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| Tiny nostalgic booth at shopfront. Even the prices of the items in that booth are vintage;-) |
At the end of that post I mentioned that I intended to revisit the place in order to check out the second floor, which hosts the actual museum.
So I did.
The museum on the second floor is just one room; not very large, but filled with all sorts of nostalgic, childhood memories of someone.
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| School banks, a lemonade stand, a scooter, a traditional street barber booth and lots more. |
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| Who is this person? One of the owners? |
Who this person is, is not clear; I guess it’s not a specific person, but rather the typical Singaporean who is now between 50 and 70 years old.
In that sense it certainly is educational, entertaining and worth the visit.
You can sit in the school banks from that era, sit in a street barber seat, see how kampong kids made their own toys, using everyday materials or take a peak in a small toy stall from back then.
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| School banks |
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| Street barber |
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| Frits, waiting for his haircut;-) |
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| Home-made Kampong toys. |
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| With feathers from kampong chickens;-) |
The museum is easily overlooked, but recognizable via the life-sized robot in front of the shophouse in which it is located.
Inside it is quite stuffed, a bit chaotic and it feels neither here nor there. Is it a shop? Is it a museum? Is it a toy store? A place for tourists to buy souvenirs? A showroom? I guess the best answer is that it is all of the above.
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| We have a tin of Cream Crackers like this at home in Singapore. |
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| I used to collect mechanical tin toys for years, but gave the whole collection up in the end. |
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| Oh yes, I want this kitsch lamp! |
I have been there at least four times and my feelings are mixed when I am at the Children Little Museum. I feel both excited (“Wow, look at all these strange, cool thingies!”) and uncomfortable (“Isn’t this place a bit ‘off’? A tad obscure?).
It looks put together at the time with a lot of love, care, effort and money, but it seems somewhat neglected nowadays.
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| The founders sure collected a lot of cool vintage stuff! |
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| How cute! |
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| Pretty! |
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| So match box creations were custom all over the world, it seems;-) |
Still, I definitely recommend a short visit to this shophouse! And I am pretty sure to return there myself, since my enthusiasm and curiosity overrule my ‘unheimisch’ feelings easily.
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| If you like toys, I also highly recommend another cool museum in Singapore: the Mint Museum of Toys. I enjoyed that museum very much. It is a much larger exhibition then the Children Little Museum with a bit of a different angle. While the CLM could be described as a nostalgic childhood memory vault, the MMoT focusses solely on toys from all times. You will need more time for this one; you can easily spend two hours here. |
Practical information:
entrance fee is SGD 2,
you will have seen it all in 30-45 minutes tops.
Adress: 42 Bussarah Street, in front of Sultan Mosque.
Local Cheekiemonkies went there with their children and wrote a great blogpost about the museum.
Time Out wrote a good article with interviews with owners and founders.
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