We collect unusual toys, and with a collection of over 20,000 (and rising!) that have been bought over the last 30 years, there is a wide variety of amazing things to share with you! We don't do dolls! Our toys might have a fun or unusual mechanism, can be used to amaze or puzzle people, are a bit magical or maybe a bit scientific. Whatever the angle, they have to have something a bit 'special' about them. Nearly all the toys you see here are from Tim's Toy Collection, and are no longer available in the shops. Many were bought 20 or even 30 years ago! However we do have a small range of items that can be bought on-line. You can visit the Grand Illusions Toy Shop, www.grand-illusions.com Hendrik Ball www.grand-illusions.com
2.1M
596.3M
1.6K
362.3K
Sign up to see all brand mentions
Sign UpSign up to see all sponsors
Sign Up
Visit Tim's Toy Shop, at https://www.grand-illusions.com/
________________________________________________________
Toys with a 14th February vibe to them...
A Spanish toy (still working after all these years) with two little dogs sitting next to each other in a little car. Wind up up and the car whizzes around the table, with the two toy dogs exchanging kisses every so often. They don't seem to have heard that advice to keep your eyes on the road!
A heart shaped toy from the US. A picture of a boy and a girl. But in each case their mouth consists of a short length of very fine chain. As you shake the toy, they adopt all sorts of expressions!
From Tim's mantelpiece, 4 pieces of wood that form two bears having a bear hug!
A kissing condiment set...
A flower that lights up when you kiss it. Well, there is an acoustic switch, so any kind of noise will cause it to light up.
A Japanese toy. Pop a coin in, push the lever down, and... the boy climbs up the steps and kisses the girl. JOY BANK it says on the front.
A French toy - kissing clothes pegs!
From the Tyrol, an automaton attached to a cork. An elegant way to seal a half open bottle of wine. This automaton has two levers, each giving a distinct action.
A 'Peep' or Stanhope. Inside is a tiny photograph (a microphotograph) and a special lens. Hold it up to your eye and point it towards a light source, and you will see the image inside!
Finally, two kissing fish! Joined by a piece of string you pull them apart, which winds up the mechanism. Let go and they are pulled together until they meet for a big smacking kiss!
Sign up for the free Grand Illusions newsletter, at http://conta.cc/3dplns1
_______________________________________________________________________
- And Write Myself a Letter...
Of course, if Tim is going to write himself a letter he has a lot of varied writing implements to choose from!
I ♡ U appears on the little optical device on the top of the first pencil - great for writing love letters maybe? An item from Rufus Butler Seder of Eye Think, Inc.
A pen that answers all your questions!
The Rocket Launcher pen - we used to stock these in the Grand Illusions Shop, but that was a while ago.
A pen that you can attach to your key ring. When not in use, it folds up into a very compact shape.
A flexible swan pen with a very flexible neck!
A pencil that is also a magic trick...
Finally a very noisy pen. Just the thing when you are working in the library! Shhhhh...
Visit Tim's Toy Shop, at https://www.grand-illusions.com/
________________________________________________________
Is Tim a gambler? He certainly has a lot of playing cards. However they are all rather unusual if not downright strange, so maybe they would not actually be all that good for gamblers!
The 'Zero' of diamonds? A six of spades where the symbols for the spade suit have all slipped down to one end... Tim has a theory as to how magicians use this type of card to deceive us!
Cards with very unusual shapes...
A trick deck with built in animation to show the card you have chosen...
A Swedish doctor friend spent 6 months visiting shops that sold playing cards before he could assemble his 'perfect deck'. 52 different cards... BUT all showing the King of Hearts. How are they different? They all have a different pattern on the back of the card! Of course, he was able to make up 52 of these decks of cards, all having the same 52 different backs, and each deck having just a single card showing on the face of the card. A very unusual idea!
An ordinary deck, but with a figure on the back doing a hula hoop exercise. Flick through the deck and he becomes animated!
Finally a playing card that has been carefully cut and folded, and now functions as a sun dial!
