Kiwi designs for farm kids’ stockings
If Santa wants to avoid plastic this year, he has plenty of options to deliver to farmers in the making.
At Kumeu-based Pioneer Toys, cattle yards, stock trucks and ride-on diggers are on the mostpopular list.
The age of plastic is declining, toy-maker Bryan Millar says, people are ‘‘sick and tired of buying stuff that lasts a day or a week and then is thrown away, it’s not sustainable and it’s not environmentally friendly’’.
Millar was the national manager of an insurance company, on a big salary and successful in his corporate world, when he visited Pioneer Toys.
On a mission to buy a bandsaw, Millar ended up buying the whole company instead.
‘‘I had a six-figure salary, company car and all the trimmings but I was waking up each morning not wanting to go to work.’’
Drawing on the skills he learnt on a building apprenticeship years earlier, Millar now produces sturdy toys that he said pass the generations test.
Pioneer’s rural-themed toys include a farmyard set with a stock truck, loading race, cattle crate and farm shed.
For Christmas, Millar said tip trucks, graders and ride-on sandpit diggers were top of the list.
Millar upcycles kauri, rimu, totara and matai, relying on joiner friends for offcuts. He said sustainability was important.
‘‘It’s something that my clients really love, to know that maybe the bonnet on their stock truck has come from a rimu stud from a Sandringham villa.’’
The toys get a hard time but Millar said it was testimony to a ‘‘well-designed and well-respected toy’’.
‘‘They want something that