Ever since I was a child each toy has been for me a new discovery and an opportunity to dream. Throughout my childhood my family and specially my mother's father offered me endless dreams: cars, bicycles, lead soldiers, games... toys which peopled my world and which I never broke. I kept them played with them and they progressively gained a bigger and bigger importance and space in my life.

By the time I was eleven I started collecting them. The yearning to complete some series and obtain certain rarer pieces led me to look for them systematically and their acquisition became all- important and playful, a game.

Comparing collections to those of other boys of my age, carrying out exchanges and being lucky enough to be able to purchase whatever I wished in the two best toy shops in Lisbon, all this contributed to the fact that toys became a structural feature of my personality and went on accumulating in a certain order that gradually prevailed.

Travelling as well as the fact of having studied in England made possible not only acquisitions but also different contacts which significantly increased my collection, a true one, that little by little started taking up every corner of my home as well as a significant part of my adult time as I permanently searched for that particular toy I still did not have. A search for and acquisition of some older pieces and an interest for the history of mankind which is well documented by the toys.

The collection evolved naturally from private to public as groups of people started to be interested in it and to visit it at my place. It was with the utmost pleasure that I shared my toys with the admiring gaze of many other people. That is when it became essential to find a public space to display them.

Thus, in 1987, the Arbues Moreira Foundation was created to which I donated all my collection. In 1989, following an agreement with the Sintra Municipality a place was put at my disposal by this entity for the installation of the Toy Museum. No sooner had the first Museum been inaugurated than it became too small.

I have never stopped collecting and, with the opening of the Museum to the public, donations increased and the pieces began accumulating.
In 1997, just at the right moment, new premises were made available for the Museum by the Municipality at the former Fire Brigade Headquarters of the town of Sintra. In this building full of history and presently restored and adapted to a museum, are now the toys on display, not only mine but of all those who have shared with me this endless journey.

The toys have helped me grow up and understand the world and their link to the History of Mankind grew more and more important. In my collection they always tell us about someone, a life, an era.

Privacy, fashions, wars, ideas, politics, economy are forever connected to what each toy carries within itself. How did people play and how do they play now? What did the child who got under the spell of this doll or soldier look like? What did people want to imitate or what kind of influence did they want to exert? War or peace? Eternal issues that have to be analysed, looked at and investigated, something I have been doing all through my life. Stories, issues which here, at the Museum, I share with all who visit us, enlarging my knowledge every single day of this adventure if mine since I was a child.

I would have much more to tell about the toys, their history, their craftsmen, their manufacturers, their countries of origin, etc. but this is only a catalogue....

From the around 40,000 toys that form my collection I will try to show you the ones I love best and the rarest not only according to their value and antiquity but also for their simplicity and ingenuity.