Wooden toys have been around it seems, as long as children with wooden toys being the earliest toys discovered by archaeologists. In the ancient Greek and Roman empires, children are known to have played with dolls, horses, chariots, and, of course swords.

By the 16th Century German toy makers took the lead in making wooden toys widely popular with wooden dolls, animals and blocks being sold all over Europe. Over the next century, as competition for more elaborate wooden toys heated up, wooden miniatures like dollhouses and theatres became popular, as well as wooden toy soldiers.

By the 19th Century many wooden toys, like the classic Jack in a box, were hand painted with bright, vivid colours. At the luxurious end of the market, Victorian doll houses are some of the most intricate and finely crafted wooden toys ever created, while rocking horses of the same period are remarkable in their grandeur.

Wooden toy trains started to make an appearance in the early 20th Century, with early companies like Skaneateles Handicrafters in America, and Brio in Europe setting the standards for the wooden toy trains you can still find in the shops today.

In post industrial revolution times, wooden toys declined rapidly in popularity as they were replaced by cheaper and more modern materials like plastic. Plastic lends itself to mass production so the toy makers switched over and wood was almost forgotten about altogether.

It’s only in recent times that wooden toys have made something of a comeback, fuelled largely by customer demand for more traditional toys. Even now though, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever return to the glories of the late 19th Century wooden toy creations which are now highly collectible items, treated more as art than play things.

Today’s wooden toys are largely simpler toys, often used in education and development of preschool children, in items like number blocks, peg hammers, puzzles and toy cars. For grown-ups wooden toys are popular as games like 3D puzzle cubes and jigsaws.