All work and play with The Herbert's toys and games collection
Throughout my time at The Herbert I have been tackling the on-going task of updating catalogue entries for the Toys and Games collection.
 The scope of the collection spans from Victorian toys such as spinning tops and marbles to more modern items such as Lego and a Playstation. As well as children's toys there are also more adult items such as card games and collectable items, for example, doll's house furniture. The toys and games are a popular aspect of the museum's history gallery because of the nostalgia that visitors feel when they see items associated with their childhood memories. There is a sense of gratification in seeing the items that you treasured as a child also being treasured and cared for by a museum.
 I recently picked out a few of my favourite items to show during the museum's open store tours which were a part of Heritage Open Weekend. The collection selected included some boxes of Lego with 1960s packaging, a beautiful Victorian toy cooking stove and a 1970s Buckaroo game which oddly I remember from my childhood, despite growing up in the 1990s! I also chose to talk about a Victorian Pope St Joan board game (pictured below). This is a game designed to be played with cards and counters, which fit into the dividers on the board, and are used to bet with. The game was named after Pope John VIII who was rumoured to have gone into labour while on horseback during a papal procession and therefore revealed to be a woman! If you were unlucky enough to get the Pope St Joan card, the nine of diamonds, then all your counters would be surrendered to the dealer.
  Two of my favourite objects in the collection were chosen for the tour because of the interesting story they carried. While updating the locations of the toys and games collection I came across a slightly scruffy looking pull-along wooden dog and a wooden 'pecking chickens' toy. On looking up their catalogue entry I discovered that these toys had been hand-crafted by prisoners of war during the 1940s. The donor of these toys was a refugee of the Coventry Blitz. She had received the toys as a gift from Polish and Czech prisoners of war who were working on a farm near Leamington Spa, where she was staying. These items demonstrate the joy of working with social history collections in discovering surprising stories behind ordinary objects.
