British Broadcasting Corporation

James May’s Toy Stories is a television series presented by James May. The series was commissioned for BBC Two from Plum Pictures. The first episode, “Airfix”, was shown on BBC Two at 8:00 pm on Tuesday 27 October 2009.

The premise of the 6-part show was to bring favourite toys of the past into the modern era, by using the toys in real life large scale enterprises. In each episode, he also explores the history of each toy.

In “Airfix”, he builds a full-sized model of a Spitfire WWII fighter plane, using the plastic moulding and assembly technique used in the Airfix self-assembly plastic toy scale model range. In “Plasticine”, he models a full-sized garden out of the toy modelling clay Plasticine, as an exhibit in the Chelsea Flower Show. In “Meccano”, he builds a full-sized footbridge out of the mechanical construction toy range Meccano, to cross a canal in Liverpool. In “Scalextric”, he reconstructs the Brooklands racing circuit in full size using the slot-car toy racing track used by the Scalextric range. In “Lego”, he builds a full-sized house in Dorking out of the Lego toy model brick range. In “Hornby”, he re-lays a railway track along 10 miles of a disused full-sized railway, the Tarka Trail, using the 1:76.2 scale track used in the Hornby Railways model train range. Of the six episodes, the Hornby attempt was the only one that failed; May revisited it in 2011 with a follow-up episode, “The Great Train Race”. A new edition, “Flight Club”, focusing on an attempt to fly a balsa wood glider across the English Channel, aired just before Christmas 2012. It was announced on BBC News on 31st August 2013 that a new episode with a motorbike and sidecar would air just before Christmas 2013.