WONDERS OF THE ATOMIC AGE

The sixties was a wonderful time technologically, huge advances occurred across the board in engineering, manufacturing and invention. Toys reflected these changes and the christmas shops were full of the newest planes, cars and rockets every year. Unfortunately, it was also a time when warfare and the means to wipe each other out advanced too, and along with these, came paranoia. Oddly, toys and films picked up on these trends too and all kinds of rocket bases, missile firing tanks and planes appeared.

I love this period as it marked a direct transition to plastic from the earlier tin and metal toys and allowed toymakers to experiment with the new materials. A famous aircraft of the day was the Avro Vulcan, one of the V fleet of bombers, including the Valiant and Victor, which provided Britain with the means to deliver a nuclear payload by air. This wonderful plane has been remembered in a number of toys and kits, but just recently this curious example appeared. With a lot of help from a very generous Scoop, it made its way into my collection, sadly missing a small bomb which was lost in the post as the careless seller delivered it in wholly inappropriate packaging. There's no makers marks at all, it was missing a nose wheel and two air force roundel decals. It has a cool spring loaded bomb bay and is made of a hard plastic.

THE BOMBER

Does anyone recognise it ? I suspect it could be early Tudor Rose, as I have seen  a Canberra of similar construction, but that was very clearly trademarked.

THE BOMB

Another of my sixties favourites is the Tri-ang Battlespace line of trains. I had already found a number of low loader wagons, but recently I was delighted to find the large red bomb payload from the series. The bomb is about 7" long, made of soft flexible plastic and has a alloy warhead into which caps can be placed. The bomb could then be used as a throwing toy, the caps going off as the warhead struck the ground.

THE SECRET WEAPON

James Bond films and cold war villains leapt to the fore in the sixties too and secret war mongering organisations and evil geniuses were invented. Airfix railways came up with a novel concept for their Dr X playset in the seventies. This rare set included a locomotive pulling a low loader with a container wagon on the back. Inside the container was a rocket, which by means of a switch could be transferred to a truck and taken to Dr X secret hideaway where it was launched upon an unsuspecting world.

So far, ive managed to find the low loader and the truck, but Dr X has hidden the rocket somewhere very secure...