TV Cream Toys Lite
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PRESENTS YOU PESTERED YOUR PARENTS FOR
TV CREAM
TOYS
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Friday Books
Text © 2007 Steve Berry
Line illustrations and colour illustrations © 2007 Phil Arnold (www.formerairline.com) All photos © 2007 Steve Berry, except: Mattel Slime by Jodie Nesbitt; Adventure 2000, Denys Fisher Dr Who by Paul Vought (www.vortx-productions.co.uk); Johnny Seven by Mike Evangelist (www.writersblocklive.com); Rubik’s Cube by Lars Karlsson; Swingball by Andrew Finch; LEGO and the LEGO logo are trademarks of the LEGO Group, here used with special permission © 2006 The EGO Group (page 93 Magna Doodle ® is a registered trademark owned by the Pilot Pen Corporation of America (page 99); ETCH A SKETCH and associated trademarks are owned by Bluebird Toys (UK) Limited and used under licence from Matte Europa B.V., an affiliate of Bluebird Toys (UK) Limited and Mattel, Inc. © 2006 Mattel, Inc. All Rights Reserved (cover image); © 2005 Rubik’s and Rubik’s Cube used by kind permission of Seven Towns Ltd UK (cover image).
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9781905548279
Ebook Edition © MAY 2009 ISBN: 9780007328512
Version 2016-08-11
For Joanna, who would like her spare room back
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Just what is TV Cream anyway?
Introduction
Part 1 - The Toys
Chapter 1 - ‘A La Cart Kitchen’
Chapter 2 - Action Man
Chapter 3 - Airfix Kits
Chapter 4 - Armatron
Chapter 5 - Backgammon
Chapter 6 - Barbie
Chapter 7 - Battling Tops
Chapter 8 - Bermuda Triangle
Chapter 9 - Big Trak
Chapter 10 - Big Yellow Teapot
Chapter 11 - Binatone TV Master
Chapter 12 - Black Box
Chapter 13 - Boglins
Chapter 14 - Buckaroo!
Chapter 15 - Cadbury’s Chocolate Machine
Chapter 16 - Cascade
Chapter 17 - Chemistry Set
Chapter 18 - Chic-a-boo
Chapter 19 - Chopper
Chapter 20 - Chutes Away
Chapter 21 - Cluedo
Chapter 22 - Commodore 64
Chapter 23 - Computer Battleship
Chapter 24 - Connect Four
Chapter 25 - Corgi 007 Lotus Esprit
Chapter 26 - Crossfire
Chapter 27 - Cyborgs
Chapter 28 - Domino Rally
Chapter 29 - Downfall
Chapter 30 - Dr Who TARDIS
Chapter 31 - Dungeons & Dragons
Chapter 32 - Electronic Detective
Chapter 33 - Electronic Project
Chapter 34 - Escalado
Chapter 35 - Escape from Colditz
Chapter 36 - Etch-A-Sketch
Chapter 37 - Evel Knievel
Chapter 38 - Finger Frights
Chapter 39 - Fisher-Price Activity Centre
Chapter 40 - Flight Deck
Chapter 41 - Fuzzy Felt
Chapter 42 - Galaxy Invader 1000
Chapter 43 - Game and Watch
Chapter 44 - Girl’s World
Chapter 45 - Guess Who?
