CAMELOT TOYS

When we were young, children were given tin piggy banks that resembled the financial buildings of London or New York. Most of us had never seen the kind that actually looked like pigs, even though we still called them piggy banks. (It’s a strange idea, stuffing a pig full of coins.) Not many of us had seen New York or London but there was a fairytale in those small tin buildings—which no-one’s pocket money ever quite filled. Those fortresses of wealth, recreated in a storybook sketch; Camelots built one coin after another. There was a happily-ever-after in those tin buildings that could never be opened. They could only be destroyed with can openers. We all did that as well when we were children—and felt like thieves afterwards.