BAYKO - Oddities Explained

Just occasionally, individual BAYKO pieces appear which seem to break all the rules.

There are 4 classic examples of this : -

Multicolour, 'spotted' screwdrivers.

White steps.

'Oak' Pillars.

Green Medium Roof.

According to published BAYKO parts' lists, they don't exist - yet they do. They're not common but they are real enough.

The multicolour BAYKO screwdriver, in particular, spawned many theories - specials for a major Toy Fair or prestige customer were the leading contenders.

Wrong - the truth was much simpler!

At the Diamond Jubilee BAYKO exhibition (Liverpool, 1994) a few former Plimpton workers, who actually manufactured BAYKO, joined us.

Talking to them was a revelation : -

Friday afternoon - was their explanation!

By Friday, people everywhere can get demob happy as the weekend approaches - the BAYKO factory was no exception.

"Sometimes we just threw any old **** into the moulds", was their frank admission!

So much for carefully crafted theories - still, it's nice to have the rarities!

It's also nice to look back to an era when things were much more 'hand made' than today!

But before we get too carried away, there could be other explanations for some of the anomalies that date from just either side of the war.

There was a brief flirtation in the late 1940's with grey Bay Window Covers and Canopies, but they proved less popular than the standard red [perhaps post-war austerity meant people didn't want drab colour schemes] so they were dropped.

Perhaps the occasional White Steps, Pale Blue Bases and slightly more common 'Oak' Pillars were part of similarly doomed experiments.

Other parts like white or 'Oak' Turrets; White Bay Window Covers; 'Oak' Domes, Pinnacles and other 'New Series' parts and mottled green Small Roofs do officially exist, but were produced in relatively small quantities and were rarities even in their own time.

If you can shed any light on any of these these anomalies or just want to proffer your own theory, then I'd love to hear from you...

Just to add a slight note of caution...

...exact, consistent colours of BAYKO parts never seemed to be a strict requirement for the manufacturers...

...so I recommend that you don't get too excited over slight colour variations.

The image to the left clearly shows that this lack of concern for colour consistency still affected BAYKO even during the MECCANO era.

Nerd's Corner

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