Chapter 46 - Hangman
Chapter 47 - Haunted House
Chapter 48 - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
Chapter 49 - Hornby Railway Set
Chapter 50 - Hungry Hippos
Chapter 51 - Johnny Seven
Chapter 52 - Junk Yard
Chapter 53 - KerPlunk
Chapter 54 - LEGO
Chapter 55 - Little Professor
Chapter 56 - Lone Star Spudmatic Gun
Chapter 57 - Magic Robot
Chapter 58 - Magic Rocks
Chapter 59 - Magna Doodle
Chapter 60 - Magnetic Wheel
Chapter 61 - Mastermind
Chapter 62 - Matsushiro Knight Rider Radio-Controlled Car
Chapter 63 - Meccano
Chapter 64 - Mercury Maze
Chapter 65 - Merlin
Chapter 66 - Monopoly
Chapter 67 - Mousetrap
Chapter 68 - Mr Frosty
Chapter 69 - My Little Pony
Chapter 70 - Newton’s Cradle
Chapter 71 - Operation
Chapter 72 - Othello
Chapter 73 - Palitoy Cue Ball
Chapter 74 - Paul Daniels TV Magic Tricks
Chapter 75 - Perfection
Chapter 76 - Peter Powell Stunter Kite
Chapter 77 - Petite Super International Typewriter
Chapter 78 - Play Doh Monster Shop
Chapter 79 - Pocketeers
Chapter 80 - Racing Bike
Chapter 81 - Rainbow Brite
Chapter 82 - Raving Bonkers Fighting Robots
Chapter 83 - Remus Play-Kits
Chapter 84 - Ricochet Racers
Chapter 85 - ROM the Space Knight
Chapter 86 - Rubik’s Cube
Chapter 87 - Scalextric
Chapter 88 - Scrabble
Chapter 89 - Screwball Scramble
Chapter 90 - Sea-Monkeys
Chapter 91 - Shaker Maker
Chapter 92 - Shrinky Dinks
Chapter 93 - Silly Putty
Chapter 94 - Simon
Chapter 95 - Sindy
Chapter 96 - Six Million Dollar Man
Chapter 97 - Slime
Chapter 98 - Slinky
Chapter 99 - Smoking Monkey
Chapter 100 - Sonic Ear
Chapter 101 - Sorry!
Chapter 102 - Spacehopper
Chapter 103 - Speak & Spell
Chapter 104 - Spirograph
Chapter 105 - Squirmles
Chapter 106 - Star Bird
Chapter 107 - Star Wars
Chapter 108 - Stay Alive!
Chapter 109 - Sticklebricks
Chapter 110 - Stop Boris
Chapter 111 - Strawberry Shortcake
Chapter 112 - Stretch Armstrong
Chapter 113 - Stylophone
Chapter 114 - Subbuteo
Chapter 115 - Swingball
Chapter 116 - Tank Command
Chapter 117 - Tasco Telescope
Chapter 118 - TCR
Chapter 119 - Terrahawks Action Zeroid
Chapter 120 - Test Match
Chapter 121 - Tin Can Alley
Chapter 122 - Tiny Tears
Chapter 123 - Tip-It
Chapter 124 - Tomytronic 3D
Chapter 125 - Tonka Trucks
Chapter 126 - Top Trumps
Chapter 127 - Transformers
Chapter 128 - Trivial Pursuit
Chapter 129 - Twister
Chapter 130 - Up Periscope
Chapter 131 - Vertibird
Chapter 132 - View-Master
Chapter 133 - Walkie-Talkies
Chapter 134 - War of the Daleks
Chapter 135 - Weebles
Chapter 136 - Whimsies J
Chapter 137 - Yahtzee
Chapter 138 - Zoids
Chapter 139 - ZX Spectrum
Acknowledgements and thanks
How to use this book
About the Author
Praise
About the Publisher
Just what is TV Cream anyway?
In short, it’s a website. You want it shorter? Try www.tv.cream.org then. Flung online in 1997 as a memorial to great TV, it has since snowballed into an online repository of all things retro from the past four decades–mucho ephemera, therefore, from comics to crisps, adverts to annuals, films to fashion. Oh, and toys, naturally.
Updated woefully infrequently considering the sheer number of people who work on it, the website does at least play host to a couple of regular ‘e-zines’ and occasional definitive lists of key pop culture touchstones (top TV themes, popular presenters, media movers and shakers).
Its slightly sarcastic, often sweary approach has won many admirers, most of whom have contributed to this book.
