Bendy Toys Traditional Cache

On this junction, between Spelthorne Lane and Ashford road used to stand the 'Bendy Toys' factory.

The Bendy Toys company was set-up by Charles Neufeld in the late 1950s and it manufactured many types of rubber toys including the, now rare, Bendy Dalek toy. The Neufeld family had fled to the UK from Austria in 1939 after the Nazis confiscated their small store. The family was broken up, with Charles’s mother, father and brother going to Scotland and his sister to Wales. Charles himself stayed in Berkshire where he was educated. Towards the end of the war he had a short spell in the American Army intelligence corps. On his return to the UK he joined Dunlop where his skills with rubber were learnt.

A Bendy Dalek toy which cost just over 50p in 1965 sold at auction in 2008 for £1,500. 'Bendy Daleks' were snapped up by children in the 1960s when Doctor Who first hit TV screens, but only a handful of the fragile novelties, which are just over seven inches high, are thought to have survived intact.

The area the factory stood has now been redeveloped.

The junction is still known as 'Bendy Toys' locally.

Happy Hunting