An early childhood memory of a toy has been bugging me recently. It’s one of those things which I expect none else remembers, but I’ll try anyway.

It was a crude construction toy. Sold in sets - so I had a playground set, a circus and a couple of knights. The main thing in each was the ability to build a figure. The main body was hexagonal in section. At the top was a kind of a “neck” which had a hole - the head plugged into that. At the base was a larger hole, which could take other pieces. It occurs to me right now that the neck portion could plug into the hole at the other end, human centipede style. These items, and the heads, were made of a brittle plastic. The hexagonal pieces were moulded lengthwise in two halves., One half of the piece was white, the other was another colour (normally blue, purple or green).

There were holes at shoulder and hip height into which limbs could be plugged- these were soft orange plastic with pegs on them. I do remember these pegs wearing out quite easily. You could also connect things to the limbs - the knights and swords (the were small holes in the hands where these items attached).

Animals and horses were made using slightly longer hexagonal body pieces. The heads would plug into the larger hole at the end opposite to the neck. You could, with a bit of balancing, get a knight to sit on the back of the horse.

Here’s a diagram of what the figures looked like which I made in Sketch Up.


When were these? I have no firm date, but given that I remember the house I was in at the time, and the presence of other toys, I would guess sometime between 1970 and 1972. This would put me at about 4 - 6. when I was 6, we moved house. I don’t remember any more sets appearing after then.

I vaguely remember these being called “Popple People” - though I could be wrong about this. A search on Google has revealed nothing, with hits fairly close but not spot on. They may have come from the market, they may have come from a toy shop. I don’t honestly remember.

So the question here is - does this jog a memory?

The closest I can think of was Playmobile. They had a knights set out about then. They would be around the right height and era, though body shape is different.

It was definitely not Playmobil. What I am thinking of came in bits - the idea was that you put the thing together and take it apart again.