TOY PROFILES
OKLAHOMA TOY SOLDIERS
During the Malvinas War (1982), the Argentine-based brand Oklahoma adapted their toys to fit with the times. In the years leading up to the conflict, the 1976-1983 military dictatorship had introduced a neoliberal model that favoured foreign brands and jeopardised local industries. To survive the crisis Argentine manufacturers used different strategies to increase sales. In these polybags, toys originally made to represent European or US soldiers, were re-packaged in 1982 to represent the Argentine army. Such details would no doubt have been lost on the children who were eager to play with them. But careful inspection of the package reveals further inconsistencies between the toys and the event they were now supposedly referencing. Alongside the soldiers, who famously suffered the frozen landscapes of the islands, there are models of tropical palm trees.
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Text by Jordana Blejmar
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MECCANO
The Meccano comprised a series of metallic plates and screws of different shapes with which to build designs. It was invented by Frank Hornby in Liverpool in 1898, but it was only patented in 1907. Daniela Pelegrinelli writes that it was marketed as a “smart toy”, and that it became the “father” of metal construction games until the 1960s (Diccionario del juguete argentino, 2010). It was made, mostly, for boys, who were perceived as those who would most appreciate an initiation into structure design and machine construction. Imported from abroad, it was only owned by a handful of lucky children. My grandfather was one of the lucky few. My grandmother’s house in Buenos Aires used to be the home to all kinds of gems from the past. There were toys, too: a Cinegraf that used to belong to my mother and her sister when they were little, tin toys of a mouse and a seal, a German Märklin train, and a Meccano, which was, by far, our most precious toy possession. My cousins and I reveled at that toy. Family rumor had it that it was precisely whilst playing with the Meccano when our grandfather’s passion for building and design had kindled. He became a civil engineer, a career that my cousins (two boys) particularly admired. Whether true or not, the aura sparked by the narrative around that toy was enough for us to play with it with a sense of warmth, awe, and admiration, as if it was a piece of the person it had belonged to. The parts of our Meccano were visibly worn and rusty, which only served to add to the mystique of it all: we were also playing with time itself.
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Text by Erika Teichert
Image: Meccano advertisement on Billiken
MIS LADRILLOS
Mis ladrillos have a long and successful industrial history. We know that from 1953 to 1957, the toy was produced as a series of rubber pieces. And, from 1965, the pieces began to be fabricated in plastic. A material that revolutionised the world of consumption. Over the years, the firm and the fabrication of the toy changed hands a few times, but it successfully managed to survive the economic crises that pervades the toy industry in Argentina, and the toy continues to be made today. What is it about toy bricks? What is the appeal of construction toys, which have found success not only in Argentina in the form of Mis ladrillos as well as Rasti, but also worldwide in their contemporaneous, globalised counterpart, Lego. Building blocks have a long history: like drawing, they emerged spontaneously from the children’s instinct to use objects in an attempt to imitate the forms of the world around them. Unlike the earlier building block toys, Mis ladrillos does not offer a game of balance, but a game of construction. The pieces link up to one another, fit into one another, allowing play to defy gravity. Assemblage expanded the possibilities of the kinds of structures and directions that architectural fantasies could entail.
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Text by Erika Teichert
Image: Mis ladrillos advertisement, c. 1950s-1960s
