| bc | SYDNEY TOY and
HOBBY SHOP MEMORIES Page updated 11th May, 2011. Just ONE page on the Collecting Books and Magazines web site based in Australia. Recollections Robert Mills Glenn Paton New comments Jim Badger - Those Aussie wartime ashtrays from Levenson’s Radio WANTED - Information on TOY SOLDIERS This page will gather together the memories of those of us who used to frequent, or work for, the toy, hobby and sports shops of Sydney and its suburbs. In the early to mid-20th Century, it was common for so-called 'sports shops' to have a toy or hobby section within, because many manufacturers who produced toys, also manufactured sports equipment in sizes to suit children. Few such shops now exist within the metropolitan area, because large chain stores have taken over the distribution and sale of toys and sporting equipment as completely separate lines. Readers should consider this page as a 'work in progress'. Your contributions are required and I'd like to thank initial contributor Robert Mills for his interesting and wide-ranging comments. - John Note: "/" indicates a new paragraph. Recollections of Robert Mills Levensons
Hobbyco, December 1972 - June 1974 I started there part time in December 1972. Job obtained through link with a Danish family at Canterbury. The Rasmussens - who were possibly neighbours of Frank Murrell. My Grandmother had worked with Mrs Rasmussen in the late 1950’s at T and G Insurance in Sydney. / I worked Thursday nights and Saturdays between late 1972 and mid-1974. I tried to return there at end of 1974 for part time work - no go. Age now a barrier !. School students were employed as wages were age based - if they had a particular hobby interest. Specialisation was the key. Total contrast with Hobbyco operations now. / I served behind glass counters in the downstairs hobby section in George St. / First pay packet of $27.50 (I think) in cash for a weeks work during school holidays late in 72. $5 for Sat mornings. Little brown paper pay packets dispensed by Mr Rubilio. / First days task was cleaning the ceiling under stairs ! / Store rooms out back rarely had fresh air. Dank stale smells. Giant safe. / Other characters employed during my time (student staff) – Geoff Fellows, Paul Swift (Son of a Colonel at Victoria Barracks), a Scottish guy, " Beg pard" Peter Jones in 74 and red haired storeman (still there / in 1999 – then a manager). The 70’s plastic kit revolution was underway – hard to convince shopkeepers/management of need for stocking new products. It was the era of Airfix, Frog, Monogram, Italeri and the Japanese newcomer - Tamiya. Pace setter in 1/35th scale AFV’s. Looking back I now realize how unique the period was. / I won a competition at Fantastic Toy and Hobby Shop (the chief competitor) in late 1972 - scratchbuilt model using Airfix Pz 4 kit. Entry No 44. I still have it complete with entry sticker ! Constructed a Tamiya BMW R75 side car combo displayed at Hobbyco for some time. / Opening routine each Saturday - Opening/Shutting roller-door at entrance was always an effort. Took efforts of two people ! Cleaning front display cases was also problematic. Gymnastic qualities required there. A real chore. Extreme care was necessary to avoid knocking down window displays. / Lunch options – Wolfes sandwich shop nearby or a recent development – McDonalds in 1974. Not much else then. went to MacDonalds to check out the female staff mainly not the "food"! Magazine stand under stairs - split stairs facing rear wall. Rail, motorised aircraft and plastic kits all on one floor. Ships, figures, games on ground level above. Mr Winfields domain. 1 or 2 central serving areas on ground level. Pre supermarket layout with most stock behind counter or under the counter glass. Sales philosophy was look but not touch - ask if needed/wanted. Unlike the supermarket style arrangement now used. / Mechanical cash registers then. Bankcard introduced in 1974. Credit cards a novelty. Few credit card transactions taken - cash mainly. / Monogrammed Hobbyco paper (Brown Red & Green) on large heavy metal dispenser rolls. An art to cut the paper with one hand and judge the length required for wrapping the sold item. No samples survived - unfortunately. / Used a small oblong shaped wooden sales pads to write prices down/add up totals. Arithmetic was essential. Each Saturday was a competition to see who could get the highest sales total - if you were based in a section with expensive items you had a natural advantage. / George St address was near Cinema alley. Hoyts Centre 70’s kitsch and old Trocadero Building coexisted then. / Image of Mr Rubolio counting cash feverishly at registers at end of each days trading. / Fantastic Toy and Hobby shop FTHS (John De Horn Manager – station wagon with balloons) - were main rivals to Hobbyco. Branches in Park St and Bondi Junction for a time ....... 