Museum of Shanghai Toys
I talked about the MINT Museum of Toys last time. Do you know that there are actually 2 toy museums in Singapore?
Here’s another toy museum which Miss Tan and I visited quite recently at Little India, Museum of Shanghai Toys (MoST). It’s Singapore’s first toy museum.
Located along Rowell Rd, this museum took us quite some time to find it. And since the weather is so freakin’ hot nowadays, I find it quite amazing that we could make it to the museum alive. Haha.
This museum is built in a 3 storey shophouse, and has a rather cozy feel to it. There’s no lift inside, so you’ll have to take the very very steep stairs to every level. Luckily it’s only 3 storeys… heh heh.
When we entered the museum, we were immediately greeted by the director of the museum, Mr Marvin Chan. There was no other staff around, except him! This place is like his second home! Haha.
After our purchase of the admission tickets, we proceeded to the third level first, which has a mini classroom and toy displays.
One thing that I like about this museum is, YOU CAN PLAY WITH SOME OF THE TOYS!
While many of the toys are probably expensive collectors’ items which need to be protected behind the glass panels, there are also quite a few others that are displayed ‘outside’.
As you play with those non-battery operated toys made of wood and tin, you can start to enjoy what your parents or their parents used to play with when they were kids. Nowadays, most of the kids I see either play with PSP or Nintendo DS (mostly PSP). I did notice many people nowadays are starting to play rubik’s cube too.
I had some problems trying to figure out how to play with some of the toys though. -_-
The place is arranged and furnished almost like how a 50’s home would be, with some wooden shelves and cupboards, old radio and television set. There are even very old magazines and books about toys lying around for you to read! It’s as if we (along with the air-con) were transported back in time.
Mandarin children songs from the past are played in this level, serving as background music to further bring out the 50’s feel.
This is the Chinese ’snakes and ladders’! The illustrations are very funny, as they try to give you moral education while you play with it. For example, if you arrive in school early, you can skip from ‘1′ to ‘41′. But if you smoke, you will have to fall from ‘69′ to ‘9′. Haha. I want to own this!
There’s also board game that you can play with. Do you know how to play this? In Chinese this game is called ‘Jump Aeroplane’ (direct translation). In English, the Chinese call this ‘Chess’. -_-
A very cute teddy bear leaning against the wall looking at the toy car displays. Cool huh?
We also came across some very scary toys, I wonder if kids from Shanghai really played with these? Or is their definition of ‘cute’ different from mine?
Looks like a bunch of corpses lying down in the coffin, and some, outside the coffin.
Arms at $5 each. Legs at $8 each. Torso $15. Head $20 (excluding hair removal). Each sold separately.
白发魔女. Some demoness with white hair, lol.
Alright, enough of scary toys. =x
If you read the words from left to right, it can be directly translated and mean ‘Human Super Big’, or ‘Super Enormous Human’. Of course, Chinese from the past read from right to left, so it means ‘Big Superhuman’.
What I’ve covered is just about 5% of the museum, don’t think this little blog post can cover everything. So you should just hop down to Rowell Rd and try this interesting and unique experience yourself too!
There’s a museum souvenir shop and retail shop in the first floor, where you can purchase some tin toys back home to play. They are all very new toys and you can choose to buy for collecting, as gifts, or play with them yourself. Or you can buy 3 toys of the same kind for all 3 purposes stated above. Lol.
The director of the museum also told us that among all students who have visited his museum, we were the first to stay there for such a long time. Most people only spent about 30 minutes in the museum before leaving.
Admission fees for adults and children/students are $8 and $5 respectively. For local bank card holders, the price for adults and children/students are $5 and $3 respectively. Very cheap isn’t it?!
For more information about the museum, you can visit their website here. Or you can follow their blog here too.
You may want to visit this museum to relax and play amidst your shopping sprees in the Great Singapore Sale! =)
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Steven “God” Spielberg is now back with the fourth instalment of the classic Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
I haven’t watched any of its previous movies before, so I can’t really make any comparison between the latest release and the three previous ones. Some of my friends commented that the fourth movie is just a combination of the working formula and elements of the first three; there’s no breakthrough nor anything surprising.
Well, to me, I find this movie very entertaining and enjoyable, keeping you to the edge of your seat with fast paced chase sequences and also light hearted funny moments throughout the whole show. The use of colours and textures have really brought out that kind of 50’s feel.
It is a good summer blockbuster movie with a not-really-super-exciting story, but not great enough to be considered another classic, nor great enough to make a deep impression. So just watch, enjoy and forget the movie afterwards.
7 / 10
