BAYKO Adverts in 'The Liverpool Echo'

In BAYKO's home town, 'The Liverpool Echo' was, and indeed remains, the main daily paper for Liverpool and its surrounding region. Even so BAYKO adverts were restricted to one or two in the run up to Christmas, during the 1950s.

There is a 'tradition', not just for the toy market, of aligning individual retailers' adverts to the manufacturers own offering, the following script from Mr. MECCANO's pre-Christmas Letter to Retailers, in 1960, is clear : -

Before I discuss the adverts themselves, I want to comment on their timing. As far as I can discover, the adverts only ever appeared on Fridays in the run up to Christmas. The adverts start shortly after post-war rationing effects had lifted and their timing clearly changed across the period covered. Presumably as a response to wider shopping behaviour patterns, there is a very clear trend, slightly disturbed by 1958, to bring the advertising period forward - by almost two weeks in just seven years.

The left hand end of each bar [below] shows the first advert's date and I've assumed each advert covered 6 shopping days, i.e. from Friday [publication day] to Thursday [publication eve!] - there was absolutely no Sunday shopping in those days, remember!

The adverts varied, not just from each other, but also from the contemporary adverts that were used in the U.K. toy trade publications.

Perhaps it was coincidental, but most of the adverts appeared, across two or three columns, down the right hand side of the page.

If you examine several of the adverts from the later 1950s, you will see that there are classified sized adverts for local BAYKO retailers hanging on Plimpton's coat tails - a clear indication of a proactive relationship with their customers.

There are also other pages showing BAYKO advertising in newspapers : -

Click on any of these thirteen 'Liverpool Echo' BAYKO adverts on this page to open a slightly larger image in a separate window.

I apologise for the fact that some of these images are a little distorted. The reason is quite simple. In order to provide the best quality image possible, I have had to photograph all the adverts directly from bound copies of the original newspapers which are held in the Liverpool Library Records Office, and they are far too fragile to be forced flat.

If you can help provide a better quality image, then I'd love to hear from you…

…please click here to email me if you can help.

Again I would just like to point out the, clearly successful, policy of linking numerous classified sized adverts to the larger BAYKO adverts, a procedure which seems to have been kicked off in 1956, as far as BAYKO advertising was concerned.

Two of these are of particular interest : -

► The FREEMANS advert, December 5th, 1958 - for its “BAYCO” typing error, which was quickly corrected just a week later.

FREEMANS was a large, catalogue-based business, and there is further information, including evidence of their links with BAYKO, on a separate page…

…click here for more on FREEMANS.

► The CURRYS advert [left], November 27th, 1959. Today CURRYS are widely known, but as part of what is now a well known electrical and electronic retail chain. However, here we have clear evidence that it began its life by selling toys, including the world's first, and finest, plastic construction toy!

Click here for more information on CURRYS.