THIEVES stole a collection of children's toy cars from the back yard of a childminding business.

Children who play with the toys were said to be "gutted" when they were stolen.

Now Angela Wallace, who runs AW Childcare Services in Morris Green with her partner Paul Brooks, is appealing for help to locate the ride-on toys, which are worth £250.

Miss Wallace, aged 43, along with her team, parents, family and friends, got the cars — Creeper Scooters — by collecting Sainsbury’s Active Kids vouchers.

The scooters were bought using 1,197 vouchers each, which took more than 12 months to collect.

The company, which looks after a number of children under the age of five, is run from Miss Wallace and Mr Brooks’ home in Gainsborough Avenue.

Miss Wallace said: “I’m gutted — and the kids are gutted too. They’re all under five so don’t understand why their toys have been taken away from them.

“We look after 23 kids here, so you can imagine we have a lot of upset children.

“We have all been collecting the vouchers for over a year to get the cars, only for heartless thieves to just come and take them.”

The incident happened between Saturday night and Sunday morning, with the thieves entering via the back gate while Miss Wallace and her family slept.

She said: “We’d been out on Saturday evening from 7pm but when we came home at 11pm everything was there.

“Our neighbour heard something at around 6am and went to check, but couldn’t see anything. Then not long after we woke up and they were gone.

“All we know is that they came in through the back gate because the latch is broken. We’d only just received the toys too, and the children were so excited.

"They’re worth around £250 new, so we can’t just go out and buy new ones. I just can’t believe it.

"It’s normally such a quiet street — everyone knows each other and it’s a very close community.”

If anyone has any information about the incident, call Greater Manchester Police on 101, or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555111.