Mint Museum of Toys

It’s been such a long while since we had travelled anywhere in Singapore that I’m starting to reminisce the past. Such as the time we visited the Mint Museum of Toys!

The MINT Museum of Toys of is certainly one of the more unique museums in Singapore and highly raved about.

Address and Opening Hours:
Mint Museum of Toys
26 Seah Street, Singapore 188382
9:30am – 6:30pm every day

Looking more like a cafe than a Museum from the outside, we nearly missed the Mint Museum of Toys. However thankfully we didn’t miss it!

The musem is sorted by countries where the toys came from. There’s a huge collection of over three thousand vintage toys from around the 1850’s to the 1950’s.

Every item is kept in Mint condition (no pun intended) so be prepared to peer through lots of glass displays, which can be quite irritating. But the collection is extremely valuable so it is understandable.

Not every item is labelled but enough labels are made so you know what’s going on even you don’t happen to be a vintage toy expert, especially on the more valuable toys in the collection. We also didn’t take pictures of every toy as there literally thousands but below are some which caught our eye!
Fun fact! MINT is an acronym for “Moment of Imagination and Nostalgia with Toys”.

Disney toys

 Popeye

Batman, Superman and other Superheroes

You can tell my Favourite superhero is Batman from the number of pictures I took!

Buck Rogers (Who?)

Definitely way before my time. Welp. I love the vintage faded colours on the toys which are older and also the retro packaging design.

Robots, Spaceships and Sci-fi

British/UK made

 

Made in Japan

USA

Everywhere else:

Dolls

From China, Japan, U.K. and more!

The Beatles Memorabilia 

The Golly aka Nigger  aka Darkie collection

This made me snigger, for real. But at that time this was probably normal and it was probably fun to make toys of your slaves. Who knew?

Unique Singapore Memoribilia of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953

*Caption taken from the Mint Museum’s website.

Having the opportunity to visit The MINT Museum of Toys was actually surprisingly fun and eye-opening. It is fun exploring history through toys. Even after spending 2 hours there, I’m confident we didn’t get to see everything but we certainly had a great time nonetheless. It could be slightly improved if there was an enthusiastic guide to bring us around or some kind of audio tour to fully appreciate some of the toys. A word for parents: You might think “toys” means “children” but I don’t think young children would enjoy the place as everything is valuable locked up in display cases or  comes with “a restraining order”. It is still a museum afterall.