First of all, apologies to all my followers, readers and fellow bloggers for a spell of silence!

My idea for this post was to look at gender issues in the 50s and 60s in relation to children and to talk about how things have changed. I know things have changed but when I started looking into it I realised that there are still ‘boy toys’ and ‘girl toys’ and that many of them are very similar. I think children’s books is an area which has definitely changed for the better. Books for kids are now far less likely to tell stories about Tim helping Daddy to wash the car and dig the garden while Mary washed up and dusted with Mummy.

I am not going to go into whether boys naturally prefer toy cars to dolls or whether they are given toys people think are gender appropriate. This is more of a reminiscing post so I will talk about the toys we played with in my childhood, show some adverts which now appear very sexist and hope to bring back a few memories for some of you.

Triang was a huge name in children’s toys in the UK and every boy (many dads too!) aspired to own a Scalextric set.

  Ah, Meccano! The main construction toy before Lego and a must for every boy.

     Of course, girls became nurses and boys were the doctors – NEVER the other way around!

  Well, I like the idea of bringing science into girls’ and boys’ play but . . . . a pink microscope?!

                                                     Girls baked, boys had adventures – in story books, anyway!

Girls appeared to be either pretending to be mums (kids still do that, of course!) or were having fun in boarding school!