Introduction
‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’
So wrote St Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians (Chapter 13, Verse 11). Wise words from a wise man. Or so you’d think, it being the New Testament and all It’s just that, when we came to put away our own childish things, we thought ‘Hang on, there’s a complete Matchbox Race And Chase in here, and a Big Trak with working transport. And there’s a first-edition My Little Pony. We could get quite a bit for that on eBay. Let’s not stick ’em up in the loft just yet, eh?’1
Back in 2004, TV Cream – the UK’s most popular and award-winning nostalgia website2 – celebrated the top one hundred toys of yesteryear, from the tiniest 50p rubber novelty to the many bulky Bakelite candidates that vied for hallowed ‘main present’ status at birthdays and Christmases. Or rather, we celebrated those toys that were lusted after but never actually received because – time and again – parents would mistake their offspring’s fervour for overexcitement and ignore the repeated pleas, the letters to Santa or the tantrums.
You see, we used to want for things too. Before Amazon wish-lists, online ordering and ‘add to basket’ buttons, we relied on the catalogues: big, chunky, glossy bi-annual volumes with a dozen or so pages at the back brimming with toys, games, crafts and novelties. Special wishing books just for kids: Littlewoods, Kays, Grattan, Freemans, Marshall Ward, Great Universal, Argos. They were our Internet. That was where we learned to ‘browse’, circling toy after toy with red felt-tip, carefully planning imaginary shopping trips but never really believing we’d go on them.
Never forget, there are entire generations for whom giant stores like Hamleys and Toys ‘R’ Us were unimaginable fantasies on a par with space cars, food pills and robot butlers. The rear sections of the catalogues were a 2D vision of some incredible future where thousands of toys might be gathered in one place in a tableau of pastel colours. It was a hypnotic, limbo-state where girls were subtly encouraged to take up crafts and think about a life of domesticity, while boys were pointed towards combat toys and things that could be kicked.
Then, as we grew up, we also started to explore some of the other pages (and yes, thanks, the adolescent jokes about the underwear section have already been done – in 1996, by Frank Skinner, so let’s leave it there, eh?) Girls tended to graduate to jewellery and – for the poor are always with us – occasionally the clothes. As far as boys were concerned, however, it was usually the digital watches that were first to attract attention, followed shortly by the posh ‘scientific’ calculators. Nowadays, it’s all mobile phones, ringtones and 3G video clips.3 But what is a mobile phone if not a portable toy for grown-ups?
Back in what we fondly call the Cream era,4 the summer holidays were longer and hotter, sweets were cheaper and bigger, and toys were there to be played with – abused, battered… broken, even. They weren’t bought as an investment, to be squirreled away in storage for collectors and completists, or auctioned off thirty years later, ‘mint on card’, ‘brand new in box’ or ‘factory sealed’. The toys you’ll find in this book are the ones that had us wide-eyed with anticipation, tearing down the stairs at five in the morning on Christmas Day; the toys we hoped to find among a mountain of wrapped-up boxes; the toys we’d rip recklessly from the packaging and put straight to work.
What we’ve tried to do is capture at least some of that experience5 but without being too earnest about it. They are only toys, after all. On the one hand, there’s the catalogues and, on the other, there’s cataloguing (in the most dry, joyless way imaginable). We hope the next couple of hundred pages will illuminate the difference. Along the way, there’ll be some mildly interesting trivia (did you know that the original Sooty was just a mass-produced Chad Valley bear puppet?), some weak observational jokes (such as: why is it that Monopoly is only made by one company?) and far too many references to Doctor Who. If that’s not your cup of tea, we’ll chuck in some tortuously extended metaphors, just for good measure.
Why? Because what we’re trying to do is reclaim our childhoods, like so much silt from the fens. Rising from the wetlands of that original online top one hundred, this book examines in detail the seven score or more toys we most yearned for as youngsters (plus a good couple of dozen others that get a mention in passing). These are the peerless playthings of a nation’s youth, the ones that encapsulate a time and place to which we can never return, no matter how many mini-desktop versions The Gadget Shop churns out. Neither a definitive history of the toy industry nor a stat-packed collector’s price guide, TV Cream Toys is the Christmas morning you should have had when you were young enough to appreciate it.
And that’s it really. All you need to know to use this book. So hold firm, St Paul, as it’s now time to unpack those childish things for one last circuit around the living room carpet.
