About Buzzy Bee Toy
The Buzzy Bee is a pull-along toy turned on a wood lathe in Auckland from around 1940: a red barrel body, blue wheels, yellow wings, a black-and-yellow banded head and two red-tipped spring antennae. Pull it and the wings rotate and clack.
Its design language is what a lathe and a tin of enamel can do together. Cylinders, discs and spheres. Wide colour bands ringing a body. Thick gloss with one soft highlight running along each turned form. Nothing thin, nothing pale, nothing subtle — and no cartoon face anywhere on it.
- Origin
- Newton and New Lynn, Auckland, New Zealand
- Era
- 1900–1950; designed late 1930s, first made c.1940, mass-produced postwar
- Key figures
- Maurice Schlesinger · Hec Ramsey · Playcraft Products · Buzzy Bee Toys Limited
- Movements
- Postwar New Zealand manufacturing · Wooden pull-along toys · National-icon souvenir design
Buzzy Bee Toy design spec
Colors
Typography
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