Barnby's toyshop

Annewiggy, not quite, the picture was head and shoulders, the hair was curled up the back of the head, I think the box was red and green. Long time ago, but thanks.

Barnbys made a big impression on me, it must have as I've had dreams about being in there. I can still remember the layout on the first floor, Action Man stuff immediately right at the top of the stairs, board games to the left, then the plastic aircraft kits, what a brilliant shop it was. I remember Davies Sports shop being a good place to buy Subbuteo items.

There were a good many shops that sold toys - toys and models meant more to kids in the old days than today. Haven't seen a mouth organ for decades. Hornby's, a household name when I was young, clockwork trains, with foot lengths of track that slotted into each other, replicas of all the steam trains. Black dolls that when the girls undressed them they were white underneath. A 3-4 foot high model of a one man band, place a penny in the slot, you had music and the model moved as if playing. You could buy bone clappers. One shop had a large model on show for a couple of weeks, could have been half-size of Campbell's Bluebird with its Rolls Royce engines. You could ask questions. Don Bradman's cricket bats became all the rage. I could go on all day.

Not to mention Mobo horses!!

In case anyone forgot.

The back end looks like an Arctic Seal!

At a time when 'Bluebird' was the fastest car in the world Barnby's sold a toy model, made of tin with a tin spring and key, you wound it up (much like undoing a corn-beef tin), it would travel about twenty feet from one wind, but the spring didn't last very long. The real 'Bluebird' was about thirty feet long, three feet high back to the cock-pit, then a fin about five feet high and five feet from the rear (guessing from the past). Lead soldiers were about ten-a-penny and yo-yo's different sizes and colours.

An advert from a 1962 Coventry Theatre (Hippodrome) Birthday Show (1937-1962) souvenir programme:

There's long been a quest on some of the old Coventry Facebook pages for a decent image of the Smithford Way store. Guess what turned up this morning (dated Feb 1980)

Lots of memories with that photo. Barnbys my favourite childhood shop, the City Arms, 2nd stop off on our Friday night pub crawl, Tiffanys for the bands, and even bought a couple of tee shirts from John Justin before a holiday.

Whist looking on Britain from Above for something else I happened to notice the Barnby store on Corporation Street mentioned earlier in this thread (1953) - ...and from a little earlier in 1949 -

Used to buy Dinky toys and Bayko bricks from this store, as a kid.

My father had a small toy shop, just after the war, and he was the first person in Coventry to sell them. They were quite expensive.