The Schröder Staircase is an amazing optical illusion. Created by Kokichi Sugihara, it won First Prize in the 'Best Illusions of the Year Contest 2020'.
You can download a free PDF file here - https://www.isc.meiji.ac.jp/~kokichis/contest/contest2020/3Dschroederstaircase.pdf - which when you print it out on a sheet of A4 paper, or even better very thin card, will allow you to create your own Schröder Staircase.
___________________________________________________
The Schröder Staircase is a free download.
We also have some of Kokichi Sugihara's other optical illusions, made from plastic, in the Grand Illusions Toy Shop - see https://www.grand-illusions.com/collections/optical-illusions
Sign up for the free Grand Illusions newsletter, at http://conta.cc/3dplns1
_______________________________________________________________________
Tim is still rolling his dice...
A spinning top that has a built in die! Spin the top, then stop the top and let the internal mechanism slow down and stop... revealing the red line is now above one of the numbers 1 to 6. So, a top and a die.
Some dice with the same number on every face - Tim is not sure what use these would have.
Tim then shows a pair of dice that when you roll the give either a seven (adding the two numbers together) or eleven.
Rubber dice - these you need to bounce, rather than roll.
Then a die with 100 faces - every number from 1 to 100. What game might you play with this?
Then... split a split die, and as you shake it, the two halves can spin around the axis.
Finally a die made of clear plastic that is also a spinning top.
PS Slight mix up last week, where one of the thumbnails showed the first item in this video! My mistake. Hopefully now fixed.
Visit Tim's Toy Shop, at https://www.grand-illusions.com/
________________________________________________________
Tim loves dice and he has many examples in his collection.
A dice (or die) as a key fob, except the die is also a puzzle. Tim takes it apart, which is quick - but he will put it together later since that take a lot longer!
Next a prototype that Tim acquired about 40 years ago. As far as he knows, this design never actually went into production. There are two ball bearings inside the circular plastic box, one on the inner circle and one on the outer circle. Shake the box and the ball bearings whizz around, before coming to a stop. There are six numbers on the inner circle, and six on the outer, so this is the equivalent of throwing a pair of dice!
Extremely small dice - who knew they made them this small?
A Japanese invention which Tim bought about 30 years ago when he was in Japan - a wooden circular design with a spindle sticking out of the top. Spin it and the interior wheels all spin around and when the wheels stop the pointer will indicate a number between 1 and 6.
A flat plastic design that folds into a cube, forming a perfect die.
A die with a very strange shape, which rolls in a very strange fashion. However it still displays one of the numbers from 1 to 6 when it comes to rest.
A plastic die which has a smaller die inside, it also incorporates a bottle opener, and then you can press a small button and it lights up. Tim loves multifunctional items!
Finally, a circular die. Tap it on the table and the LEDs light up and flash randomly, before setting on a specific number. However it displays the numbers 1 to 7!
Sign up for the free Grand Illusions newsletter, at http://conta.cc/3dplns1
_______________________________________________________________________
Tim has many balloon based toys in his collection.
All these demonstrations involve something INSIDE the balloon.
The first balloon sits quietly on the table, until it suddenly shoots up into the air! A small gadget inside, with a rubber sucker and a spring, needs to be pushed together and then - when the sucker loses its grip - the gadget springs apart and causes the balloon to suddenly leap up in the air!
The next balloon has a UK 10p piece coin inside. This coin has a milled edge, so if you spin the balloon so that the coin is then spinning around on the inside, you hear a strange 'whizzing' noise.
Tim then shows what happens if instead of one 10p coin, you use two 5p coins.
Then Tim shows a balloon with two 'blaster balls' inside. These have small percussion caps all over the surface which go bang when they hit a hard object. So as you shake the balloon, you keep hearing little bangs coming from inside!
A balloon as maracas...
Finally, Tim demonstrates the Bernoulli Theorem using two balloons attached to a piece of string. When you blow between the two balloons while they are suspended on strings, instead of the balloons being blown apart, as you might expect, they are blown together. Most unexpected!
