CHEAP GERMAN TOYS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 299, 15 December 1923, Page 5

CHEAP GERMAN TOYS.

POPULAR WITH CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS. CHEAPER THAX BRITISH GOODS. Little Xew Zealanders will be blowing German trumpets in a week or so, and excitedly watching the progress of German trains across Carpet Plain, or the voyage of German steamboats round the tin shores of Bath Bay. Whether the toy-makers in thp Olil Country have been deliberately getting as much for their wares as they could while they had the market to themselves, or whether they really cannot compete -with the Gentian family-labour that enters so largely into the manufacture of German toys, one cannot say. but the advent of the cheap German toy into Kew Zealand during recent months in anticipation of the Christmas trade, has been hailed with relief by many an otherwise patriotic Xew Zealander. Some of the so-called British toys that have found their way into the Dominion in the past are pronounced by those that should know to be of foreign make imported into Britain and then re-exported in order to get the advantage of the Dominion's preferential tariff. Whether that be so or not. some of the mechanical toys certainly looked suspiciously like German make: anyhow, they were a very good imitation if not the real thing. To-day, however, there is no need for the oncedespised German goods to travel incog. They have been given the freedom of the country, and come in with impunity and with the half-forgotten "made in Germany" branded upon them with all the pre-1 !>l4 assurance of the Teuton. Toys this j'car are very much up-to-date, and even wireless figures in the list, and though this last comes from America, the Germans have sent out a surprising range of clever novelties, many of which strike a distinctly amusing note. But of course the main thing is that this German stuff is cheap—some of the articles being about one-fourth of the English price. Possibly it is the unwonted cheapness of the toys that lias set people buying very early, but whatever the reason, the shops are experiencing quite a boom in business already, although we are eleven days off Christmas.