MonoMonday: Back to the 60s

Getting my old Bayko sets out of storage has certainly taken me back to the 60s. If you don't know about it, Bayko was a construction toy with plastic bases on which you could construct a variety of buildings, using bricks, windows, doors etc which you slid onto rods plugged into holes in the base. Manufacture began in 1933, stopped briefly during WW2 and ceased in 1967 when its main rival (I'm sure you can guess what that was, it begins with "L"!) displaced it from the marketplace.

In a lot of ways the models are more realistic than those made from its competitor, but it's not nearly as flexible in terms of what can be constructed. It can also be a little frustrating, as when the rods get bent (as they always tend to do) it's tricky to keep the bricks in place.

Here's a funny anecdote: being such a Bayko fan, when I was little and saw scaffolding being used in the construction of new buildings, I imagined that they were slotting bricks onto the scaffolding poles just like with Bayko!

Bayko came in a variety of different-sized sets which varied during its period of manufacture. When I knew it there were sets numbered from set "0" to set "4". If you started off with a lower numbered set you could buy a "conversion set" to upgrade it to the next level - I've included some in the photo. If I'd more time I'd have built a more impressive model for the photo, I'm sorry that this is all I had time for today. (Some day I'll see if I can blip a photo of a bigger construction.) But I've deliberately photographed it on the floor as that was a common place to play with it (not nice for bare feet if a part got left there afterwards!).

Thanks so much to Laurie54 for organising MonoMonday this month.