35 years on and how the world has changed. # Thanks again, Robert. All comments on the above will be gratefully received. See below. COMMENTS Recollections of Glenn Paton Enjoyed the toy shops article, a few thoughts and questions. Was Levensons in Pitt St? In the 60's I remember going to a model shop in Pitt St with a workmate who was a keen model railway modeller, I thought it was Levensons, being a non railway person I couldn't work out why anyone would pay a huge amount of money on the pretty gold model locos only to paint them black. In the late 60's there was another Hobby shop in Pitt St I think between King and Market Sts? Again in the 60's there was another toy/hobby shop opposite Dymocks but they were not there for long and mainly sold toys, the name escapes me. I remember Walther and Stevenson's at Town Hall, I used to love looking at the toy soldiers in the window and one Saturday morning was fortunate enough to get my own Britains 25pdr and for Christmas another time the naval gun. Hobbyco was also visited in the 60s and 70s, I remember getting a model of the Revell Hospital Ship Haven during one of their sales, I was still at school so it must have been before 1965. I also remember that they had real old issues of Airfix models that hadn't been seen in shops for ages. In the mid 70's I was working at the DMR and used to visit with a railway modeller who purchased a VR Puffing Billy. As one of my jobs was to walk between Day St and HO at Campbell St I was tasked by my friend to pick up his monthly issues of model railway magazines. I also remember visiting the Fantastic Toy & Hobby Shop up that little lane near Wynyard. When it opened we modellers thought it was terrific as John stocked all the newer models that Hobbyco didn't seem to worry about eg the Tamiya tanks. Captain Fantastic was a nice guy and was always willing to help out with model enquiries. Anthony Hordern's also had a good selection of models, the brand I remember them having a lot of was Aurora, so maybe they were having a sale of them, I can't remember. Woollies at Town Hall also sold quite a lot of models, I remember in the early 70's that they remaindered all the old Frog kits when they went out of business, I purchased quite a few of the warship models. I wish I still had them. Later Woollies also remaindered the Airfix kits when they went through one of there collapses, that time I remember getting the hovercraft, which I still have somewhere. I also visited Keith Hudson in his Goulburn St shop and as it was only around the corner I spent a good deal of time there. Both Keith and his wife were terrific people and always helpful. From memory Keith was a keen model airplane builder of the flying type but kept a huge inventory of model train gear. Very popular at the time as he was only one of the few hobby shops that stocked NSW outline models, even thought they were pretty rough compared to today's standards. It was great dealing with Keith because if you could find it in a Walthers catalogue he would order it in for you. That was really handy for the modeller in those pre internet days. Anyway
that's a few of my memories on toy and hobby shops in the
city, the memory is going so maybe some of the info might
not be accurate. Jim Badger - Those Aussie wartime ashtrays from Levenson’s Radio Airplane ashtrays collectors occasionally come across an e-Bay auction for an ashtray modelled in the shape of Australia.
Certainly, there are numerically far more cast English and American cast airplane ashtray models dating from the war to be found on e-Bay, but Australian-sourced models make up a significant proportion of the offerings each month, which raises some interesting questions about their manufacture, because Australia was far from being one of the world’s heavily industrialised economies in the mid-20th century.
