Hard to believe but yes, its Christmas in a month! Where did the year go? I dunno but I'm slowly getting my head round the festive season being upon us once more. It officially started to day as I got my first Christmas card [thanks Ed the Iceman!], so I can safely talk about the run up to the Big Day.
Some of the best toys I ever got at Crimbo were die-cast cars and the plastic tracks to race them on. It didn't really matter what make they were as long as they were fast. They all competed against each other - Matchbox Superfast and Whizzwheels, Corgi Rockets and of course, Mattel's redline Hot Wheels. I had a good smattering of them all back in the Sixties.
Although I was very democratic in who got to race, there were firsts amongst equals, my top gear as pictured:
There is something quintessentially Nineteen Sixties about these die-cast cars for me and a bevvy of them lying around are guaranteed to take me back to childhood. Of course, die-cast speed kings needed tracks and accessories. Never have Christmas dining room chairs been so completely transformed as when die-caster Kids clamped all manner of red and orange tracks onto them, which then flowed out across the carpet, round the dog and over the cat! My own fave track accessories were the Corgi Rockets circuit Assembly, with its unique plastic cone-shaped stands and the iconic Skypark tower:
What are your Christmas die-cast memories readers?
I got Anderson die casts at Christmas, I still have the Shado mobile and Ed Straker's car that I received, they're in good nick too.
ReplyDeleteMum and dad used to get me Dinkys or Corgis at Christmas as they were a rather more expensive than the Matchbox cars I got from the newsagents every few weeks with my pocket money. I can still remember getting the Dinky Ed Straker's car, the Hot Wheels carry case shaped like a car wheel and the Hot Wheels battery powered garage that you attached the track to. The two spinning wheels inside the garage pushed the cars through at greater speed. Fun times!
ReplyDeleteI got the Corgi Rockets Grand Canyon set and Wall of Death. Still got Canyon set with the cable car, brilliant.
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