An atom car is worth more than $53,000. Photo / Atom Model Cars Facebook
An atom car is worth more than $53,000. Photo / Atom Model Cars Facebook
The average person is expected to spend nearly £500 (NZ$895) on gifts this Christmas.
However, for the one million millionaires and 120 billionaires that make up Britain's wealthy elite, that number is likely to be a great deal higher.
While you might be raiding your local Smyths or Toys R Us to get your hands on a Hatchimal for your child this Christmas, rocking horses covered in Swarovski crystals, doll houses worth more than £20,000 (NZ$35,768), and bespoke electric cars are just a few of the gifts the children of the uber rich can expect to find waiting for them under the tree on Christmas Day.
The documentary shows a pool table-sized replica of a Formula 1-style racing car track. Photo / Channel 4
It's a world of extravagance that is the subject of a new Channel 4 documentary, The World's Most Expensive Toys, which meets the people who make these opulent toys and the parents who eagerly buy them.
Dragons of Walton Street, run by mother-of-two Lucinda Croft, sell "the finest hand painted, luxury children's furniture and interiors" (doll's houses, to you or I) to an exclusive - and mostly anonymous - group of A-list clientele.
Both Prince William and Harry reportedly slept in nurseries designed by Dragons, and it is rumoured that the Duchess of Cambridge might be a client - though Croft refuses to comment on that point.
Croft designs and creates miniature versions eerily reminiscent of the homes the UK's elite are likely to own themselves. Her 'Walton Park' model costs a staggering £22,500 (NZ$40,239) and features a real marble entrance hall, individually laid parquet flooring, and 15 rooms each with their own interior design.
This may not seem like an appropriate gift for a child, but Croft has seen demand for her houses grow as the rich become even richer.
Crofts says some of her clients have even begun asking for more detail in the houses: "One said to me 'you need to do me some staff', so I needed to make a whole team of staff for the dolls house because otherwise it wouldn't be realistic.
Lucinda Croft with one of her bespoke doll houses - Walton Park. Photo / Channel 4
"My clients live such privileged lives that they notice all those details, because this is the life that they live."
For the one per cent, buying toys isn't just a matter of fun and games but also a way to introduce them to the world they will one day be a part of. While Crofts provides smaller scale versions of their future homes, Stuart Pennington gives them a taste of the cars they'll one day be driving.
The most basic model at Pennington's 'Atom Cars' goes for around £30,000 (NZ$53,652) and takes a team of three roughly eight weeks to build from scratch. Despite costing more than most would ever dream of spending on a real car, Pennington's electric cars (capable of reaching 20mph) are not licensed to be driven on public roads. To even begin to get your money's worth out of the car, you'd need to have your own personal race track or a driveway long enough to comfortably do a few laps.
According to Pennington and his sales partner Adam Longley, this isn't a problem for the kind of clients they work with: "Kids of the super rich and they come along and just say 'I want it' - it's the only three words they speak - and out comes the credit card."
Nuno and Rebecca, and Mark Stevenson with Crystal the rocking horse. Photo / Channel 4
Over the last five years Pennington and Longley have sold 14 cars to super rich clients all over the world, with four sales alone at Christmas in 2014. Spending £30,000 (NZ$53,652) for what is essentially a toy car, however realistic it may look, might seem incomprehensible to most people, but the wealthy elite think differently.
"When the rich want something, they want it now," says Pennington. "It's an impulse buy for them. They don't want to wait for it."
As expected, Pennington's clientele tend to be extremely secretive, though he says he gets a fair amount of business from countries in Eastern Europe and Russia. "These are the kind of people that want a really fast turnaround, but they tend to be so rich that I often don't even have to handle the shipping and customs.
"These are the type of people to own their own cargo lines. Buying expensive items from all over the world is almost second nature to them, so they can just say 'have this here, by this time' and they'll deal with all the rest."
This kid has his own personal race track for his Atom Model car. Photo / Channel 4
But marketing toys that can surpass the expectations of some of the richest people in the world isn't always an easy task, as Nuno and Rebecca, two ex-professional ballroom dancers, have quickly found.
Despite drumming up interest in both London and Monte Carlo, Crystal, their £98,000 (NZ$175,264) Swarvoski encrusted rocking horse, has yet to find a permanent home, proving that maybe even the exceedingly rich have their limits
While these costs might seem extravagant to the average reader, as Mark Stevenson, co-owner of Stevenson Brothers, makers of luxury rocking horses with thousand pound price tags, says: "If you own a few oil fields, this is petty cash."
