Trumptonshire - collectors' corner

The Trumptonshire programmes were one of the first TV series to take advantage of tie-in merchandising. A vast number of different products were produced in the sixties and seventies, taking advantage of the popularity of the Trumptonshire characters. These items included games, jigsaws, model characters, buildings, records and even toothpaste, as this magazine advert from 1971 shows!

These, and a similar range of bath foam were marketed by Wright's "the household name for family health" as it says in the ad. I vaguely remember having a tube of Sergeant-Major Grout toothpaste as a six year old. Ah, those were the days...

Most of the merchandising was taken from the Camberwick Green series and very little from Chigley. Some of the items used photographs taken from the series (mainly the books and jigsaws) while others were the manufacturers' interpretations of the characters, which in some cases closely resembled the TV characters - and in other cases didn't!

This page illustrates just some of the many items.

BOOKS

The biggest range of merchandise however, must have been the books which numbered around one hundred different titles.

Check out this illustrated listing of almost every Trumptonshire book ever published.

The great majority of the titles were published by either Dean, Hamlyn or Purnell, and were written by a core group of authors. Although Gordon Murray is credited as the author on several titles, including all of the annuals, he had no direct involvement. Of the approximately one hundred titles published, relatively few (those published by Hamlyn) contain actual photographs of the real characters or the sets. Instead they use artists' illustrations which vary from being quite 'lifelike' to being far too human looking.

There was also a tendancy in many of the annuals to take a little artistic licence, and introduce new child characters, presumably to make the books more attractive to children (don't forget that the original television programmes used only three school-age characters). A further departure from the original characters is that many of the artists gave the characters permanent mouths.

While several of the publications contain the word "annual" in the title, strangely the year of issue is not indicated on the front cover. They adhered to the usual 'annual format' of storeys, activities and puzzles but do not appear to have been issued on a regular basis.

RECORDS

Six different records have been identified, If you're interested, check out the details of these records.

JIGSAWS

Around twenty different jigsaws were produced by Arrow Games Ltd and Falcon Games Ltd, with scenes from all three series.

GAMES

Camberwick Green Lotto

This is a simple version of bingo using pictures from the series. The box contains 6 large cards with six pictures on each card, and a further 36 smaller cards containing matching pictures. The pictures are of the usual Camberwick Green characters in their surroundings. The "TV Lotto" theme would suggest that this was one of several similar television programme related games.

(c)Gordon Murray (Puppets) Ltd 1970 from the BBCtv series
Medallion Press Ltd 21 Jockey's Fields London WC1
Box size: 25cm x 19cm x 3.5cm

Puzzle

A simple wooden puzzle (with illustrations similar to those seen in the books published by Purnell) in which the player has to put the correct character into the appropriate hole in the board.

Village Playset

(Photo courtesy of Sam Brown & Mary Beaird)

This set of Camberwick Green village shops is about 2ft long and came with a set of figures.