Museum Toys

The toys featured on this site are all in the Social History collection at the Queensland Museum. Look at the toys and see if you can find evidence to answer these questions:

What makes them go? The energy source for most of these toys is the person using them. They need to be pushed, thrown or wound up.

Which ones have a different energy source? Can you think of a toy that uses a different energy source from all of these?

How do they store energy? Most of these toys have some way of storing energy so they keep going after they've been let go (eg. the Glider has a lead weight in the nose to give it more momentum). Can you tell how the energy is stored in the Tops, the Train and the 'Friction Drive' Truck? Which toys don't store energy?

New or old technology? Some of these toys use technologies invented thousands of years ago (the control-line plane looks modern but is similar to 'bull-roarers' used by aborigines). Others use recent inventions. Can you put them all on a timeline to show when their technology was invented?

How were they made? Most of these toys came from factories. Can you tell which ones were hand made? Which ones could you make a working copy of?