Toy museum opened in Turkey’s Black Sea province

SAMSUN – Anadolu Agency

A large toy museum displaying toys from all over the world has been inaugurated in the Black Sea province of Samsun.

The museum features an array of nearly 800 toys, most of which were produced in the 1900s-1920s, worth some 2 million Turkish Liras ($532,000), Osman Genç, the mayor of Samsun’s Canik district, said at an opening ceremony on Jan. 9.

The museum is also the largest toy museum in Turkey, and features vintage specimens crafted by German, French, Americans, Japanese, Polish, Chinese, and Turkish toymakers, the mayor said.

“The lack of a toy factory in Turkey has troubled us,” he said.

“If a nation wants to pass down its own culture, heroes, and life to the future generations, it has to make its own toys. This is why we wanted to build a toy museum and encourage the private sector to build a toy factory,” he added.

The museum also gives children an opportunity to learn how to make toys in workshops.

“Our children will know our local toys and will be excited about them,” he said.

“So they will learn the Turkish culture.”

The museum also includes miniature villages, Native American tents, airplanes and trains produced in Germany in the 1920s, as well as Ford’s first toy car from 1920.