The Lion's Toy Show is usually packed with vendors displaying and selling their customized farm toys, tractors, combines, and other various machinery.

These displays filled most of the 80 tables at the 17th annual toy show this past weekend at the Access Event Centre in Morden.

"You're paying big money for these, you're not going to play with them in the sandbox," said Don Holenski, organizer of the annual toy show.

Holenski's father, Kola, was a collector of the die-cast farm replicas, often customizing them to create unique pieces impossible to find in stores. Kola farmed until he was

About 30 vendors piled their wares onto 80 tables during the toy show this past weekend at the Access Event Centre 75, then displayed his toy collection until he turned 90.

"It's bringing back their younger years of farming," Holenski said.

One collector, Ed Wolfe from Winkler, said he had a man visit his display table from Regina, who had come to Morden just for this show. Wolfe has attended the toy show since it started 17 years ago, and his love for farm toys and replicas goes back even further.

For around the past 40 years, Wolfe has been building, customizing, and collecting farm toys and replicas who said his fanaticism started innocently when he went to a toy show in Fargo, ND, where he saw the die-cast models.

"The bug kind of bit me," he said.

Wolf was brought up on a farm in a small village, and he remembers going to the country school and seeing the agricultural machinery rumbling up and down the road. As a child, the toys he got for Christmas wore out, but as an adult, he can keep his childhood memories alive.

"The reflection of the past kind of got a hold of me," said Wolfe, adding it's a way for him to relive his childhood. He suspects it's the same for other collectors who grew up on the farm.

"I guess, for some reason or another, childhood has never totally left you," he said.

Now Wolfe has several hundred pieces in his collection. Some are his own prized models, others he sells or trades with other collectors. Some local collectors attend the same shows every year, so a camaraderie has developed.

"There's about a dozen of us collectors, we generally show up," said Wolfe.

As part of the Lion's Toy Show, a 50/50 draw, along with other funds raised at the event, were collected for a landscaping project at the new Tabor Home in Morden.