The first Mettoy toy typewriter, “Mettype Junior”, hit British toy shops in 1952, joining stoves, sewing machines, cash registers and train sets in the recommendations for Christmas gifts that year.
It was designed by Samuel Berger of Unique in 1947 (patented 1951). Marx and Tippco were among the other companies who also purchased the design.
It utilised a method of typing even more cumbersome than texting on an old Nokia. The wheel was rotated to the letter/number of choice and the lever below pressed. Letters O and I doubled for the numbers 0 and 1, and somewhere between the original patent and production the ? was omitted from the wheel (good idea because why encourage kids to ask even more questions than they already do).
Christmas 1957 gave children the choice of two newer models; the Minor or the Supertype, which held two differently coloured ink ribbons.
The design was improved upon by Berger’s son Edwin in 1956 (patented 1959) to include lowercase letters operated by a shift lever. Mettoy’s three new models, the Travellor, Elegant and Prefect, were out in time for Christmas 1960.
The companies already mentioned also produced tin motorcycle toys. They, along with a number of others, made predominantly racing, policemen and touring riders, but also some clowns and ‘about town’ riders on scooters or trikes.
As with the typewriters, there were a lot of similar moulds used by multiple companies and the use of lithography allowed for different characters to be printed onto the same moulds (like the two below). Those pictured are mostly around 8″ in length and friction or spring powered. They are not shown to scale.
All motorcycles (alongside many more) from Flickr, lord enfield CC BY 2.0
Images have been adapted from their originals to remove backgrounds and some were colour corrected for consistency.