Whizz, Jump, Spin, Hoot, Flutter and Fly: New exhibition of dynamic toys

Join us for our current exhibition at Pollock’s Toy Museum, Croydon, celebrating moving toys from around the world. See carved wooden folk toys, and explore how simple mechanisms using string, wire, elastic bands and reused packaging are used to create ingenious and surprising movements.

Discover how generations of children have captured the wind, used sand to power an acrobat, or made things jump, flap, and run with just a squeeze, flip or push.

An exciting new acquisition of over 100 international moving toys, from a former travelling exhibition, joins the historical collection of Pollock’s Toy Museum in this exploration of dynamic play.

The simple pleasures of making things move

Toys with movements that harness nature’s physical forces have delighted children and intrigued adults since antiquity. From puffing on a whistle, or blowing soap bubbles, or running into the wind with kites and windmills on breezy days; to the wonder that a top balanced on a tiny point doesn’t fall over, but can spin and spin instead; all of these things are unconscious lessons in physics, as well as simply fun.

Energy released by tugging a tightly wound string, or a twisted elastic band, has been the driver of many ingenious whizzing, crawling, or flipping toys, some homemade by children from a chicken wishbone or a reused plastic bottle; others manufactured in their thousands by toy companies around the world.

Movements created using eccentrically linked sections – as in the bird above – can be made to produce a wide range of surprising actions, and are all the better for the way in which you can see and understand the mechanisms that make them work. Toys like these, from the simple to the sophisticated, have captivated the imagination of artists and craftspeople as well as children, often leading to works containing an element of wry wit or social comment.

Our final exhibition for 2025 at Pollock’s Toy Museum, Croydon, showcases a range of these so-called ‘dynamic’ toys from the museum’s historical archive, together with the recently acquired travelling exhibition of moving toys from Africa, India and Europe.

Visit us to explore the variety, creativity and delight of making things that move. We hope you will leave inspired to join a new generation of children and makers having fun playing with simple materials and basic principles to create your own dynamic toy.

Activities during the dynamic toys exhibition

FREE drop-in family workshops on alternate Saturdays from 11.30am-3.30pm. Come and make your own moving toy in our Saturday family workshops. Dates throughout November, December and January will be confirmed soon.

This free exhibition is on now and runs until January 2026. The Croydon museum is open on Saturdays from 11.00am-4.00pm.