Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: toy

The original Prague Vytopna restaurant was actually this one, on Vaclavske Namesti. I've actually forgotten if I've ever been inside, but I don't think so. There was also a location in Brno, which is said to have been the original location in 2009, but it has since closed. The Vaclavske Namesti location was still open when I researched this caption in 2024, however.

There are actually two Vytopna locations in Prague, one here, in the Palladium Shopping Centre, and another one on Vaclavske Namesti (plus another one in Vienna, in Austria). This is a railway-themed restaurant, with mostly American-inspired food like burgers (even if the trains are mostly Czech and European), and a large G-Scale model train layout integrated into the restaurant. This is the case in both the Palladium and Vaclavske Namesti locations. The trains are computer-controlled, using a similar system to that used on the (real-life) Docklands Light Railway in London, with a signal wire down the middle of the track. This is so that they can be used to deliver drinks to the tables, although they are too small (in spite of being G-scale) to deliver food. One thing their small size doesn't impact much is their speed, as they can operate at up to 20 Km/h, comparable to real 19th-Century freight trains (at least in the United States). This means that they're hard to photograph without a good camera with a fast sensor or film. This is one of my better shots from this visit in 2015, where I managed to catch one of the gondolas loaded with two full 500ml beer glasses. Empty beer glasses also generally return to the bar via rail.

The model railway in Vytopna also has station buildings, although they're purely decorative. This station is for "Stare Brno," which is probably a reference not so much to the city of Brno (as Brno doesn't have a station by that name), but more likely the Starobrno beer brand. Despite this, when I was there Vytopna was mostly serving Krusovice, which is brewed in the city of the same name (historically, from 1581 to 1685, Krusovice was the royal brewery of Bohemia, and has passed through various owners since).

I don't know what company makes this CD 380 Class (I think it's HO or OO Scale), but whoever released it they were absolutely up to date. At the time of my visit to the muzeum, the real Class 380 electrics were so new that they hadn't ventured out of the Ostrava area yet, although now they work some of the services into Praha Hlavni Nadrazi.

The model train display was much larger than just the Merkur tinplate sets. Here we can see a variety of makes and scales.

Merkur are better known for their erector sets, but at one time they also built tinplate toy trains. I'm not sure about the scale of these, but they could be O. They look close to it, anyway. Does anybody know? Nowadays Merkur specialise in TT Scale, although their website only had track the last time I looked.

I saw these in Sangertown Mall in New Hartford, New York, and just thought they were weird enough to photograph. I don't remember the store, but the store didn't specialize in toys or novelty items, and I should note also that hedgehogs are not generally considered native to New York, although porcupines (unrelated except for the quills) are common in the Adirondacks.

Whoa!! :-)

Another hippy cootie! :-)

Cooties go psychedelic!!! :-)

Just because. :-)

A conspiracy between the Cooties, the Freemasons, the aliens, and Dr. Evil??? :-)

"Yeah, I asked her out, and she kicked me right in the thorax." :-) :-) :-)

"Hey!! Did I tell you about the kid who shared hats??!!" :-)

"* Cootie is also the name of a table game, the object of which is to be the first player to complete a comic model of an insect from the supplied plastic parts, as determined by the roll of a die. The patent is held by Milton Bradley. The bug was animated in The Outer Limits episode The Zanti Misfits (episode)." -Wikipedia

The cooties are coming!! :-) No, actually, I just posed them. :-) :-) :-)

" cootie - n. N. Amer. informal a body louse -origin First World War: perh. from Malay kutu, denoting a parasitic biting insect." -Oxford Concise English Dictionary, ed. Judy Pearsall, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999)