Love Our Old Toys?

That 707 is a nice item Rob. Reminds me of a time back in the early 80s, when I was out in London with my youngest brother. We were touring ‘airline street’ otherwise known as Regent Street, looking at the lovely huge models in the windows of the various airline ‘showrooms’ Taking a short cut, behind the shops, my brother exclaimed “Wow, look at that” It turned out to be the tail of a large Iran Air Boeing 707, in a rubbish skip, if you please! What heathen did this:eek: Well he was into that skip as quick as you like, and pulled the model out. It was virtually undamaged, with a wingspan of around 3ft. No stand, but my brother ‘ferreted’ further down, and found it. No one looking, so we took it home. Great fun on the tube I can tell you:)

This is about a third of my Dinky planes. its better than money in the bank at the mo..

just a “small” selection of some of my Dinky stuff thats crammed away in boxes in every nook n cranny of the house.

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If they are in good condition and boxed you are sitting on a lot of money there!

I only had two, a Hunter and a York. They did not last long with a nine year old.Still hindsight was not one of my strongpoints then!

Matchbox power track was better than TCR and Scalextrix … I had two sets – both with the Jaguar XJ and BMW of some kind…

just a “small” selection of some of my Dinky stuff thats crammed away in boxes in every nook n cranny of the house.

the 707 was a window display model for Air India but was all bashed up and for some reason half sprayed black. its an on going project and one of many :confused:

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Wyvernfan;

I thought that the Britains stuff was great. However, I wasn’t into the peaceful past time of ploughing and sowing crops, but blowing things up with Britain’s excellent range of military hardware.

Yes they were all quality toys back then, and made to last.

Same here, loved the Britains tractors which I usually got at Christmas from a rich farmer friend of the family. Strangely I looked on EBay the other day to see if you could still get them.

My first was this Ford 5000 on the left, now minus its cab and smaller fittings. Also shown is my favourite Ford 6600 thats still complete apart from the exhaust, and my cultivator. The piece of metal elastic banded on the back was found in dads shed and has been on there since the seventies. It was my attempt to stop it springing up when it got caught in the carpet during cultivating :D.

Rob

Anyone remember these chaps? Produced by Star Toys of Hong Kong and available from the mid seventies to the mid eighties. I used to pick my Action Jacks up from the local newsagent for 20p each. Cheap as you like and a rip off of Matchbox’s “Mobile Action Command” figures. Also included were cheap and nasty accessories moulded in garish coloured plastic which the figure refused to hold no matter what!

Bonuses over Mobile Action Command figures? Action Jacks were cheap and fun, but most importantly, you could pull their heads out! The heads had a large pin underneath that held the figure together, so if you whipped Action Jack’s head off, he fell apart! That meant bags of ghoulish childhood japes that meant you could rebuild him putting his arms where his legs should be and vice versa!

Still can’t believe I managed to find this original shop display full of the little bu**ers on Ebay for a song! Happy days!

Regards;
Steve

That’s a few years down the line, for me I found I found that those models would fly if you kept to no more than the water spray and clear dope to tighten the covering, but if you went the full hog with painting it soon became too heavy and hard “landings” became the norm.

Me to Silver Fox!

A bit of nostalga

Possibly showing my age here, but my main passion was building the Keil Kraft models, usually the “flying” scale models, the rubber powered, balsa wood and tissue paper aircraft, spent hours building, flying and wrecking them.

Swear I spent most of the time “high” on the fumes from that balsa cement.

The kits cost buttons in those days and provided hours of playtime.

I had a few of the Dinky aircraft. When I was very young, I was given a Bristol Britannia, a Caravelle, and a Viscount. A few years later, I think I was about 11 or 12, I received a Beechcraft Baron, a Beechcraft Bonanza, complete with baggage! I can remember also one Xmas, receiving the Dinky HS125, A Spitfire, Bf109, and a Lufthansa 737. I should emphasise, that these planes were given to me over a period of several years, I am in no way related to Santa Claus;)

Last night, I was talking by phone to my sister in Canada. She reminded me of the huge Britain’s build your own garden set, that she got one Xmas. I’d forgotten all about that, but I can now picture this huge garden, complete with trees, lawns, fencing, flower beds, a greenhouse, paving etc. There were even little plants to put in the flower beds, gardener figures, tools and a lawn mower. I had no idea that she still had it, along with the ‘add on’ items that she saved her pocket money to buy. She presently lives in a leafy suburb of Toronto, with her garden set stowed in her attic. I suggested that she could make a few bob, by putting the set on eBay, I should have known better;)

You could afford toys?

Well I know I couldn’t! Took me six weeks to save up my pocket money for the Airfix B-17G!

My parents certainly weren’t rolling in it, so thinking about it now as a parent myself, I’m not sure how they managed to buy all the fab things they did for me at Christmas and Birthday times! I very appreciative of that now (Not to say that I wasn’t at the time, because I was. I can just understand that they must have done a lot of saving). That is unless, they were actually holding up Post Offices without my knowledge.

Regards;
Steve

…It’s got me thinking now if my set had a jam car! My hazy memory only recalls two cars. The link below is to a website that my mate runs on classic toys. It’s the page for TCR and the set I had is the second one down in the first photo. I do remember the snazzy lights though!

http://www.stuffwelove.co.uk/racingsets/tcr.htm

Regards;
Steve

You could afford toys?

The TCR set I had (Indie 500 I think it was) had three cars.
A red and yellow racing car and a black `Jam` car.
The Jam car ran on it’s own around the track at half speed and was an obstruction to make racing more challenging (especially if you put it on backwards!).
For those that did not have TCR it was a single lane game where you could overtake the car in front by flicking a switch on the controller. This flipped the car to the opposite side of the road.
It had one advantage over Scaletrix in that you could go flat out and not fly off the track.

hampden98;

“Jam car?”….shows what I knew as a kid then. There was me cursing the damn thing…it did conk out though, all the time. I think the set might still be in my parent’s loft. Must look next time I’m there and try and find it, along with my Lego!

Nice Swordfish by the way. High time I got that kit!

Regards;
Steve

Me too!

btw the slow car in the TCR set was the `Jam Car` it was meant to be slower :diablo: although not conk out!

p.s. Nice Stash!

hampden98;

Airfix SLR….green with envy! I always lusted after that!

Action Man Scorpion Tank….equally jealous! I ended up with a Cherilea knock off!

Airfix….still buillding em!

Total Control Racing! Cool! I thought I was the only kid to have that! All my mates had Scalextric! I thought TCR was underated, but my set had one car that was considerably slower than the other and kept conking out between lanes! Frustrating to say the least!

Matchbox Motorway anyone?

Regards;
Steve

Airfix Firing SLR.
Action Man Commander and Scorpion Tank.
Airfix Models.
Total Control Racing.

but my favourite was always Britains farm models.

Same here, loved the Britains tractors which I usually got at Christmas from a rich farmer friend of the family. Strangely I looked on EBay the other day to see if you could still get them.

I was also lucky to get the latest Dinky diecasts when I was younger as an uncle worked for the company, must have been in the Liverpool area.
I remember their Police and fire Transit vans being particularly good and I think a Ford D Series road sweeper, the quality seemed to have gone down hill after that with a USS Enterprise that fired yellow pucks.
Unfortunately I either destroyed or buried (don’t ask!) the stuff.

I have a now fairly small stash of old aircraft kits, which I have a horrible feeling will never be built!