Before He Made Iconic Buildings, National Artist Bobby Mañosa Happily Made Toys

(SPOT.ph) He may have been widely recognized for the stately Filipino homes and buildings he designed, and awarded the National Artist honor in the field of Architecture, but did you know that Francisco “Bobby” Mañosa started out as a designer of toys and furniture for children?

Yes, the man famous for adapting the nuances of the bahay kubo and bahay na bato into his structures. The man who championed the kind of architecture that was, in his words “true to itself, its land, and its people” in projects like the Coconut Palace, Our Lady of Peace Shrine and San Miguel Building in Ortigas, even the villas of Amanpulo. The man started small. As in his clients were small children, starting off with his very own.

Before he was making structures best suited to Philippine life and climate, Bobby Mañosa was first making furniture best suited for his daughter Bambi. In the late 1960s, when Bambi was going to turn one and her parents were thinking of throwing her a party, there was one thing missing: party furniture for kids. Nothing of the sort could be found in the city. “That cannot be,”Mañosa told his wife Denise. “You cannot put babies in adult furniture!”

If you knew Mr. Mañosa, you’d understand that such a predicament might lead to quite a serious solution: making the furniture himself. The guy was known to go the extra mile to make children happy. “Not many know he really liked children. He was like the Pied Piper,” says Denise. “Any child he would see in the street he would play with them, he would give them something.”

For his only daughter Bambi, eldest child in a brood of three, Mañosa was more Peter Pan. “Growing up with him was actually really fun,” she says. “Many people say he was more like a grandfather to us than a father. He was not a disciplinarian; he made my mom do all the disciplining.”

Mañosa was also very big on birthday parties that he would usually come out with the invites and themes himself. And the furniture, if necessary.

Thus was born Dimples, a store for kids’ furniture which opened in Greenhills in 1971 before moving to Makati at the Tesoro’s building. When Martial Law came in 1972 and a ban was imposed on imported goods in the Philippines—children’s toys included— Filipino parents needed to find alternatives. Among those who started making toys for their own kids was Mañosa, an undertaking that soon became a business and a brand called Bobi Toys.

Bobi Toys was all about “environmentally-conscious children’s toys,” and it “celebrated the Filipino child’s natural world.” Instead of a toy car, Mr. Mañosa proposed a rocking horse, or the Bobi Horse, inspired by the horses in Baguio and the calesas his children were familiar with. There was Kokok at Manok, a pair of mobile toys with wheels made up of removable blocks that, when assembled, resembled a rooster. His most popular toy creation was the Tipaklong, undoubtedly an homage to the bugs Pinoy kids play with, made of local wood and equipped with a string that, when pulled, caused the toy to mimic the movement of a grasshopper.

The Mañosa kids were the muses and testers for the toys their father designed, which was why they often found themselves in the factory ran by their mom’s sister in Marikina, where the toys were made. “He would design according to their hilig,” recalls Denise. Hence, there was an entire line of dolls because Bambi was very much into dolls. There was a play grocery. There was an Uod and a Pagong and a train set called Bicol Express.

Sometimes the toys were double-purpose, as in a banca that can be turned into a stage. Sometimes they transcended their toy-ness, as in the Seesaw. Addressing the fact that it rains in the Philippines half the year, Mañosa designed a seesaw that can be enjoyed outdoors and taken indoors during bad weather. Left on its own, however, it could just as easily be mistaken for a piece of midcentury modern furniture.

The products of Bobi Toys were made of simple materials: pieces of local wood joined together by screws and bolts produced locally, too, brightened up by local non-toxic paint. He designed with both a sense of wonder and safety in mind (they’re for his kids, too, after all). And as can be seen in the houses and buildings that bear his stamp, he designed with a clearly Filipino point of view. He always began with the question: What does a Filipino toy look like?

Bobi Toys had a pretty successful run, and was even recognized by The Design Center of the Philippines with a Good Design Award, “which recognizes breakthrough solutions that improve quality of life and elevate Philippine design on the global stage.” At one point, the Mañosas were even joining the big guns in the major toy fairs in Frankfurt and Nuremberg, at the invitation of the Department of Trade.

Bobi Toys enjoyed popularity for a number of years, but like all things fun and innocent, the it had to come to an end. Mr. Mañosa got busier making real and big houses for grownups, as making play houses for kids started to take a backseat. Besides, the kids—primarily the Mañosas that inspired the making of the toys—have all grown up and moved on to other interests. And so 10 years after it opened, Bobi Toys closed shop.

But it would only be a matter of time before those playthings found their way out of the great architect’s archives in Alabang. Over 40 years after the closure of Bobi Toys and more than six years after Mañosa passed away at 88, the toys have come out of hiding and are set to make a new generation of children happy—this time along with their bigger community.

This is all thanks to Bambi’s daughters Tasha and Bella Tanjutco. Through the two’s Tukod Foundation, larger-than-life versions of four of their grandfather’s iconic toys will be auctioned off via Leon Gallery from November 22 to December 13. These are the previously mentioned Tipaklong, the Seesaw, the Bobi Horse, and Kokok at Manok.

Tasha and Bella help manage their lolo’s archives, and they remember the old man with great fondness and affection. “My dad was just as magical to them as he was to us when we were growing up,” recalls Bambi who first hesitated to share the following story but went on ahead, likely realizing it captured the kind of Peter Pan quality his dad possessed even at old age.

“They called him Bob. Someone dropped the Lolo and everyone started calling him Bob. ‘It was so much fun with Bob,’ they said one time after a ride with him. ‘He stopped the car and made us gather all the bougainvillea and put everything on the windshield. We covered the windshield and we couldn’t see anything! Then he stepped on the gas and everything flew, all the flowers flew! It was so much fun!”

Clearly, their lolo’s sense of wonder and belief in possibilities are strong in Tasha and Bella, as well as the desire to bring happiness to the young. The proceeds from the auction will fund the building of a climate-resilient school for Halian Island’s children, as well as a creative space and community kitchen. Halian is a small remote island in between Dinagat and Siargao. The facility will be called Bayay Halian and is “intended to serve as a model for climate-centric school design and to prove that it is possible to design good spaces for the future generations of Filipinos.”

The silent auction will be hosted online by Leon Gallery and is open to the public from November 22 to December 13, 2025. Bidding will be conducted through the Leon Gallery portal at https://leon-gallery.com/auctions. Proceeds from the auction will directly fund the Bayay Halian project.