Dewi Lewis Publishing issued *Dinky Toys*, a hardback of 144 pages gathering 74 photographs by Kim Sayer. The subject is die-cast model vehicles produced during the 1950s, the period described as the golden age of the Dinky toy. Sayer did not present pristine or shiny models. He collected them over the years, and the pictures show the consequences of use — chipped paint, dents, worn paintwork, the particular wear that comes from a toy being played with and loved. The book treats that condition as its subject rather than its defect.

What distinguishes the sequence is the way each model is given its own setting. Sayer builds small scenarios that extend the logic of the object: a Landrover climbs a staircase, an Avro York Airliner takes off from an ironing board, and an open-top sports car zooms along fighting the gale-force winds of an electric fan. Several photographs also play off against the original marketing taglines used to sell the models, so that the images are in conversation with mid-century selling talk rather than merely illustrating it. The effect is comic and affectionate at once.

Read as a whole, the book is a coherent treatment of a category of mass-produced objects and the era that made them. The worn surfaces carry the ordinary history of postwar childhood, and the staged photographs give that history formal shape. Sayer is the sole credited photographer; the volume is a single sustained body of work rather than an anthology.

For collectors, the appeal lies in this combination. The book is a considered photographic project about a collecting field, published by a press with a long commitment to photography, and made in a compact format (21 by 14.5 cm) that invites repeated handling. It earns its place on the shelf because it does something with its subject that a catalogue or price guide cannot.