Toytown Pop

Toytown Pop is a collector's term for a strand of British psychedelic pop of 1967 to the early 1970s, named after an imaginary toy town and codified by the anthology "Climb Aboard My Roundabout!". Sparked by *The Beatles*' "Penny Lane", it favoured whimsical, childlike vignettes of small-town characters, music-hall and fairground colour, quasi-classical arrangements with strings and woodwind, and an atmosphere of nostalgic innocence. Acts such as *Kaleidoscope*, *The Idle Race*, *Rainbow Ffolly* and *Billy Nicholls* recorded in this mode, much of it issued on singles and albums that became staples of the psychedelic reissue market.