1950s Triang Toy Dairy Milk Float No 5

Something I’ve always enjoyed about Triang Toys is how many of their products reflect the social history of Britain (and, indeed, the world).

When I was at school, history was taught by rote, so we had to memorise dates of wars and royal families. We were only taught about aristocrats, and learned very little about ordinary people and how they lived. As a result, when I left school I immediately forgot all of it.

Since then though I’ve learned about social history through the inventions and innovations in the evolution of vehicles …from horse-drawn carriages, hand carts, bicycles and tricycles, to motorcycles and automobiles.

Many toys provided history lessons by illustrating that evolution. This is a typical example, a milk cart that evokes memories of the earliest days of milk deliveries, which started with churns on wagons delivered direct from farms, and progressed over the years to milk delivered in bottles to everyone’s doorsteps.

Of course, nowadays the milkman no longer delivers milk to our door, so the whole thing is consigned to memory, and even the toys that reminded us of the earlier years are now rare vintage items.

At only 15 inches long, this may at first seem a rather insignificant item. However, even the Victoria & Albert Museum in London recognizes the history that can be evoked by a toy milk cart, perhaps even more so given its size, as vintage toys immediately return us to our childhood years. They have a 1960s Triang milk cart in their collection, while the example featured here is an earlier version.