Today I am going to show you one of my Cyclops prams. This blog will run in two parts because I have more than one pram. When we were little girls in England we had a doll’s pram that we used to share. Vanda would have had it first and when I was big enough I played with it too. I’m guessing it was made by Triang in the fifties as many toys were back then. I really can’t be sure. We didn’t bring it to Australia with us. Vanda has provided a photograph from the family album with the two of us and the pram. I am in the foreground on my Gee Gee Rocker made by Triang. Vanda is in the background. Big Teddy as he was known sits proudly in the pram waiting for another ride around the garden.

The next photograph is of a Cyclops pram that I bought a few years ago that I am going to have restored. My friend Leigh in Adelaide is very fond of doing restoration jobs on old toys. He has done several jobs for me over the years and recently he made a new chimney for our Triang 61 doll house. Vanda will probably post pictures of the repair work later which looks terrific and very original. My pram has some rust issues but is intact and still has the Cyclops Sticker on it.

Cyclops opened their first factory  at Leichhardt an inner suburb of sydney in 1913. They were famous for their bikes and pedal cars. They were taken over by Triang at some point but the Cyclops name was still used. I will write a bit more about this in detail in my next blog. I have some links and photos that may be of interest.

The next photo is of the Cyclops pram next to my English Leeway pram that I bought some years ago when I lived in Semaphore South Australia. Here you can compare the toy pram with the real thing. In those days it was such a thrill to receive a toy that looked just like the one Mummy or Daddy had in real life. Little girls wanted their doll’s prams to be just like the one Mummy used for their baby brother or sister. Little boys wanted a car that looked as real as the one Daddy drove. I loved to have doors and drawers that really opened on my doll house furniture.

I have two more photos I would like to share with you until next time. This is one I took of the two above prams and my Cyclops push chair. I will tell you more about the push chair in my next post as I have another pram to show with it. The riders in the prams are my own dolls Colin, Peter and Mark the 2nd. Colin was a present from Nanny. He was actually a birthday present when I was four or five. he is in the Leeway pram. Peter is a kader baby and he is in the push chair and Mark the 2nd is in the Cyclops pram.

Colin in my big Leeway pram

Leeway and Cyclops prams and push chairs

Mark the 2nd is named after a doll called Mark that I had in England. Come to think of it Peter is actually Peter the 2nd too. Perhaps another post on them later as this is about the prams. This is all for now but I will be back with more later.