Toys are fun—but they are also serious business, as David Veart makes clear in this remarkable story of New Zealanders and their toys from Maori voyagers to 21st-century gamers. Deploying the tools of archaeology and oral history, Veart digs through a few centuries of pocket knives and plasticine to take us deep into the childhoods of Aotearoa. His story explores how people made their fun on the far side of the ocean—the Maori and Pakeha learned knucklebones from each other; young Aucklanders established the largest Meccano club in the world; and Fun Ho!, Torro, Lincoln International, and Luvme helped to build a successful local toy industry under the shade of import protection. Hello Girls & Boys! covers the crazes and collecting, playtimes and preoccupations of big and little New Zealand kids for generations. With its memories of knucklebones and double happys, golliwogs and tin canoes, marbles and Meccano, Tonka trucks and Buzzy Bees, this is a seriously fun New Zealand toy story.

David Veart is a New Zealand Department of Conservation historian and archaeologist. He is the author of Digging Up the Past: Archaeology for the Young & Curious and First Catch Your Weka: A Story of New Zealand Cooking.