A moment of imagination and nostalgia with toys

by Lionel Wijesiri

More than 50 years ago, there was a man in Singapore who loved toys. Hisname was Chang Yang Fa. It was the time when the British were pulling out from Singapore abandoning their naval and air bases. The shops that stood around the old bases were slowly becoming smaller and fewer. Most of them were gift and souvenir shops. Toys were packed into boxes.

Chang had a whole collection of cars, trains, dolls, bears and whatnot.

Thousands of them!

Many a times he thought to himself, "I need a museum to store all this"?

The little story ended up nice and cozy. On March 5th 2007, Engineering Consultant Chang opened Singapore's MINT Museum of Toys.

Meaning of MINT

I was fortunate enough to embark on a journey of re-discovery and nostalgia at the MINT Museum of Toys! You need not be an avid toy collector to appreciate and enjoy this world-class display of vintage toys and childhood memorabilia from 25 countries! Dating all the way back to the mid-19th-century, expect to be amazed and fascinated by this home-grown treasure trove which was amassed over 30 years by the museum's founder.

Located just next to Raffle, this 5-floor shop-front museum is fascinating for children, and even more engaging for the child in you.

The name "MINT" has nothing to do with currency, though the most expensive toy is priced at over USD$35,000. MINT is an acronym for Moment of Imagination and Nostalgia with Toys!

Also, it refers to the mint toys that are displayed, which are apparently brand new, never been played with before, and even displayed with their original boxes! From early 20th-century mechanical toys and spinning tops, thru Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Flash Gordon, Barbie, Robbie the Robot, Popeye, Batman, King Kong, Star Wars, trains and racing cars, soldiers, cowboys and Indians, merchandise, and equally seminal Asian genres...this surprisingly comprehensive collection will open reservoirs of nostalgia that will have you sucking your thumb again.

Although a toy museum, it will probably be more enjoyable for adults thanfor children. The shelves of this exceedingly narrow 5-story high building are crammed with toys. It's higher on the collection, lower on the explanation. The toys are divided into reasonable groupings based on era or character.

Chang's toy collection exceeded 50,000 pieces, of which 5,000 are on show at Mint. These toys are estimated to be worth more than US$15 million. .

When you buy your ticket, the cashier will direct you to start exploring onthe top floor (full oftoy robots and Star Wars posters) and work your way down to the second floor (which houses the oldest toys in the museum).

"What we try to do here is position ourselves as one of the best collections in the world in terms of diversity and depth," Chang says. "Typically if you go to a museum in Japan, for example, Yokohama, the majority of what they have is Japanese, in London or Edinburgh; you'll find mostly English toys. If you go to Nuremburg, you'll find German. We have toys from more than 40 countries at last count."

Space Robots

Among these are such wonders as the largest collections of Dan Dare toys,

Door of Hope dolls and one of the largest collections of Batman items in the world. Two of the museum's finest jewels are a pair of tumbling acrobat toys made in Germany in around 1840, a male and female set. The female is, again, the only one that has ever been seen.

There are space robots - enough to stage a full-on earth invasion - teddy bears and English lead toys. For die cast fans, there are vast numbers of Matchbox, Corgi and Dinky - including Chang's first ever Matchbox car - as well as exotic brands like Mercury and Gama. And, aptly enough, there's also one of the largest collections of Japanese anime cartoon character toys in the world.

All of which should give you a pretty good picture of Chang's collection.

Indeed, Chang estimates that he would need a museum ten times the size of the present one to exhibit everything he owns. "But then you would have visual overload, I guess. Better to rotate the exhibits and make it more interesting for visitors."

Chang's collection is still growing, as he's still happily adding to it. So what does he think will be the most collectable of modern toys? "I think that it's difficult to say," he continues. "The world has changed so much. Toy production is now centralized to China. It's not like before when individual countries were producing toys unique to their own land. Now it's so generic what you can buy from Johannesburg to New York City. What makes it worse is that certain toymanufacturers make 'special editions' becoming more like a collectable than a toy."

One of Mr. Chang's most recent toy purchases was a limited edition of a Marklin Harry Potter Hogwarts Express Train, which cost $2,700. "It's a good and well-established brand, comes in limited edition and the train set is based on a famous character.

In fact not many people know of its existence," he says, adding that he believes toys with these three characteristics will always be sought after.He is, however, confident that the demand for collectable toys will remain strong. "For me, I've always said that most people buy shares or bonds to make money, not for fun. Whatever the value, you buy a toy it's for fun!