Imagination: The Last Frontier

books:


	• Robots: Spaceships and Other Tin Toys Teruhisa Kitahara Taschen, 2006 - 349 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Imagination: The Last Frontier

Kitahara's world famous tin toy collection has been photographed many times, and featured in very small paperbacks and large coffee table spreads. This is probably the happy medium; a very inexpensive, large (nearly 350 pages) and visually inviting photoessay that lets the toys speak for themselves.

As many books as there are on tin toy robots, they nearly all feature the same collections, and so the photography and presentation become paramount. Taschen has often featured Kitahara's museum(s) but never to better effect than in this inexpensive volume. Kitahara's collection also includes non-space themed tin toys, but this book concentrates on the robots and space toys from the '50s and '60s when Japan brought unbridled creativity and unparalleled design to tin toys.

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Toy Story

These are toys, the subject matter of a brilliant collection of the artifacts of Japanese ingenuity. Tin toys, produced by tin printing and punching machines, permit a peek into the Japan of the 1950's. Tin toys are mass produced but seem hand-crafted.

There are robots and space ships. A robot tractor and bull dozer have particular charm. There is a robot seesaw. Also there are moon scouts, astronauts, capsules, space stations, and rockets. There are gear robots.

Figures and scenarios are elaborate. Ball escalators are amusing. Skiers are pulled by a dog or turn on a sort of wheel. There is a ball kicker. A highly-wrought horse-race is presented, complete with painted spectators, seating, airplane, clubhouse, greenery. There is a Coney Island rocket ride.

Popeye figures roller-skate, ride a bike, a plane. The pipe is always present, (signifier). There is a girl with a hula hoop, and one with a sewing machine. A remarkable piece is a boy with a camera--highly realistic. Other characters created by comics artists are present, such as Mickey Mouse, Batman, and fantasy figures.

Finally, there are the cars. There is a TV crew bus and car. There is more than one Cadillac, Mercedes Benz, Lincoln, and Packard in the collection. This is magnificent.

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Tin toy mania! Now that computer games have come to stay, tin toys have become obsolete for today's children. For those of us who remember them from times past, these tin toys can transport us back to our childhoods; they call up a vision of a time we thought we had already forgotten. They also bear witness to history; they have survived wars and crises, and tell us something of the fashions, colors and tendencies of their times.

This book will be of special interest to anyone fascinated by early space travel and technology, those who simply want to wax nostalgic about a bygone era of their youth, and of course to collectors and fans of 50s and 60s tin toys. The roots of today's toys can be seen in these precursors, notably in the early transformer robots. Taken from collector Teruhisa Kitahara's vast collection, which is on display in many museums in Japan, the tin toys featured here are quite rare and give a wonderful overview of this era in the history of toys. A must for any toy lover!

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