“Look at ME….”
Here’s one for the album!
This picture was given to us by our friend Charlie…..yes, that’s Charlie on his tractor 
As children, we played with toy soldiers, match-box cars, teddy bears, dolls, board games, etc. But I do wonder: how many of us had such toys (picture above) when we were little? Certainly Leong Cheok Loong had a mobo bronco, and Ong Wei Mei had a triang jeep.
Care to share your sweet memories with us? Or, perhaps…some of you out there ‘improvised’ cardboards and other stuff for amusement?
When I was a kid, my dad bought me a Meccano set (1977? or 78?), which is all but extinct today in the age of internet and computer games. I had a lot of fun, building cars and cranes with the set, and served as a strong inspiration for me to be an engineer.
Today my vintage Meccano collection is bigger and much better and I must say that for anyone who aspires to be an engineer, a Meccano set is a must-have.
I recently built a full function tower crane with the set and had loads of fun with my kid, who at only 8 years of age, has shown a keen interest in my work.
Hi Aaron! i’ve never seen a Meccano set…..is it similar to LEGO?
i was a LEGO fan…..hahaha…..
I too had a Meccano set when I was a kid. Some of my classmates had it too. You can start by buying a basic set. Meccano was all metal and British made. It was sold by the department store Whiteway Laidlaw who had branches in Singapore, KL, Ipoh and probably in Penang. In Ipoh, it was in Station Road. Up to abound the mid-1950s they had a store in Taiping. They closed down in this region sometime during the early 1960s. The department store was something like Robinson’s in Singapore in those years.
The set consists of perforated metal plates, strips, pulleys, gears, shafts, fish plates etc. The holes are all standard size and the supply of screws and nuts fit them. A standard screwdriver and spanner are all that is required to assemble into working model machines. The supplied booklet has photos and construction details of various things that can be assembled.
As you add more sets the number of models that can be built increases in size and complexity. The crane/excavator was big, complex and required many parts. I was not able to do that as I only had some basic sets. Before Whiteway Laidlaw closed they had a sale and I bought a Meccano electric motor. It was incomplete as I had to source for a mains step-down transformer to power it.
Eventually the sets I had rusted and had to be thrown away. The many assembly and disassembly scratched the metal where the rust started. For boys it was really fun and absorbed many hours of leisure time. Intuitively you learn about mechanics and machines while playing with it.
Lego started out as building blocks and eventually many items were added to do all sorts of things. However, that was for my children when they were growing up!
Welcome back, Ignatius! nice to hear from you again…
I showed the above photo to my 5 year old son and he went wild and begging to have 1 for himself. Well he has been fond of bulldozers especially the Caterpillar’s machineries ever since a baby! Does anyone know where to get 1 nowadays in Ipoh?
Hello Duanne, welcome to our world, ipohWorld.
The photograph shows the tinplate tractor/crane that is around 50 years old and very rare across the world. Indeed I cannot even find a catalogue that shows it. Consequently there is no chance of finding anything like it in Ipoh although I believe there is a collector in Kuala Lumpur who collects pedal toys of this kind. Should there be one here for sale it would cost a considerable amount of cash as all old Triang toys are very collectable.
Consequently your best bet would be to find a modern plastic equivalent, but that will also not be easy. There are such things for sale in UK and USA at around 100 British Pounds or 160+ US dollars, but none that I know of in Ipoh.
ToysRUs in USA do sell them and perhaps you should call their KL branch to see if they have or can get them.
Sorry, but if one like Charlie’s was available there would be a big queue and I would try to be at the front.
Good hunting.
Hi Aaron and Ignatius, would you believe that a gentleman named Frank Hornby patented Meccano in 1901! What a far sighted man he was.
That was the same Frank Hornby who, in 1920, introduced the first Hornby Train. Being a lucky young boy I had both Meccano and a Hornby train set at one time, but when I went away to join the navy at age 16 my mother gave them away, as she thought I was too big to play trains.
We have a picture of a Hornby Train set, dating from 1947 and found in Ipoh in 2005 at http://www.ipohworld.org/search8/result.asp?strid=94.
Yes, Wikipedia has good details of the history of Meccano. I too had the Hornby Train set featured in your webpage. The track can be configured as an oval or a circle when the 2 straight tracks are left out. If I remembered correctly, the tender car had the number 1515 on it. The spring in the locomotive is wound up using the removable key. That is enough for the train to go round the track several times. One of the tracks has a small lever which can be set. When the locomotive goes over it another lever on the locomotive is pushed and this stops the motor. After sliding a short distance the train stops. The locomotive as shown in the photo has 2 wheels on each side and connected by a lever arm. When moving the action is like that of a real steam locomotive.
When I was a kid I remembered my mother buying it from Whiteway Laidlaw in Taiping. The price was about $15 to $20. That was Malayan $$ not RM!
Hi Ignatius, how would you like to write an article for our book about growing up in Ipoh. I have older ‘games’ stories about rubber seeds, marbles, fighting kites, spinning tops and the like but nothing about the sort of stuff we are discussing now. It needs from 500 to 1500 words or so and some photographs if you have them. However we do have a lot of photos available if you cannot find any suitable ones.
In case you have forgotten the details are at http://www.ipohworld.org/blog/?p=1878 and also on the Ipoh Echo site at http://ipohecho.com.my/v2/2010/08/25/ipoh-my-home-town-2/.
I am also hoping that Aaron, after contributing so much to this site, will also come up with his submission, but nothing so far!
ika,
yeah yeah yeah…. I know…. with work piling up past my eyeballs, it’s kinda hard to steal some time to put my life story. I think even you have found that that I have not posted as often as I should have.
my apologies Guv’nor but that submission will come as soon as my real work is done. !
And oh ika, sorry bout your water meter that has been swiped by irrespobsible people.
Don’t waste your time with a report to the authorities for surely they will tell you, “itu biasalaaaaa”
Welcome to M!
Hi Aaron,
Good to hear your submission will come soon!
You must have been reading my article in the current issue (106) of the Ipoh Echo at http://ipohecho.com.my/v2/2010/10/01/a-lesson-in-attitudes/. They have now asked me to do another on heritage and I am struggling to decide how to start it. There is so much to say and so little space to say it. Incidentally, although it comes above my name on the Echo web, I did not write the bit about me. I wouldn’t dare! If you look at the original paper it was in an editorial box and I was not aware of the content. They were too kind.
By the way, if you didn’t follow the link in my article, this at http://www.heritagepark.ca/virtual.htm is really worth looking at as it shows “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”, Perak it seems, simply does not have the “Will” despite all the promises that are made.
When I was a kid back in the 50s, we never had expensive toys etc but we had so much fun with things that nature gave. we lived at Lahat Lane down by the river side, yes, down by the river side. The Kinta River that is. We used to play by the river banks after school and we try to be back home by 4pm. That is when our dad who works for the PWD then , gets off work. he shall patrol the banks with a cane and smack the daylights ( I am being polite here) out of our butts if he catches us playing by or in the water. One of our favorite games was getting a fallen leave from a Bettle nut tree. We sit ourselves on the broader side or the branch. this is the end which is attached to the tree. Then someone will pull the leave and we get a thrill riding the leave. specially especially form the top to the bottom of the slopes at the banks. and our gang of friends were Chinese, Indians, Malays, Seranis and Punjabis and we always ate at someone’s home.