Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Nov 10, 2019 20:25:13 GMT
Yes, Meccano was very good too. I had quite a bit of that, it was made by the same firm, and in the same factory as Hornby Dublo and Dinky toys.
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Nov 10, 2019 20:30:43 GMT
Yes, Meccano was very good too. I had quite a bit of that, it was made by the same firm, and in the same factory as Hornby Dublo and Dinky toys. Look up the price of Set 10 in its wooden cabinet on ebay, about 2 grand!
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Post by D.C. Burtonshaw on Nov 10, 2019 20:46:00 GMT
A great thread BG and I some superb stuff there in your photos! I too had all sorts of toys as a child, Matchbox and Corgi and a few Dinky cars, as well as an Action Man each (although my brother got two) and we also enjoyed Board Games we got from Grandparents at Christmas as well as Top trumps. I played those with the boys in the family next door. We also got together and had adventures with our Action Men joining forces with theirs and organising Commando missions for them! But never ever did have trains sets, as our dad thought we had enough stuff so it was really interesting when we visited friends houses and saw their impressive Hornby layouts and Scalextric layouts too!
With Action Man we never had any of the big vehicles so improvised and made vehicles for them out of cardboard boxes. I one spent quite a bit of time building a Land Rover SWB 2 door Station wagon with opening side doors and a roof and painting it with green poster paint. The "wheels" didn't go round, I drew them on the side!! It had a bonnet though!
My brother often wanted the noisier toys, cap guns and rockets and also action figures and there was one he got that was a parachute man that you threw up in the air and let the parachute open while the bloke dropped to the ground slower.
I do actually have some of my old die cast cars I kept, some going back to when I was 8 onwards (although it seems these days that Matchbox cars and Corgi 1/36 scale cars of the early 80's and aren't worth a great deal nowadays, with many being mass produced unless they a rare colours).
Nowadays I have also collected earlier Dinky and Corgi and Triang Spot On cars and restored/carefully repainted a fair few of them, and put a few on display (as I haven't got room to display then all!). But these were ones I bought in my adult age over the last 15 years or so as a hobby from toyfairs or Ebay.
Did anybody have anything like the "Matchbox" Streak Tracks? Which were track layouts for smaller Matchbox cars which you could either fix to launchers and fire them off at speed down a track, and let them go downwards from a fixing to a chair so they got some speed up and they could loop the loop, as part of the layout. There was then a little finish line gate where the chequered flag would go down if the first car went through the barrier. The track layout my brother got in 1982, had glow in the dark lines on the track as well as glow in the dark plastic (where the window glass would normally be) on the cars which was interesting when you turned the lights out. The 2 cars with those sort of windows where a Porsche 911 and a Chevrolet Corvette Stingray.
I remember also the cheap polystyrene plane kits you could get from your newsagents which were easy to build and a had a wind powered plastic propellor. If the wind dropped and you threw them they only stayed in the air a few seconds but you'd get better luck if it was a windy day. Except no matter what they never landed on their wheels!
As for board games we only really had Frustration (a sort of Ludo with a fingertip large button in the middle which rolled the dice for you), some other one where you had to flick a trigger with a marble which was supposed to eventually push for tiny plastic racing cars down a track and the player that got all 4 down was the winner. I found it a bit boring after a while as it was difficult to get the cars that were nearest the trigger!
BG has a Starsky and Hutch board game, but you could get a Kojak board game to which I once had a play on, at a friends house who had it in the late 70's.
And then of course Lego! I had a beach buggy Technical kit while my brother got the go kart with the single cylinder piston engine. The same kit could be used to make a trike which his Action Man fitted on perfectly! All the other lego sets were great ideas and so many variations and your own designs could be built, with buildings and vehicles and road layouts! I used to use the lego buildings to house my die cast cars and put them on the lego roads.
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Nov 10, 2019 20:53:30 GMT
The first cap guns I had were those with that simple explosive stuff on a little reel.
