During the early years of the war there was an enormous demand for children’s toys and games with wartime themes, toy soldiers, board games, model spitfires etc. were all enormously popular. As the war progressed, materials could not be spared for games so these wartime toys tend to date from the first couple of years of wartime. Card games were one of the most popular items on toy store shelves- they were cheap to manufacture and as they were only printed card it was very easy for manufacturers to quickly get them out to buyers within weeks of the war starting. One such game takes its inspiration from a popular song ‘We’re Gonna Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’:

The box is printed in shades of red and pink and features the washing in the song and game title on the box lid:

The rules are printed on the underside of the lid:

The cards themselves consist of washing cards:

Money cards:

And some delightfully illustrated hazard cards:

The card game was reissued post war under the simpler title of ‘Laundry Line Out’, those cards being green rather than red backed. Card games remained some of the few toys and games that could be found as war progressed, needing less materials and manufacturing than other toys, but even these became harder to find as time went on.