James May's Toy Stories is a UK documentary television series created and presented by James May, and produced by Plum Pictures for the BBC.^[2][3][4] The programme focused on bringing some of the most notable toys conceived in the past into the modern era to a "new generation of children", by putting each toy into a complex, large-scale project involving the nature of the toy. The projects, often ambitious, required an extensive team of experts, and in some cases required a large group of volunteers to help achieve the project's goal.

The programme was originally commissioned for BBC Two as a six-episode series for 2009, between 27 October to 25 December, but later received four specials after the series concluded – one in June 2011 and three more for the Christmas broadcast schedules between 2012 and 2014.

The programmes are currently available on the Naked Science YouTube channel. ^[5]

The focus of the documentary was on six notable toys during the original series of episodes, including their history, each of which were chosen to see if they could be possibly capable of achieving a remarkable goal in real-life on a grand scale. For each toy, the nature of its purpose fundamentally underlined the project's core task, whether it was to recreate something using similar methods with the toy, or attempting push the toy with a challenge not attempted before with it. May, who had presented documentaries on toys with James May's Top Toys and James May: My Sisters' Top Toys, chose the toys to be used on the programme, and fundamentally involved people in his new programme with whom he had worked with on other projects, including Tiff Needell and Oz Clarke. The basic premise of the programme, as May put forward was:

For too long now we have regarded the great toys as mere playthings. It's time to use them to bring people together and achieve greatness...^[2]

The scale of the projects meant that the production team had to recruit specialists to provide technical assistance, including architects, designers and engineers,^[6] while in others, large teams of volunteers were required to handle construction work - an example of this was the involvement of a project involving model trains, which required volunteers to help set up a vast line of track along with connecting power supplies to it, and then dismantle it afterwards - and so appeals were made in local papers for assistance by programme researchers. Some of the projects were so elaborate, that carefully planning had to be made to ensure that each ran smoothly and did not cause disruptions within the main area it was being conducted within.

James May released a book in conjunction with the series, through Conway Publishing (2009).^{[citation needed]}