1 None of this is true. In fact, in common with much of this book, it’s an old stand-up routine we pinched (in this case, with permission, from the very lovely Richard Herring). We’re hoping that the quote from The Bible is out of copyright. Mind you, what the hell does ‘spake’ mean? We can’t find that on our Speak & Spell.
2 The award was Yahoo! Find Of The Year 2003 (they found us after six years, bless ’em). What’s with all this ‘we’ business? Well, we’ll come to that in a bit. In the mean time, get used to these footnotes; the book is riddled with them. They’re the paper equivalent of a director’s commentary.
3 Gawd, how dated is that sentence going to look in two years’ time? Don’t get us wrong, we’re not trying to be curmudgeonly or wring our hands at ‘the youth of today’ (although, c’mon, they really don’t know they’re born, do they?). There are plenty of future classic toys and games for twenty-first-century children. They’ll just have to write their own nostalgia book, that’s all.
4 Your own Cream era is the period in your life that created the most vivid and enjoyable memories, the ones that conjure an indescribable yummy feeling and that don’t need to be validated by Kate Thornton gurning away on some godawful TV talking heads compilation Alternatively it’s that year – any time from the ’60s to the ’90s – when you hit ten years old. Whichever definition suits you best… Watch out for 1977, though. That’s the year Star Wars (and a flood of merchandise spin-offs) changed the toy business forever.
5 This book is a collection of shared experiences. No single person can claim them. You can’t claim them. Steve Berry can’t claim them. Even TV Cream itself can’t claim them. They belong to us all. Just look at the list of contributors for one thing! The toy and game floor of TV Cream Towers is inhabited by a sort of gestalt creature. So, because we’re all in this together, this book has been written in the first person plural (or, as our Queen would prefer, the royal ‘we’).
‘A La Cart Kitchen’
Training the housewives of tomorrow
This is how it begins–with a none-too-subtle reinforcement of gender stereotypes for the Daily Mail readers of the future. Many are the generations of little girls that were saddled with ‘minimum’ plastic ironing boards and carpet sweepers from an early age (all the better to brain your little brother with), and many the house that was cluttered with all the paraphernalia of pretend cleaning without any real cleaning actually getting done.
Reminding us once again that a woman’s place is in the home, this particular primary-coloured party-pooper was a complete kitchen set comprising oven, hob, sink and, erm, washing machine on a handy moveable cart–hence it’s ‘A La Cart’, geddit? Quite why the more predictable inclusion of a kitchen fridge was omitted is anyone’s guess.1 However, the toy was successful in ingraining itself on the nation’s collective memory primarily because of an extremely enduring TV advert. Briefly, this featured a small girl who got up unfeasibly early in order to potter around for a few hours, knocking together bits of plastic in a brisk but pointless way and eventually arriving in the parental bedroom to feed her dad cold baked beans and arctic roll from a plastic saucepan (Wake up Daddy, breakfast’s ready!’). He at least had the unshaven grace to pretend to look happy–we can only imagine how a genuine parent might’ve reacted.
Although this sorry display surely says something rather serious about the division of household labour in the late twentieth century, we’re not quite sure exactly what (although we’d love to know the whereabouts of ‘Mummy’). Besides, if that child is so keen on household chores, surely ‘Daddy’ can find a chimney to shove her up?
Manufacturer Bluebird continued to expand its range of authentic, though slightly strangely juxtaposed, culinary workstations on wheels with the Walford-inspired ‘East End Market Stall’,2 one side a fruit-and-veg trader’s stand, the other a burger bar. All the major food groups well-represented there, then. Conspicuous cuckoo in the nest this time was a bright-red telephone stuck in the middle. Even in those pre-mobile days, we can’t envisage a market trader installing a landline on their trolley. Presumably they used it to phone in bulk orders of beans and jam roll to the cash and carry.
Bluebird’s founder, Torquil Norman, retired in 1994 a multi-millionaire. He has since spent £30m turning London’s Camden Roundhouse Theatre into a Big Yellow Teapot.
