The Original Iron Giant (Meccano)

Member Name: robinlawrie

Product:	Meccano
Date:	16/08/01 (572 review reads)
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Having completed opinions on LEGO and K’NEX, I took a look at other categories on dooyoo for similar construction sets and found to my surprise that the granddaddy of them all, the one that all other sets are based on, only had a single opinion written about it. I am referring of course to Meccano.

Fifty years ago, the greatest thing that a boy could aspire to at Xmas, was a Meccano set. It was the ultimate possession and hours would be spent poring over magazines with pictures of these wonderful red and green playthings. I call it a plaything in the loosest of terms, as grown men were just as keen to get their hands on it. What then was Meccano? It was a set of tinplate sections with holes drilled around them; thin steel rods and brass cogs, with nuts and bolts to connect the whole thing together. This may sound unbelievably simple to you, but there is something else even more unbelievable. A decent set cost the equivalent of a fortnights pay for the average working man. Consequently my friends and myself ended up with sets described as 00 and consisting of a dozen small pieces of tin, with a couple of cogs and rods and exactly enough bolts to put the pieces together. The picture on the box may have had a huge model of a transporter bridge or the SS Queen Mary, but with the parts supplied you were lucky if you managed a rather lopsided model of a wheelbarrow.

Meccano, was invented and patented in 1901 by Frank Hornby, who went on to capitalise on this and model electric train sets. He devised competitions, with a large amount of prize money at stake. This was an inspired move as, at a stroke, he had built an instruction book, designed around prize-winning entries, at a fraction of the cost it would normally have cost him. Some of the winners were huge Ferris wheels, warships and a working model of a loom.

Meccano was exported to countries around the world from its headquarters in Liverpool, and apart from halts i
n production during both world wars, built up a following that continues to this day. There are now hundreds of clubs all over the world that exchange model instructions and hold shows. A market in original Meccano parts has built up making the sets even more expensive in real terms. Try typing Meccano into the likes of Google and see what I mean.

In November 1979, Meccano Ltd. Sadly went into receivership. The factory that had manufactured Meccano was demolished. A French company now owns all rights to the Meccano name and produces the metal sets under the trade name of “Erector Meccano” for sale in the USA.

They also tried to bring Meccano up to date in the 1980’s by re-designing the whole concept in plastic. The pieces were much larger and designed for a much younger customer. It never really captured the imagination the way that it’s main rival LEGO did.

Now we are bang up to date and a brand new Meccano has been launched. It is so new that the website at www.meccano.com is only running in French, with the UK site still under construction. In all probability it will be up and running by the time you read this, so go and give it the once over.

The new Meccano is a mixture of old and new. The old metal parts are now multi-coloured, and now can be combined with new plastic fittings, giving the whole thing a fresh modern look. The boxed sets are numbered from 4 to 50. This denotes how many actual models can be constructed from each set. With imagination of course the number will be far greater.

As far as price goes, it is of course advisable to shop around but a good rule of thumb appears to be that set number 4 retails for £4, set 10 for £10 and so on. This means that for a pound or two, you can see if Meccano is really suitable for your budding engineer.

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