Playbox was the brainchild of Freda Lingstrom who had originally joined the BBC in 1942 in radio's Home News Talks Department. By 1951 she had worked her way up the corporate ladder to become Head of Children's Television and had a number of successful credits to her acclaim. She was an artist of distinction, worked in textiles, china and glass and was also an accomplished novelist and scriptwriter.

In 1953 writer and broadcaster Johnny Morris was working at BBC radio when according to him he was press ganged by Lingstrom, who was affectionately known as 'Mum', into his next job. 'She was a most positive lady with ideas of her own, one of which was Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men. She had an idea for me. She said, 'I have decided that you will work for Children's Television. You will be the Hot Chestnut Man. You will have a chestnut barrow on the street corner and every week you will tell the children a story. Now go away and do it.' 'Mum' did not mess about.'

The Hot Chestnut Man was to appear in a series of magazine type programmes called Playbox that was introduced by Eamonn Andrews. Also taking part with their own specialities was artist Tony Hart and artist-cum-entertainer Rolf Harris. Cliff Michelmore was assigned producer. For his part, Johnny Morris recalled that he had to learn his story off by heart, which didn't prove much of a problem as he had normally only written it about two days before broadcast. In his entertaining autobiography, 'There's Lovely' Johnny wrote about how he drew his inspiration for his own fictional characters from one young fan who had written to him:

It began: 'Once upon a time there was a man and he had got something up with him.' He had got the right idea and he had no doubt got it through people saying to him, 'Hey, what's up with you?' I very much liked the idea of people who had something 'up' with them. Very true to life. So all the stories I dreamed up were about people who had something 'up' with them. They had various exaggerated regional accents. They had funny voices and kept strange animals as pets. Their pets were as peculiar as their owners. All the animals had something 'up' with them too.

From this it is easy to see how Johnny developed his 'talking animals' format that was so successful for his next series Animal Magic. Not only did he put words in the animals mouths he also gave each and every one their own unique personality. Eamonn Andrews also had fond memories of Toybox saying that he found children's television one of the most exciting and stimulating fields he had worked in. 'We created a Children's Television Theatre for light hearted entertainment, and we balanced it by producing slightly more serious material from the Playbox.

'We paid our young viewers the compliment of presenting shows on an adult level, and they were quick to respond. Children are as quick as adults to spot a mistake or point out what is shoddy, but quicker still to display warmth and generosity when you give them something they like.'

With her instinctive knack of knowing how to entertain children, Freda Lingstrom laid down a format in these early days of children's television using number of elements that were reused to even greater success in later shows such as Crackerjack, Blue Peter, Take Hart and Jackanory. She truly was 'mum' to them all.