Visit Tim's Toy Shop, at https://www.grand-illusions.com/
________________________________________________________
Offer someone this teaspoon to stir their tea or coffee. As soon as they dip it into the hot liquid, the spoon bends through 90 degrees! It does this very quickly and will cause the person holding the spoon quite a surprise! Alternatively, you can stir your coffee or tea in a café or office canteen and then point out how strong the tea or coffee must be, given it has caused the spoon to bend! Finally, there is a perfect depth of tea or coffee, where you can drop the spoon in and it will vanish below the surface, due to it bending the minute it enters the hot liquid. The liquid needs to be deep enough to cover the spoon in the bent position, but not so deep that people will think it is deep enough simply to cover the spoon without it bending. If you use a cup and saucer (the saucer covering more than a mug would) you can then lift the cup and saucer off your hand and reveal the teaspoon underneath – it appears the spoon has passed through the cup and ended up in your hand! Of course, you need two spoons to perform this particular trick.
The liquid does not need to be boiling - the spoon will sometimes bend if placed under water from the hot tap, if it is hot enough. Part of the handle is made of Nitinol or Shape Memory Metal, which 'remembers' a shape that has been previously set into it. To reset the spoon, first cool it under the cold tap, and then straighten it again. The spoon can be used many times, as Nitinol is a very flexible metal.
Nitinol is a metal alloy, sometimes also called 'memory metal' or more properly Shape Memory Alloy (SMA). This memory effect was originally discovered in the 1930s, but Nitinol itself was only discovered in 1962. Made from Nickel and Titanium, it was discovered at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in White Oak, Maryland.
Shape Memory Alloys have two distinct types of crystal structure, depending on whether they are above or below a certain critical transformation temperature. Below the critical temperature, the alloy is flexible and can be bent easily into any shape. This is known as the martensitic state, where the atoms are in flexible lattices, which allow the metal to be bent easily. But once heated to the critical temperature, Nitinol shows its 'heat memory' as it transforms into the austenitic state, where the atoms become locked into their previous rigid arrangement. When the metal springs into its remembered shape, it does so with so much force that it can be used to do actual work. Small motors have been built using Nitinol wire that passes through different temperatures. Solar panels on some satellites are raised into position by Shape Memory Alloys, activated by the heat of the sun.
A shape is programmed into a piece of Nitinol by annealing it. The metal is held in the desired shape and heated to a very high temperature. After it cools, you can bend it into any shape you want but heat it above the critical temperature (which is much lower than the annealing temperature) and it will instantly return to the high temperature shape that you programmed into it.
Visit Tim's Toy Shop, at https://www.grand-illusions.com/
________________________________________________________
Skywriters involve lights that go on and off, and create an image in the air.
Tim demonstrates a toy where the image is created in lights, and then he shows some 'reverse' versions, where the lights create the background, and the animated figure is dark.
Sign up for the free Grand Illusions newsletter, at http://conta.cc/3dplns1
_______________________________________________________________________
Tim is all in a spin again - and not just because he has new titles!! There is something of a Bristol, England theme here. And who is that in the balloon? Could it be Isambard Timdom Brunel??
Simple little plastic daisies that sit on the table, and spin if you blow on them. Tim found these in a German toy fair.
An intriguing little windmill that acts as a hook, maybe to keep things tidy in the kitchen. When you hang something on the hook it causes the windmill to spin.
A small metal spinning top from Germany. Not immediately obvious how you get it to spin. However if you hold it between your thumb and finger and use a little tube to blow, it will spin up to a good speed. You can then move your thumb out of the way, and leave the little top spinning on your finger. Very clever!
Fridge magnets that are little propellers which spin when you blow on them.
Finally, a large windmill that is an outdoor toy, which will spin given a reasonable breeze.
Get notified instantly when Grand Illusions mentions your brand, topic, or keyword in their videos.
