The history of toys
The History Hour
BBC
4.4 • 913 Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2025
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.
We learn about how Play-Doh evolved from a cleaning product to a childhood favourite and the creation of one of the best-selling board games of all time, Catan.
Our guest is the editor of Toy World Magazine, Caroline Tonks, who takes us through the history of toy crazes.
We also hear about the invention of the hoverboard, and how the Tamagotchi allowed people to have their own virtual pet.
Plus, how the family favourite game, Jenga, was born in 1970s Ghana.
And our Sporting Witness looks at how a piece of software revolutionised the game of football through data analysis.
Contributors:
Peg Roberts – daughter of Kay Zufall
Benjamin Teuber – son of Catan inventor Klaus Teuber
Caroline Tonks – editor of Toy World Magazine
Shane Chen – the inventor of the hoverboard
Akihiro Yokoi – the inventor of the Tamgotchi
Leslie Scott – the creator of the game Jenga
Ramm Mylavaganam – inventor of ProZone
(Photo: The Tamagotchi was introduced in 1996 and is one of the best-selling toys in history. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously and then laughs at it. |
| 0:13.4 | This Christmas, forget about socks. We've got the best present of all. |
| 0:17.2 | Dead people! |
| 0:18.2 | All that sounds like zombies. Sorry, it's not zombies. Let me start again. |
| 0:21.8 | In our new family-friendly podcast series, dead funny history, historical figures come back to life |
| 0:26.8 | but just long enough to argue with me, tell their life stories and sometimes get on my nerves. |
| 0:31.8 | You're dead to me. |
| 0:32.8 | Dead funny history. |
| 0:34.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.5 | A moment in time captured by what they heard. |
| 0:39.5 | I heard some people making phone calls. |
| 0:41.1 | Okay, which one way would you like at Teterborough? |
| 0:42.9 | What they saw. |
| 0:44.8 | I put my head down. I saw the movie of my life. |
| 0:47.1 | Start going through my head. |
| 0:48.2 | What they smelt. |
| 0:49.7 | I still remember the smell of the fresh fish. |
| 0:52.1 | And I completely lost my appetite. |
| 0:55.5 | Moments captured which last for a lifetime. |
| 0:59.0 | Scientists have made the atomic bomb. |
| 1:01.6 | That sort of flash set on fire the birds, and they all fell down without their feathers on. |
... |
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