See also Mr Frosty, Petite Super International Typewriter, Girl’s World
1 Check out the miniature branded groceries, though. Daz, Mr Kipling’s cakes, Ryvita. Yum
2 The inverted commas were actually part of the name. Not so with the Bluebird Café Royale, however, despite the flamboyant use of French. Brands represented in this deliberately unisex fast-food restaurant training kit included Heinz Beans, Saxa Salt and Bisto. The eggs and sausages supplied were made of plastic, much like in yer real greasy spoon.
Action Man
Military mannequin
There’s nothing wrong with boys playing with dolls!
But just in case there’s the slightest chance that doing so could turn ’em a bit…y’know, make sure the dolls are butch soldier types who look good in a buzzcut and military uniform.1 So went the thinking, we assume, when Palitoy imported America’s GI Joe and rebranded him Action Man for Brit kids in the–ahem–swinging ’60s.
See also Cyborgs, ROM the Space Knight, Six Million Dollar Man, Barbie
Initially available with only painted-on hair and combat fatigues, the range was soon augmented by a whole wardrobe of snazzy outfits (including frogman, pilot, sailor, traffic cop and Red Indian)2 and cybernetic extensions to Mr Man’s physiognomy (‘gripping’ hands, ‘real’ hair, ‘eagle’ eyes). And, much like Barbie, the big fella got his own fleet of personal transports–although not for him the pink limo treatment. Our favourite was actually the fairly unsophisticated, thumb-operated backpack-copter (which enabled us to re-enact the best bit of Thunderball), although it must’ve been cool to have owned its full-size army hospital helicopter cousin. There were, we recall, two tank varieties (a Scorpion and, erm, whatever the bigger one was called), a jeep or two, plus inflatable and outboard motor-powered dinghies.
Frankly, there wasn’t anywhere our hero couldn’t go, except perhaps somewhere that required him to stand on an uneven surface (a deep-pile carpet, anywhere on grass). Basic instability problems could be avoided with the application of a child’s fertile imagination (which would require that members of the Grenadier Guards always adopt an insouciant, leaning-against-a-wall attitude to their sentry duties, or that the 21st Lancers conduct their parades lying down). In the 70s, more poseable joints were added to the basic model, including one around the neck that enabled Action to adopt a ‘sniper’ pose with one or more rifles from his impressive armoury.
Endless battles could be enacted with this almost limitless selection of plastic weaponry in a war of attrition the ’80s superpowers would’ve boggled at (particularly given the unusual prospect of witnessing a fight between Taking Commando Action Man and Captain Zargon). Rumour has it that classic Dr Who adventure The War Games was written entirely while Patrick Troughton’s young sons were pitching German paratroopers into combat with the Queen’s Horse Guards.
The biggest hostilities Action Man encountered were, of course, brought about by his owners. Sad to say, Action Man abuse was rife in the Cream era. Bangers, matches, caps, magnifying glasses, fireworks–all were employed in creating ‘realistic’ battle scars to show off to friends or maiming him beyond recognition.
So, although we know that nearly everybody owned an Action Man, the important thing is that everyone we knew wanted more.3 By virtue of the fact that the combined forces of our street could never amass a platoon of even Dad’s Army strength, Action Man remains on our wish list.
1 Yes, there were wars, and violence, and bloodshed, and tea, and medals. But at least we were learning something. Military history, for one. The Paras, US Marines, SS Stormtroopers, or (dialing down the testosterone) the RNLI. Action Man had proper guns that actually looked like they might hurt people. Nowadays, he’s either a neutered Extreme iPod Eco-Warrior or wishy-washy Skateboard Surf Ninja.
2 Altogether now: ‘It’s fun to stay at the YMCA.’ Action Man never ran out of outfits as long as your granny had enough green wool
3 Palitoy’s token-collecting system meant you had to send off for exclusive extras (on offer in the 70s were a Canadian Mountie outfit or a pit-bull). Then there were the additional figures: Tom Stone, the first–gasp!–black Action Man; the Intruder, a muscle-bound, dwarf Liam Gallagher-alike enemy with white eyes and grabbing arms; and Atomic Man, with bionic limbs, plastic clicky pacemaker and a light where his left eye should’ve been.