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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Mint Toy Museum, Singapore

Continue with my Singapore trip. The day after the Nuffnang Award Dinner, the foreign bloggers were treated to a 1 day tour of some of Singapore's interesting places thanks to Uniquely Singapore (Singapore Tourism Board). We were grouped into a few group, each group will go to same place at different time. At the end of the day each group will have visited all the same places but at different time of course. Chris and I were grouped into Group A, so our first stop is Mint Museum. It's just behind Raffles Hotel, which was supposed to be our real first destination.




Zoe Yve & Wei Wei, Group C members that woke up late and has to follow Group A first.

It consists of 5 floors, each floor will showcase rare mint toys of different theme and different time. Admission fee to the museum is SGD $15 for adult and SGD $7 for child. There's a restaurant in the basement if you don't want to go on a tour in the museum.


Greeted by Astro Boy at the museum entrance.


Hanis is in Group A too.

We were brought up to level 4 first, if I'm mistaken. A very experienced curator, whom previously is a Master Jeweler is our guide. Level 4 is Robots or Sci-fi. There's robot toys from different time and different country. You can see that the colour that like to be used from different country is different from each. Japanese toys tend to has a lot of improvement or more features.






For Star Wars fans.


Mickey Mouse earlier versions.



The first version Felix the Cat is one ugly cat with a tail that looks more like a third leg lol.


Apart from being a rare mint toy museum, the design of the museum also won architecture awards.


The transparent floor in the 3rd floor.

The wonder of the design also is because the 4th and 5th floors are actually hanging in the middle.


I took the picture of 4th and 5th floor from 3rd floor.



Not only toys can be found. This is a autographed postcard of The Beatles. Which is very rare now because you won't be able to get John Lennon and George Harrison autograph anymore.


Popeye with tank.

The top floor is a pub that was decorated with a lot of very old and rare signage. The curator told us happy hour rate here is damn cheap.


One can take a very good picture of Raffles Hotel from the balcony of the pub.



Even the restaurant in the basement were filled with rare posters of food and beverage product.




The architecture award that Mint Toy Museum won in 2007.




The curator told us that the collection showcase in the museum is only less than 10% of the total collection that the owner has. The rest of the collection is kept in a very big warehouse somewhere. Crazy!!! The value of each toy ranged from a few hundred USD to about thousands or maybe even hundred thousands of USD.

One should really drop by here once at least in his or her lifetime to find out the history of toys. Nowadays the toys are just mass produced and in low quality. The collection are swap every 6 months.

Opening Hours:

Mint Museum
9.30am to 6.30pm

Mint Shop
9.30am to 6.30pm

Mint Cafe
9.30am to 10.30pm

26 Seah Street
Singapore 188382


Contact:

Mint Museum
Tel: +65 6339 0660
Fax: +65 6334 3373

Mint Cafe
Tel: +65 6339 6266
Fax: +65 6883 2212

Email: info@emint.com

8 comments :

Ciki said...

looks like a grand ole place to visit!

jojostruys.com@gmail.com said...

Hey, I didn't know about this museum. I may check it out when I'm next in Sing. looks fun! :) thx Simon!

Susan said...

Oh wow! Didn't know this place exists... looks cool!

Simon Seow said...

Cumi & Cuki: yeah, should go visit at least once in ur lifetime lol

Baby: it's damn ugly right

Jojo: it's in the itinerary but too bad ur too busy to join the tour, yupe u can always visit next time u go to Sing.

Sholee: I read about it in The Star before, didn't know I get a chance to visit it during the NN Award trip.

Kelvin said...

haha u only take photos of beautiful bloggers:D

Simon Seow said...

Nolah Kelvin, just happen there's a few beautiful bloggers around mah :p

Anonymous said...

Toy Museum in Penang is even 100 times bigger than this tiny mint toy museum!

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