Toddie’s merry-go-round: with twelve interchangeable figures
Edinburgh: Gall & Inglis, 1918?
1918.7.906 (replica carousel)

These series of boxes contain some self-assembled cut-out figures and a card merry-go-round. The oldest existing carousel had been made in 1780 in Germany, and by the end of the nineteenth century, merry-go-rounds commonly featured in illustrations for children. During the First World War, imports from Germany were banned and the British government encouraged industry at home to make the toys that the Germans no longer supplied. Towards the end of the war, Edinburgh publishers Gall & Inglis produced a series of ‘cut, fold and build’ paper toys, which included this ‘carousel of victory’. The toy books were received by the Library through the Copyright Act.