I remember my childhood, there were many inflatable beach toys in 70ties and 80ties, swimrings, matresses,children's swiming safety jackets: ALL made of genuine heavy rubber, not some PVC, like today's toys. This was absolutely fantastic: all public beaches were loaded with it, all school swiming pools,inflatable giant swimrings( they were chep then) were the favorite birthday present, I wouldn't believe ,if not been eyewitness to it. There were rubber toy sections in most toy shops back then with perfect looking young girls as sales persons, to help you choose from array of fancy looking gorgeous pregnant looking inflatable monsters. As you have guessed, heavy aroma of rubber hang around those happy toy shops. But it all ended so suddenly, that it makes another sad story: with break up of Soviet Union, in which my country was incorporated, raw materials needed for rubber production ceased to enter my country and within a year all shops were totally devoid of any rubber toys. Some years ago I started to search for some artefacts of this time, but was able to find only few examples from
those glory days, since real rubber is prone to drying and cracking with time. Quite frequent I dream in my sleep about getting in toyshop full of inflatables and ....I woke up then. Interesting that many items from those days, more fragile than toys, cigarettes or packaged cookies are quite common today as souvenirs, looks like nobody else found rubber toys valuable enough to keep for next generation...
In most western countries era of rubber beach toys seems ended in 50ties, switching to PVC material, which is also interesting in some aspects, but nothing like Realthing....