James May, Action Man

Found this article on the Top Gear site, about the wonderful programme James May put together last Christmas: James May's Top Toys which has since been repeated at least once. Keep an eye out for a repeat this year.

"For several weeks now, I've been beavering away at my desk working on a project completely unrelated to Top Gear. I've been asked by the BBC to make Gear a one-hour Christmas special about toys, and I have to admit that I'm enjoying myself immensely. Toys are nostalgic, evocative and, above all, still great fun. Scalextric, for example, is really nothing more than an elaborate way of connecting the terminals of a 12-volt transformer to an electric motor.

If sir had pointed out that this phenomenon was the basis of all domestic motor racing, the physics lab would have been a happier place. Likewise the train set, which works in exactly the same way. I love a good train set, and a collection of Dinkies, a Mamod steam engine and a really big box of Meccano or Lego.

These things are magical and offer an immediate and welcome respite from the tedium of adulthood. The downside of all this, however, is that I'm reminded of some truly tedious toys that I'd rightly forgotten."

Payday!

Aha!!! At last found this little beauty on e Bay: Payday!!!!

Now this was one of the best, Xmas oooh well I'd reckon on '75 but info I found says this is a 1979 edition, but I'd have been 14 then, and into rock music and guitars, so i'd have been past the board game playing age. I distinctly remember being up about 6 in the morning dark outside, presents open, and mum and dad going back to bed, while me and sis played this one, whilst chomping my way through the first of many selection boxes! Like an idiots version of monopoloy, but much more fun. They still make it it seems, but this is the version I had and loved. Bidding for this baby, suprise my sister on boxing day this year with it!

Going...going...gone

Oh boy, just came across this old chestnut: Masterpiece

Yup, you can still buy it it seems, even if it's second hand. This was a family favourite in our household, well me and my sister anyway, one year around about 1975-6 I'd reckon. We never really "got" the rules, but thoroughly enjoyed holding our own little auctions, smugly grinning when we managed to palm off a fake to one another during a frantic bidding session! Not up there with Monopoly or Scrabble or Cluedo, but a definite blast from the past.

Push to kick

Striker!

Wow, another one of those Christmas memories. My overriding memory of this one was finding it under my parents bed when I went hunting for pressies in the run up to Christmas 9 (This must have been about '74-75)

They usually kept the pressies in the top right hand cupboard in the wardrobe above my dads clothes, but obviously this one was too big for there and made its way under the bed. Didnt fool old Sherlock for long tho'. I was able to pull the box out, and ease the lid up and sneak a peak at those wonderfull richly coloured blue and red players. I was a big Man Utd fan in those days (dont even watch football any more) and I swear one of the red team was the spitting image of Lou Macari. Unlike many toys and games, this one did live up to expectations, and I found it absorbing to be able to choreagraph these little men, and allow Man Utd (red) to regularly thrash Everton (blue) on a thrice daily basis.

They also made Super Striker, where the goal keepers actually dived. My mate Tim (who always seemed to out do me) had Super Striker, and tho' it looked amazing on the adverts in reality it was pretty shit, and my working class version where the goalkeeper just threw the ball from his frozen arm. One up for me there then!!!

It's long since the days where I could play striker for hours on end lost in my own innocent little world, but I've got a bid up for Striker on e bay at the moment, hopefully another little piece of the nostalgia jigsaw will droip into place in the next week or so.