POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Notes

Bayko was one of the world's earliest plastic toys. It was made by Plimpton Engineering in Liverpool UK, from 1934 to 1959, and then Meccano from 1958 to 1965 after which time it was withdrawn. Bayko was one of the most successful British architectural building toys and its main competitors in Britain were the rubber Minibrix, Lott's Bricks made of reconstituted stone, and terracotta Brickplayer erected with mock cement! Bayko buildings were built from sliding Bakelite panels (embossed in a brick pattern) along with windows and doors between steel (later aluminium) rods that were inserted into multi-holed bases. Over time there were some changes in materials and colours and new components. Most importantly, from 1938 Bakelite was replaced by a plastic, urea formaldehyde (known as Beetle), which allowed far brighter red and green colours. This in turn was replaced from 1958 with Polystyrene. The bases could be joined with clips to form increasingly large foundations as required for the desired size of model to be built. The dimensions of a house however were generally limited by the three sizes of solid hipped roofs and two gabled roofs available. Some further degree of building variation was possible if the thin perforated floors, included as the floors of second story structures, were instead used to form flat roofed structures. As was commonly the case in toys of this nature, sets were available from small starter combinations to the largest, most aspirational sets such as this No. 4 example at the Powerhouse Museum. Smaller sets could be upgraded to the next through the purchase of 'conversion sets' so that a set 1 was converted to a 2 through conversion set 1a, a set 2 became a three through the addition of conversion set 2a and so on. Bayko retained its basic components over its thirty years of existence with some innovations and changes in colour, especially before the founder, CB Plimpton's death, in 1948. White bricks were a mainstay from the beginning in 1934 but the dark brown roofs and bases and dark green windows and doors gave way from 1938 with the use of Beetle plastic to allow bright red and light green colours and it is this colour combination that is most associated with Bayko during the height of its sales in the early to mid 1950s. Rarer colours such as orange and 'oak' (mottled brown) had been included in the shortly available ornamentation sets or to special order. The Bayko No. 4 set in this acquisition (introduced 1952) was the largest and most expensive set available - a 1955 price lists show the No. 4 set at 99/- (shillings) which equated to the princely sum of five pounds. This was a huge cost for a toy at that time. In the early 1960s Bayko was sold to Meccano, Plimpton Engineering's most famous Liverpool toy-making neighbour. Meccano's attempts to modernise the product was not successful and found it was unable to compete with LEGO - the building set that crossed over into construction sets offering the greatest flexibility of all. As a result Bayko was withdrawn from sale in the mid 1960s. It is thought that the basic idea for Bayko would have been inspired by other rod styles of 1930s architectural sets such as Brik-tor from the US, Batiss from France and the Dutch Mobaco. All of them used vertical elements into which slid panelled components but these combined metal and/or wood rather than the plastic and steel seen in Bayko. Refs: 'Baykoman' website (Pete Bradley) http://www.bayko.org.uk/index.html?http://www.baykoman.com/The%20BAYKO%20Collectors%20Club/The%20BAYKO%20Collectors%20Club.htm&mainFrame (accessed 21 March 2011) Malcolm Hanson (revised by Gary Birch) 'Bayko: Then and Now', Bayko Colectors' Special Publication [2009] Brian Salter, 'Building Toys', Shire Library, Oxford, 2011 With thanks to Gary Birch, Robin Throp and members of the Bayko Collectors Club http://www.melright.com/bayko/club.htm