4295 – Treasure Transporter

Treasure Transporter Released: 2007 RRP: N/A Rating: ★★★★★ The treasure transporter is one of my favourite Playmobil sets. It was the first item of second-hand Playmobil that I acquired: from eBay for £12 if I remember rightly. As such it probably represents the tipping point of my descent into playmophilia. There are a lot of

6847 – Knights’ Rivalry Duo Pack

Knights’ Rivalry Duo Pack Released: 2016 RRP: £4.99 Rating: ★★★★ Our modern conceptions of the knight, and of the medieval period in general, have suffered greatly from the romanticism of the nineteenth century. The knight, from the German ‘knecht‘, meaning ‘servant’, was a designation of social rank more than a military position. Knights were the

6658 – Pirate Keyring

Pirate Keyring Released: 2016 RRP: £3.99 Rating: ★★★★★ It’s the start of term this week. To commemorate A.’s graduation to a new school year, I treated her to this lively-coloured fellow to hang from her book bag. I ended up getting him from Spain as he’s quite hard to find in the UK, but by

70160 – Pirate

Pirate Released: 2019 RRP: £1.99 (FI?URES Series 16) Rating: ★★★★ This lady was an impulsive acquisition, as a gift for A., from the Valencia Playmobil specialist ClickClack. I had found enough pieces that I wanted in order to justify the cost of import, but actually had space for a couple more klickies, so in she

70242 – Soldier

Soldier Released: 2020 RRP: £1.99 (FI?URES Series 17) Rating: ★★★★ On our way back from a sojourn in mid-Wales, A. and I decided to physically visit a toy shop, something of a novelty in this age of lockdowns. So we had a little detour to BD Price in Sedgley, near Wolverhampton; one of my regular

9446 – Pirate and Soldier Duo Pack

Pirate and Soldier Duo Pack Released: 2018 RRP: £4.99 Rating: ★★★★ The threat of pirates to maritime trade has always been seen as a problem for governments to resolve, rather than one for the merchant community to deal with itself. This is because governments – monarchs in the early modern period – are the arbiters

6490 – Three Roman Soldiers

Three Roman Soldiers Released: 2016 RRP: £7.99 Rating: ★★★★★ Where would the early modern period be without the Renaissance, and where would the Renaissance be without the Romans? Ok, early moderns were (arguably) more interested in the rhetoric of Cicero, the histories of Livy and the architecture of Vitruvius, but they still enjoyed reading Caesar’s

9358 – Pirate with Treasure Chest

Pirate with Treasure Chest Released: 2018 RRP: £3.99 Rating: ★★★★ History has been very kind to pirates. Nobody thinks today of the cruelty of Charles Vane, only the charms of John Silver, Jack Sparrow and Horatio Pugwash. Moreover, the central piratical act, that of robbery, has been displaced in the popular imagination by the essentially

6107 – Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer Released: 2011 RRP: €2.99 (tourismus.nuernberg.de) Rating: ★★★★★ Possibly my favourite klicky to date, and also a favourite with A., is the figure of the Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer. This was the first collaboration between Brandstätter and the Nuremberg Tourist Office, five years before the famous Martin Luther klicky, and understandably so. Dürer is

6822 – Playmo-Friends Caribbean Buccaneer

Caribbean Buccaneer Released: 2016 RRP: £2.49 Rating: ★★★★ While most pirates operating in the Caribbean Sea c.1700 were ‘white’ Europeans, former merchant sailors and the like, there were a number of ‘non-white’ pirates too. Many were ex-slaves, the most famous of whom, Black Caesar, was executed in 1718. Most Playmobil pirates are also ‘white’ and