I bought my two boys a ‘pop-pop’ or candle boat each a few years ago when we saw a street trader selling them and we only got them out at the weekend (they got put in a cupboard and lost!).

If you have kids or a scientific curiosity, these are great little toys.

We have got the £4 ones on this page:

http://www.tintoycollector.co.uk/tintoys-Boats.asp

And here is how they work:

http://www.nmia.com/~vrbass/pop-pop/#How

Anyone know of any other similar gems?

Neighbour dug out an old model steamroller which looked ace. Haven’t seen it fired up yet but he reckons it still works. 30 years old!

The raspberry pi seems as though it could be an interesting toy. I’m quite tempted with one of those.

Every child should own a rattleback

[Oh poo they’ve stopped shipping to the UK – any body else ‘edmund like?]

[worked recently with Fred Dinenage’s producer]
For a similar steam thing to the boats you can make a pretty effective Hero’s Engine out of Sigg style alu bottles. The bottle top gives you a good central point to suspend from. Most fun thing I’ve made of late is Rubens Tube, poss a bit hardcore for kids though
[/worked recently with Fred Dinenage’s producer]

I’m glad it’s not just me and my boy, we have a pop pop boat and some old Mamod engines.
Mecanno is good, even the modern plastic stuff, just check what you are getting. We have the mechanical and motorised construction boxes. Try and avoid the sets with the flexible rubber parts they don’t hold together, or the toy building sets.
You can have a lot of fun with a dynamo, meccano a buld and a steam engine.
Try Westwings for model planes.

I’ve got a Wilesco steam engine in the attic – must get it down for the offspring to play with. And my dad got me these:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYf3nOYM_mQ&sns=em[/video]

wooobob – Member

Neighbour dug out an old model steamroller which looked ace. Haven’t seen it fired up yet but he reckons it still works. 30 years old!

Posted 11 hours ago #

Sorry to sound like a killjoy but got to suggest that if its done nothing for 30 years he really needs to be sure the relief valve on the boiler works properly !!!!!

For a similar steam thing to the boats you can make a pretty effective Hero’s Engine out of Sigg style alu bottles.

Here is a cheaper method!:

http://www.techknow.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Hero%27s_Engine_with_a_drinks_can

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJ-JnVSfiQ[/video]
I’m waiting for some one in the family to but me one

As Cheekyboy says, check or replace the safety valve, I’d also replace the seals and o-rings around the safety valve, whistle and overflow. Plenty of places do spares, try Forest Classics or Manor Models.

At least these things have a safety valve, thier Victorian cousins, known as Birmingham Dribblers were not quite as safe; if the boiler didn’t blow up and kill you, they ran accross the living romm floor, hit the curtains, fell over and burnt your house down!

I’ve got a pop-pop boat too, they’re ace.

I can’t wait until my nephew is old enough to appreciate an Euler’s Disk
[video]http://youtu.be/ug2bKCG4gZY[/video]

I also seem to find myself pouring over this site fairly frequently:
http://gyroscope.com/

You could spend a bike’s worth of money on there…

We got a pop pop boat after watching Ponyo 🙂

Most of these ‘science toys’ are very short lived though.
Whereas Lego Mindstorms is still being used 2 years later 🙂

Unfortunately babybgoode is only just about to turn 1 so I can’t justify a poppop boat for him yet but I may sneak a purchase anyway!

Mamod engines rock!!

Cheers

Danny B

Alex- my boys have made robot wars models from mindstorms and they control them from their ipads!

Cool eskay – we did similar with Android.
New version out this Autumn even more tailored for mobile.

Edit: There’s also a Raspberry Pi brick to interface on kickstarter, but that might be a bit beyond me.