'We're all nutty collectors! - Beloved Blackpool toy museum opens for season offering plenty of nostalgia
A much-loved and cherished shop filled with nostalgia is back on the map as Blackpool Toy Museum reopens for the season.
Brooks Blackpool Toy Museum, which offers free admission, has reopened its doors for the new season running from March 1 until November 5, with the establishment - tucked away on Waterloo Road just off the Promenade - accessed through Brooks Collectables and sitting next to both the Joke Shop and the iconic Notarianni’s.
The museum features an amazing collection of all kinds of collectables from toys to movies and is one of Blackpool’s most delightful hidden gems, with Brooks Collectables having opened way back in 1948.
Celebrating the golden age of toys, the museum offers visitors the chance to see a working model train and tram sets clattering along detailed miniature tracks, classic die-cast cars gleaming in display cases and ranks of vintage toy soldiers.
It also features Edwardian and Victorian souvenirs, dolls house and doll collections, plus coins, stamps, football programmes and Subbuteo, with its innate charm lying not only in the exhibits themselves, but in the nostalgia they evoke.
“We’re all nutty collectors, we opened the museum for the shop’s 60th anniversary,” said Mark Yates, of Brooks Collectables. “We had a loft insulation that we thought hadn’t been on display for a long time and we have these original shop cabinets from the 1950s, that were downstairs in the building.
“We put them out with a small display just to give people something to come and look at, to show the history and evolution of the shop. We had somewhere in the region of 28,000 visitors within eight months. We were surprise dby how many visitors we had in the first year. The second year we put more cabinets out and gave it a bit more variety.”
The premises originally opened as Slater’s Rock Shop before being repurposed as a munitions store during the Second World War. During the 1970s, the family expanded the business, launching a second outlet beneath the Blackpool Tower and a third within Pablo’s building opposite South Pier, while continuing to trade as Brooks Gift Stores Ltd at 1 Waterloo Road.
In 1982, operations relocated to Central Drive and, by 1998, it returned to Waterloo Road and resumed trading under the name Brooks Collectables.
Whether you’re a dedicated collector, a railway enthusiast or just simply looking for a free family outing in the town centre, the Brooks Blackpool Toy Museum offers a unique escape from the everyday.