Toltoys Kid

Were these stickers unique to Australia? Hopefully one of our international readers can enlighten me.

Classic LEGO Space promotional sticker

I stuck my fair share of these stickers on school books in 1979, so finding a mint unused one on ebay recently was a real joy. I have foggy memories of stacks of these sitting on the counter at Griselda’s toy store in Brighton, or at the annual LEGO display at MYER Melbourne’s Bourke St store. They are quite large, around A4 size, and are a wonderful item from LEGO’s golden years.

Check out that cheesy explosion graphic!

Will

LEGO Keychains Part 2

Some of you long time readers who have been following this site since the olden days back in ’06 will remember my excitement at finding an Aussie 80′s LEGO Fabuland mini-figure keychain in a random lot of LEGO.

Well Toltoys.com reader Craig had fond memories of these little guys too, and kindly supplied me with some images of his own keychain.

There is something ethereal in the face of the classic Legoland mini-figure, a manufactured Mona Lisa wrought in plastic. They are smiling, but not too much, full of mischief, but also happy to chill. They would make a great drinking partner or co-driver on a road-trip.

I need to showcase more of these Birkenhead Point keychains, if you have one send me a pic!

Cheers!
Will

Special thanks to Craig for today’s contribution.

The Keys to Successful Collecting

Promotional items are amongst the most sought after and valuable pieces in any line of toy collectables. From store displays such as Kenner’s Star Wars to salesman samples and awards such as Mattel’s Hot Wheels we all love having items in our collections that are outside the standard production stuff that was available to everyone.

As you may recall from my last post I’m a bit of a LEGO nut, so imagine my delight to find this promotional keyring in a lot of 80′s LEGO items I bought the other day.

Not only is it a promo item, it’s an Australian exclusive – and you know how I feel about those! I love finding stuff like this, it’s often a challenge to track down info about them. In this case I knew I had the vast resources of the web’s extraordinarily comprehensive LEGO collector’s sites such as Peeron, Lugnet and BrickLink. It was the latter who came to my aid with pics of a few of the little Elephant’s buddies from the long gone Birkenhead Point LEGO Centre in Sydney.

After a bit more digging I discovered that the Sydney LEGO Centre was apparently the only one outside Denmark, and that it closed down in the mid 1990′s. The keyring is probably from 1985, but I don’t know if they were giveaways or could be purchased as souvenirs or the like.
If you grew up in Sydney and remember the centre let me know, I’d love to share some memories of it.

Cheers All!
Will