Plastic cereal toys from the Fifties wash up on coast
PLASTIC toys that were given away free in cereal box promotions more than 60 years ago have been found washed up on the Cornish coast.
A blue cowboy that came free inside packets of Sugar Puffs in 1957 was found at Watergate Bay in Cornwall, with its etched waistcoat and belt buckle still visible.
Nearby, a plastic football spinning top was found – a free gift in Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxes in 1958. And a plastic figurine of a Russian cossack, believed to be from 1959, also turned up.
Tracey Williams, a volunteer from Newquay who has spent more than two decades clearing plastic from the beach, found the toys over the summer period. She first began picking up plastic in “vast quantities” from the Cornish beaches in 1997, when a container from a cargo ship tumbled into the sea. It contained millions of Lego bricks.
A similar spillage occurred earlier this year close to the Netherlands, resulting in hundreds of My Little Pony dolls washing up on beaches.
Ms Williams said she was able to use “plastic archaeology” to accurately date the figurines she had found by using books and internet research to establish when they were released.
She said: “Much of the plastic we get is unrecognisable, it is broken down into segments so when you find these toys they are actually dateable.” She added: “We think many of these toys have been buried in the sand for decades – and have not been floating in the ocean all that time. They’re normally washed out of the sand after storms.”
Ms Williams has been charting the alarming growth of Cornwall’s plastic waste problem on social media at the account Lego Lost at Sea. One picture shows the older spoils of her beachcombing hobby, including many spectacular shells, next to scores of plastic figurines she has found on more recent expeditions.