BAYKO in 'Toy Trader', July 1949

Although this is not strictly an ”advertising puff”, this is non-the-less an interesting example of Plimpton using the trade press to get their BAYKO message across.

This is a short but interesting paragraph on BAYKO which appeared in 'Toy Trader', a leading publication of the day for the British toy trade, in July, 1949. It appeared in the ”Things I see and Hear” section, which was a sort of insiders insight, if not actually a gossip column.

The script is simple and to the point : -

There are, I suppose, two possible views of the motives behind this snippet : -

An old cynic like myself might just see this as a marketing ploy - encouraging the trade to order early for Christmas, or even to over-order for fear of getting less than they wanted through some sort of rationing process.

A more charitable person may see this as a particularly interesting comment on the ”export or die”, deliberate, government inspired, pressures of post-war British business.

I, perhaps rather surprisingly given my usually jaundiced perspective, suspect that the latter is the more likely explanation!

I think I always knew that the U.K. was bankrupt after the second world war, and that exports were strongly encouraged to generate much needed foreign currency for the overall economy…

…but I certainly hadn't realised that the pressures were such that domestic markets were impacted so strongly.

A final point of interest, or perhaps a pointer to which of the above is the more likely explanation, is the fact that this item appeared just two months after Plimpton 'relaunched' BAYKO with its first domestic advertising campaign since the war!

BAYKO was a regular advertiser in 'Toy Trader'…