Fair enough. But as a 9 year old in 1977 I didn't have the resources to to do this. Red team and blue team and a 7 year old sister who didn't want to play it.
Also. Dinky Gerry Anderson vehicles. Fantastic models, but painted the wrong colour!
Thunderbird 2 is not blue. Eagle Transporters are not Green or Blue. SHADO Mobiles are not green! Why did they do this?
I have to confess that as an adult I’ve bought a couple of SHADO Mobiles and painted them up as they were in the TV show. I also spent a daft amount of money on a green Eagle.
Something's just struck me.
I had a toy spacecraft that was pre-loved so came without a box or anything. I think it was part of a series (like those Micronauts mentioned earlier) but I have no idea what. It was kinda like an elongated A-Wing shape. The cockpit was a big clear sphere which rolled on the ground, if you turned it upside-down the seats were on an axle so the spacemen would spin round to be facing backwards. I think the nose and tail had connectors so you could join others together like a train.
Does this ring any bells with anyone? I'm pretty sure we've mentioned this on STW before so someone must recognise it.
Fair enough. But as a 9 year old in 1977 I didn't have the resources to to do this. Red team and blue team and a 7 year old sister who didn't want to play it.
Well two man games do tend to be a bit crap if you don't have anyone to play with!! Got my first set in 1986, world cup edition with 2 teams and subs..usefully when your dad manages to stand on your Argentinian number 9 on boxing day
Does this ring any bells with anyone? I'm pretty sure we've mentioned this on STW before so someone must recognise it.
No, but I want one!
How 'bout the length of corrugated hoover pipe we used to wirl round our heads to make a whooshing noise...?
Hah yes! I remember that sooo much.
I had a unique 'noise' toy – our garden gate, made a 'beeooynggggg'! noise when I swung it on its hinges that was pretty much identical to The Six Million Dollar Man when he used his bionic powers – I would spend ages making the noise then pretending to be Steve Austin.
Anything remote control was brilliant in the 1970s!!
Then the batteries would run out before Christmas dinner.
And you'd wait weeks for your parents to buy more as they cost a small fortune back then! 🤣
No, but I want one!
Found it.
https://wearethemutants.com/2020/01/07/mutating-empire-britains-space-toys/
I just had the main module and a few connectors, the creatively named "Space Craft" 9110 in the catalogue.
Tamiya Sand Scorcher.
It was bloody brilliant at the time, and would pelt along at a gazillion mph, but, thinking back, it was pretty one-dimensional, and didn't fare too well when turned at high speed. And the battery lasted 5 minutes, and then took an hour to charge.
Probs not a patch on the crawler type stuff that's available nowadays.
Stick a modern battery and radio gear in it and it will still be "bloody brilliant".
I remember having that stargard set, plus a green alien flying saucer thing which it did battle with.
Must have been only about 3 years old at the time as I remember it being one of my earliest toys.
Thing aboit subbuteo is that basically no kids ever actually played it properly. And definitely no football kids. But gamer kids who understood the rules and wanted to play it "right" all have no manual dexterity and basically robbed all the fun out of it for the football kids. It's pretty much a game for old people that had to target itself at kids.
We spent ages clearing out my mum and dad's attic and basically playing with all the old toys. I've aquired all the lego, star wars, action man, and some wee oddball stuff like the micro machines, starcom (clockwork and magnets space thing), centurions, loads of Britains farm stuff, playmobil... Some of its got value, most of its junk but I love the variety of it, tons of what we had was basically discount shop stuff, end of lines etc so lots of oddness. Matchbox Roadblasters! Brilliant.
(also I ended up with all the 90s warhammer stuff so I'm still hoping to find a single rare ork that'll fund my new kitchen)
I love digging into this stuff, modern internet fandom and "stuff we couldn't afford but can now" is a lovely innocent joyful mix sometimes. And pretty funny selling stuff on ebay and then having it turn up on someone's youtube video. I can't bring myself to throw anything away now, a load of it I've basically sold at a loss but you know it's going to someone that'll enjoy it. Like, I do not want to be a toy collector but I can really enjoy other people's enjoyment
(I just watched a 20 minute video about Matchbox Sea Kings, I had literally one of those toys that I played with in the bath but apparently that's enough)
Thing aboit subbuteo is that basically no kids ever actually played it properly. And definitely no football kids. But gamer kids who understood the rules and wanted to play it "right" all have no manual dexterity and basically robbed all the fun out of it for the football kids. It's pretty much a game for old people that had to target itself at kids.
I remember building a full on stadium for my team, main stand constructed from the box my swing ball came in (another fine gift). Unfortunately, after about a week of painstaking construction, whilst I ended up with an arena that put the San siro to shame, tiny little tpbiker and his miniscule arms was unable to actually reach over the stands to play the game. And the floodlights (that ran off those huge triple d batteries) made taking corners impossible..
And it didn't even look that good given 20 spectators cost the equivalent of a weeks pocket money, and I need about 20000 of them to fill it up.
I was going to post some MASK pictures, but then read the first post properly, I think they're far better than most when compared to the shite that passes for action figures kids get these days, for me they're still top drawer toys.
But this was banger when I was a nipper, probably less so now:
Who remembers Action Jack? The poor man's action figure. Loved those, but pretty crap even back then, let alone nowadays.
Pea shooter and catapult were always fun. Mamod steam engines. Tonka dumper truck. Campari rubber dinghy. Like this one but smaller… an early packraft
Thing aboit subbuteo is that basically no kids ever actually played it properly. And definitely no football kids. But gamer kids who understood the rules and wanted to play it "right" all have no manual dexterity and basically robbed all the fun out of it for the football kids. It's pretty much a game for old people that had to target itself at kids.
