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Many people have played with toy boats and toy airplanes while growing up. And there is much that is fascinating about how they have been constructed. The first toy boats are often made of wood or sheet metal and in some cases have small motors that allow them to move in the water.

The slightly fancier toy boats and toy ships function as real vehicles and, for example, sheet metal steamers can be powered by a real steam engine. In other toy boats, the power does come from a clockwork motor or a battery-powered electric motor, but the propulsion itself works like on a real boat.

The collection at Stockholm Toy Museum contains many different types of technical solutions in the toys. For example, a rowing boat powered by oars, a paddle steamer with paddle wheels and lots of ships, boats and submarines powered by propellers. There are also hydrocopters powered by an airplane propeller, as well as a boat powered by a small Jetex jet engine. A technology that is not used in real ships, however, is the one that powers the small put-put boats. Using meta-tablets or candles, air is heated and then forced out into thin tubes under the water surface, which in turn propels the boats forward.

Initially, toy planes could not really fly, but they could roll along the floor with small electric motors and whirring propellers. It was not until the 1950s, when strong and light plastic materials became available, that airplanes could really start to take to the air in some form. Things are different today, when we have advanced radio-controlled airplane models that can hover in the air just like real airplanes.