These notes were put together in September 2002, by Jean Hall (nee Stanley).

George McConachie, moulded the first toy tractors in the basement of his home at 80, Kent Street, Timaru.

He first trained at casting and moulding in Atkins (?) Foundry in Christchurch.

In Timaru, he obtained the services of a pattern-maker, Tom Mountford, who made the items he wanted out of timber, so that he could make castings in aluminium, in his basement.

Still using his sandboxes, he used a plastic toy bulldozer as a mould, to make his first aluminium bulldozer, and a small tractor with a man on it, to make another mould. This would, I think cast four or six at a time.

George cast the posthole digger singly and they made the Header Harvester out of sheet metal, which was stamped out on the press, I think also in their basement.

George used to have his wife, Nancy, upstairs in the living room, painting the little men on the tractors in different colours. One day she said she said she spilt a whole pot of yellow paint over the carpet!

She went on to say that she had to use a broom and shovel to clean the whole house as George had commandeered the vacuum cleaner, and I think this did it, as the red paint all filtered up through the floor boards, covering their butter and everything else in the meat safe!

Another time , George wanted to use her stove to heat the sand through ( which they had gathered from the beach) with linseed oil and something else, to make the core for the sand casting better.

Nancy said it made such a terrible stink, that George was banished to the garden, and had to find his own stove to do the job!

The large tractor tyres were made of rubber, from a mould George had made for Para Rubber to use.

The smaller wheels were quite easy to get.

George and Nancy were manufacturing all items singly, and it was very labour intensive and time consuming.

I have been told that around 1954 Peter Knife had the business for about nine months, and called the toys Peak Toys.

About this time Fun Ho! began manufacturing too. [ Fun Ho! began mid 1930's; Fun Ho! Gazetted 1940...Barry ]

George said he registered the Tiger name in 1954, but it is to be found gazetted in 1956, and it seems he began to manufacture the toys again, this time in a disused church, near 140 Evans Street, on a block near the Show Grounds.

Andy McFarlane was working for him then, and lived at the above address.

This is where my father, Charles Stanley (Toolmaker), comes into the story.

Charles Stanley and Andy McFarlane went to school together and were for many years, great mates.

Dad was a tool and die maker in Christchurch, so in due course George paid Dad a visit in 1956, bringing him the items he wanted dies made for, to make for mass production of the tractor, trailer, roller, discs, plough and harrows.

I was a teenager then, and watched as each piece was made in pairs, in its opposite forms, on Dad's lathe.

The lathe was beautifully made by Dad, years previously, and I had been taught as a child never to touch the knobs, as they may be set.

I just itched to wind them and feel how smoothly they moved, but never did, only once, under supervision!

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