I think you might just be too young. Back on the mid to late 70s a boy in my class at primary School from the posh part of town had his subbuteo pitch permanently mounted to some sort of board. And we'd all pile into his after playing football for hours in the grounds of a derilict hospital next to his 5 floor house. The basement (I guess once upon a time servants quarters) had its own large kitchen, bathroom and dining room which we'd pretty much take over unsupervised by adults. We'd often play subbuteo down there for a couple of hours. Sometimes playing doubles if there were a lot of us. One day the boy who's house we were in came up with the idea we could make a league with fixtures. Entry simply meant each of us had to buy our own subbuteo team. (which I remember being quite pricy for a 9yr old) we played proper rules. Ref'd by those watching. (possibly shorter games as there were a good few of us. a properly organised/run league meant most of us stuck with it for a few years.
Not entirely sure what you meant by "football kids" but we normally played daily unless it was absolutely pissing down all day. Someone always had a football. Whether we were at school or kicking around the town later. We all supported teams. Other than me. Not many of us actually got to watch many games as geographically we weren't close to any decent team's ground. My dad was football mad and well connected for tickets at Hampden and Wembley so I went with him to the cup final every year. Tons of internationals and some big European games. Bearing in mind the Atari 2600 was a new thing most households couldn't even afford so most of us had probably only played 'pong' tennis on those twisty controller B&W home TV gaming machines. We did have early video games down the local arcade but that's where rougher kids (me included) hung out. And a lot of kids introduction to smoking fags, drinking, chatting up girls n drugs. Certainly not the nerdy gamer kids you think of nowadays. ... Or by "gamer kids" did you mean nerdy adult board games or dungeons and dragons kids? ... None of us had really seen those until secondary school. And usually through someone's hippy/stoner older sibling.
I was a football kid that thought Subbuteo was good to look at for five minutes but too damn boring to play. I did get the indoor pitch though and that was a bit better as the ball bounced off the walls and stayed in play.
Can't believe the humble Spudmatic spud gun hasn't had a mention. Yoof of today would just be disappointed it wouldn't kill anyone.
TCR racing. Looked ace. Was crap.
Spoilt Greg had a set that I used to go round and play with. The problem was that the cars didn't come off like Scalextric, so it was full throttle all the time, and one car was always just a bit quicker than the other so there was no racing.
Greg would liven it up by putting playing card soaked in meths on the track and setting fire to them. Fun, but ultimately detrimental.
Scalextric - borrowed a set recently and was reminded that it's actually rubbish
I got TCR for Xmas and the boys next door broke it on Xmas day, turned out it was a recall fault and I never got it replaced - still traumatised.
A couple of years ago I bought an old Scalextric set to put the demos to rest. It was indeed crap, but I was determined. Cleaned it up, tuned the tyres, bought more track, still pretty poor.
Then a controller broke, so I went down a rabbit hole and ended up getting some new controllers. It's transformed - so much control and so much fun now. My lad and I can do controllable, repeatable tail slides round the hairpins. It's the only thing that got him of his Switch for an afternoon.
£35 seemed nonsense - have a look what you can spend though! https://www.pendleslotracing.co.uk/accessories/hand-controllers.html
Which reminds me - Xmas tradition - it needs setting up again soon!
I may have accidentally acquired 200ft* of Scalextric track and 40+ cars. It works well if you take the time to set it up and upgrade the throttles and power base. Also, cars by other brands are better than Scalextric IMHO. Mine are mostly SCX.
* Can only use abut 50-60ft though without losing power or needing to knock a wall down.
Subbuteo football wasn't too bad. Subbuteo Cricket was unbelievably bad. You 'bowled' the ball (which was about 5mm diameter) by flicking a plastic figure which held the bowl in a small loop. This sent the ball down the pitch so fast you couldn't see it. The bat was about 20mm long and 4 mm wide, so the chances of hitting the ball were slim. The wickets and bails were fitted to a plastic base, so when you waved the bat in the vain attempt at hitting the ball, you knocked the base hence taking the bails off, so you were out.
I played it for about 2 minutes. I found it last year clearing out my mums house. Still rubbish.
I know it's a tangent but,
What difference does changing the Scalextric controllers make? it's just a pot, isn't it? (Or is that the point of upgrading?)
Aside from a mate having Race & Chase when I was a kid, the only hands-on experience I have of Scalextric is another mate buying one during student days. It was a figure of 8 with banked turns and you could 'play' by holding the throttle on max whilst they whizzed around. More track might well have improved things but out-of-the-box it was more fun to build and lasted about five minutes.
It's something I always fancied - didn't we all - but I'd chalked it down to being one of those things where expectation far outstripped reality. (Do we need a Christmas Scalextric thread to go with the other Big Boys' Toys ones?)
What difference does changing the Scalextric controllers make?
I bought a load of newer Scalextric ones, nothing fancy or adjustable. The older ones wear out or filth up. Eventually the newer ones go the same way, but at a couple of quid each they were pretty much disposable.
2x (Pair) Genuine Scalextric Sport 1:32 Hand Controllers Throttles C8229 C8230 | eBay UK
I'll try and set mine up over Christmas and post a couple of pictures.
What difference does changing the Scalextric controllers make?
I'm not techy electrically, but the old ones were almost digital and felt nasty, gritty, creaky. You had to pin it to get the car moving and had no fine control.
The ones we got are so well built, smooth mechanism and loads of control, a small movement lets the car crawl off the line and you have much more 'resolution' with the trigger. It's actually controllable rather than all or nothing.
An absolute transformation.
Right, off to eBay for some more straights, borders and barriers. Especially barriers.