Joseph Levenson (1882-1974) commenced his business in the early 1900s. He is listed in the Sands Sydney Street Index of 1910 as the proprietor of a shooting gallery in Pitt St. About this time, American slot machines were entering the market in Australia, finding favour amongst customers of establishments like Levenson’s and boosting profits. Indeed, up to 1940s, the firm described itself “slot machine specialists”, perhaps indicating that they imported and distributed, as well as ran, these Yankee money-makers. Although Levenson was described as an upright businessman, his business activities (it was not until the 1950s that gaming machines were legalised in New South Wales) and wrangles over employment disputes landed him in trouble with the police and the industrial relations system from time to time. From this thriving base, Levenson branched out into selling a huge variety of games, tricks and novelties. These included such gems as skull rings (“the wearer commands respect”) sugar dispensers and luminous paint, pocket knives (for “Men of the Services”,) throwing knives and toys, such as the toy roulette wheel horse-racing game featured in Carter’s 2006 Price Guide to Antiques p.662. He added crystal sets, radios and radio parts in the late 1920s. His shop obviously worked its charms on Sydneysiders like Ian Kirby ( http://www.collectingbooksandmagazines.com/ahIan.html ) who recalls haunting the premises at lunchtime as a young apprentice electrician working for nearby Anthony Horden’s department store during the early 1950s. His interest in things electrical had been sparked as a youngster when he was given a Levenson crystal set one year for Christmas and now was a teen, he was drawn to Levensons displays of enticing gear for the radio enthusiast. Some idea of what Kirby would have seen during his lunch hour can be gathered from his description of the American Talking Weighing machine stationed right outside Levenson’s front door. The mulct levied by this wonderful machine for letting the whole world know your weight was considerably more than the single penny charged by conventional machines, but apparently there was no lack of patrons eager to pay to be publicly humiliated! The firm was selling its own brand of radio receiver in 1930, and by 1933, its Radio assembly chart & component parts catalogue boasted that it supplied “the demands of a continent and the South Seas islands”. Not all of this demand was met from new stock – much of it apparently dated from the 1920s and was probably PMG surplus. But old or new, it was promoted via a relentless stream of books on radio (All about aerials and How to build modern crystal radio receivers are typical titles) Although radio sales became his mainstay, Joseph Levenson (self-described in the 1930 Sands Street Index as an “investor”) kept a finger in many other pies, ever on the alert for market opportunities. He imported and sold books on subjects as diverse as Household Electric Refrigeration and More card manipulation, while his range of aircraft identification manuals and ID aids probably walked off the shelf throughout the 1940s. As early as 1941 Levensons advertised that they sold rough castings of airplanes – “all Modern Planes”, “ready to polish up and chrome” . Customers could choose between a Spitfire (2/6d), Douglas (DC-3?) (2/9d), Hudson (2/6d), Fairey Battle (4/-), Wirraway (2/6d or 3/-), Kittyhawk (2/9d) or De Havilland Comet (3/-). There were four kinds of ashtray base ranging from 3/6d to 4/6d, while the upright or stalk attachment cost 1/1. Complete sets cost between 11/6d – 22/6d. To put these prices into perspective, you could rent a whole house for 20/- per week at this date. Levensons probably bought the castings from the many small factories and foundries which turned to war production on a 24/7 basis, turning out these models as a by-product of serious war work and as a means of training unskilled hands. Levensons advertised that they acted as wholesalers, sending goods all over Australia, so many airplane ashtrays found today in junk shops interstate could have come from their premises. I have heard that hobby shops in Melbourne had a flourishing trade in rough castings, but I have never found examples and proof is hard to come by. Whichever retailer sold them, Spitfire, Hudson, Wirraway and Comet models held enormous appeal to public sentiment during the war and must have sold in some numbers, for they are the models from Australia which still turn up in the largest numbers on eBay today.
Souvenir ashtray sales seem to have continued right up to 1946, when P-38 models frequently had the words “South Pacific” and the date engraved on the tail plane. In my years of collecting airplane ashtrays, I have never found any example with a later date than that, so I guess that with the end of hostilities, a domestic decline in interest in war-like displays of airplane ashtrays plus the departure of cash-up servicemen, Levensons went back to selling toys, novelties and radio parts, a trade which kept the firm afloat until 1971. # Thanks for the excellent article, Jim. WANTED - Information on TOY SOLDIERS
|
bc |
