PLASTIC ADVENTURE: FROM BUTLINS TO BUESUM BY TOY BOAT

When I was a wee nipper back in the Sixties my folks took the family to Butlins every summer. Butlins had holiday camps dotted around the UK. We went to Minehead and Pwllheli. One of my great passions back then were toy plastic boats and Butlins was a great place to get Mum and ex-sailor Dad to buy them for me and because of the paddling pools everywhere, a great place to sail them!

 

Here I am at Butlins around 1964 with, from left to right, my late Mum, my brother Steve, Uncle Gordon, their son Stuart, Auntie Terry and me. My Dad's absent as he will have taken this particular Kodak moment! As you can see I am proudly displaying my latest vessel with another one near my feet. Sadly I don't remember much from my childhood very clearly so I rely on photographs to jog what memories I do have. But just what are Steve and Stuart doing to thier thumbs? Is it a signal?

 

 

I don't remember the two toy plastic boats but the one in my hand appears to be black-hulled ferry maybe, with red decks and a yellow chimney, which I assume all snapped together. The blue one on the grass seems to be a much simpler blow moulded blue speedboat with possibly a red rudder.

 

Both boats were on the ends of strings, which may have been part of the toys. It would make sense since they were sold at Butlins, which was awash with pools and lakes. Neither of these beauties have survived and I have no idea of the manufacturers, probably Tudor Rose or Woolworths. They will have been made in their thousands, mass produced for holidaying kids like me. I have had half an eye out for similar toy boats ever since.

 

So it was with utter astonishment that I saw what I thought was something like one of them in a shop window last week whilst holidaying in Buesum last week on the North German coast. The shop turned out to be an old tobacconists who had a few toys thrown in to keep the Kinder happy. I enquired about the toy boat in the window.

 

It was nestled half behind a rack of pipes and some tins of tobacco. The old shopkeeper hauled it out and said it was Zwei Euro, that's two Euro's, about £1.70 or two dollars and sixty cents. Kerching! I asked if he had any more and groping behind a shelf he pulled out a second but wholly different plastic boat priced the same! Kerching again. Bagged up and pleased as punch I took my booty off to the nearest bench to study them. This is what I bought both in and out of the bags:

 

 

The brightly coloured boat has no markings on it at all but the black-hulled boat has this nice header card - it was made in England by one Springwell [Mouldings] Ltd of Tonbridge, Kent. It's not dated or indeed bar coded.

 

 

But its biggest secret only revealed itself when I inspected the stern:

 

 

 

It says TUDOR ROSE LONDON! It's a Tudor Rose! This old boat has been re-bagged and sold to a modern audience! I was and am chuffed to bits and the icing on the cake is that it looks a bit like my old plastic Butlins boat too! Result! It deserves a little Steve Carell dance of joy!