Then they made those red circular things for revolvers, much more realistic.
Can you imagine what would happen if your kids went out into the streets tomorrow with those (which were quite loud) and started pretend shooting at each other, like we used to?! You'd end on the news, or possibly dead!
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Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Nov 10, 2019 21:22:42 GMT
I remember Hot Wheels which was similar to the matchbox superfast cars, you had some orange coloured track which clipped together and clamped one end to a table so the cars would run downhill, I had two ramps to make a jump and a loop the loop section.
They were quite good fun and I adapted a short length of track to fit onto a flat wagon on the train to make a motorail loading bay.
Airfix kits were another, I made quite s few of these, mostly planes, my favourites were RAF and Luftwaffe world War 2 ones, the biggest ones I did were a Lancaster and a very big Junkers transport plane with three engines
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Nov 10, 2019 21:43:24 GMT
I remember Hot Wheels which was similar to the matchbox superfast cars, you had some orange coloured track which clipped together and clamped one end to a table so the cars would run downhill, I had two ramps to make a jump and a loop the loop section. They were quite good fun and I adapted a short length of track to fit onto a flat wagon on the train to make a motorail loading bay. Airfix kits were another, I made quite s few of these, mostly planes, my favourites were RAF and Luftwaffe world War 2 ones, the biggest ones I did were a Lancaster and a very big Junkers transport plane with three engines My brother had the track, it had a motorised foam wheel to speed the cars around a flat circle. Airfix kits were great, had a few Revell ones as well. I had a lovely 1/32 Sopwith Camel.
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on Nov 10, 2019 23:47:25 GMT
They still make a version of it today and they still needed those huge D size batteries. My son loved his hot wheels stuff in the 90s and 00s.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Nov 11, 2019 7:06:21 GMT
The first cap guns I had were those with that simple explosive stuff on a little reel. Then they made those red circular things for revolvers, much more realistic. Can you imagine what would happen if your kids went out into the streets tomorrow with those (which were quite loud) and started pretend shooting at each other, like we used to?! You'd end on the news, or possibly dead! The kids next door used to get the reels of caps and roll them out on the path (or top of the garden wall) and set light to them. You could also bash them with stones/brick to make them go off.
Waltzing around the streets with one of those now - you'd end up with Armed Response on top of you.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Nov 11, 2019 7:12:56 GMT
Probably my favourite toys weren't really toys, they were a bunch of old electrical stuff my Dad gave after rewiring a house. So I used to connect them up, buy stuff like little bulb holders you could get from Woolworths, make electromagnets etc. A lot of this was inspired by 1960s Dr Who as that is what the character did to get out of trouble, knock something together out of odds and ends. I was eventually given a couple of old telephones and discovered that if you removed the handsets and them connected them in series with a 4.5V battery you could talk to each other. Amazing, didn't even need an amplifier! Were you living in our house? That is exactly how I got into Electronics!
If something broke down beyond repair - eg TV/Radio - I would hoik it off to the garden shed and dismantle it to try and see how it worked and remove any bits that I could build something else. I ended up with shoe boxes full of bits and pieces - and raiding the local library (and school library) for books on electronics.
These parts came in dead handy when my brother grew up and built a large model railway... and I would end up building switch boxes, controllers etc for that.
Sadly - I haven't changed, and am still the same today; with a home small workshop and boxes full of electronic tat. Though am more qualified to do it and my soldering is much better!
I do remember the kits at Woolworths with the Torch bulbs and packs with bits of wire in.
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on Nov 11, 2019 11:44:52 GMT
I was recenlty looking at a radio kit but the 60 quid starting price tag put me off a bit. I remember them in Woolworths years ago, never did end up with one. I used to take broken stuff apart in the shed. It was fascinating and by the time i was in my teens i would repair items like the washing machine for my Mum. Alongside other small electrical jobs it saved her a fortune.
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