London Toy Fair 2014

Press pass downloaded, I headed off to the London Toy Fair a week ago. To see if there was anything of interest to railway or boat modellers. Obviously. Not to look at all the new toys because I'm a big kid.

First stop was the Hornby/Airfix/Humbrol stand where there weren't any surprises as all the announcements had taken place weeks ago. However, it was useful to chat to the reps and see some of the new Humbrol goodies in the flesh. The textured paint looks very interesting, if a touch pricey. We'll have to see how far it goes though, if one can lasts for ages then it will be a permanent addition to my scenic toolkit.

After this, upstairs to Oxford Diecast for a long chat with Malcolm and the chance to photograph some of the new models for this year. I remembered to take some white plasticard to act as a background this time so the pics are fine for on-line use.

See the Hornby & Oxford diecast photos on MREmag.

When you look at the quality of models now available for a few pounds, you can see why people ignore the whitemetal kits available. Unless you want something very specialised then it's hard even for me to make a case for sticking things together.

Elsewhere I picked up a few leads on new boat models - we'll see what becomes of these in a few weeks. Suffice to say I found the worlds smallest RC boat in pre-production from BladezToyz and look forward a lot to seeing the production version.

One theme seemed to be Dr Who toys. They were everywhere - presumably the BBC is making a fortune from licencing deals. It's nice to see that many ranges include the full range of Doctors and not just the modern versions even if the TV company seems to want to pretend that the series is only 5 years old.

The other trend seems to be wooden toys. Loads of them in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Maybe this is just the things I spotted or maybe as these tend to be more expensive, the firms have to make more of an effort to sell them to distributors.

One disappointment - I placed one foot on the Lego stand and was stopped and asked where I was going. Apparently Lego operate a closed stand policy, I wasn't on the list so I wasn't getting in. A shame really as I could see through the gaps in the walls some train-shaped models. With most model railway exhibitions featuring a Lego layout, I would have liked to be able to report on these. But I couldn't. Even though the stand was empty. Hmmmm.

London Toy Fair photos on Flickr.