BIRTHDAY READER SPECIAL: THE ONES THAT DIDN'T GET AWAY BY KEVIN D

The Ones That Didn't Get Away

I can't remember a time when my life wasn't influenced by TVSF, most notably the worlds of Gerry Anderson and the cut-price universe of the BBC.

One of my earliest memories is of making a cardboard Thunderbird1! So, it is no surprise that my memories of a happy childhood are dominated by the toys of the Space Age. Countless hours were spent in imaginary worlds brought to life by Anderson Dinky toys and the sublime Spacex range.

Time, entropy and, well, life slowly melted away that era and the toys vanished too. The Space Race ended and the Digital Age eventually rolled up, so, suddenly the chance to regain those toys became real. Courtesy of the eBay time machine, I was able to retrieve pretty much all that I wanted from the Vortex. 

I have all the Anderson Dinkys, a lot of the JR21 vehicles and a full set of Spacex I. I am delighted by these but I am by no means an expert collector, so, what I'd like to feature are the ones that didn't get away, the few toys that, by some strange accident of fate never left me, the very small number that I was bought as a child and still possess to this day.

First up, the only Anderson toys that are my originals. The Dinky Shado Mobile and Ed Straker's car. I was bought these two and the Interceptor by my Mum and Dad as Christmas presents the year they came out (1970?), I played with them a lot, both inside the house and on the street, yet I mustn't have been rough as the paint survived! I wrecked the Interceptor by trying to paint it the right colour! 

Not happy with my work, said Interceptor never made it back to base. Eventually, of course, I stopped playing with them. Rather than throw them away, my Mum put them all in a box and put them in a cupboard to forget about them. There they languished for many years. Protected from the Time Winds they might've been, but I wasn't. 

I was now living in an attic in Southport (honestly!), plying the trade of teaching Physics (I couldn't get a proper job!). I was about to get married and it seemed to me that money wouldn't be a bad thing to have, so after a trip to see my folks in Chester, I retrieved all my old Dinky and Matchbox toys with a view to selling them. 

I contacted a dealer, arranged for him to come round and spread my toys on the dining table. The time had come to get rid and move on! He arrived, looked at the collection and said something to me that I am forever deeply grateful for. He said, 'pick out two that mean the most to you', I had no hesitation and moved the UFO ones to one side.

'I'm not paying for your sentimentality' he said, and wouldn't make an offer on those two but did give me a reasonable deal on all the rest! I can't even recall the chap's name now, but how brilliant that he did that! I came so close to losing those two but I've still got them and would never part with them now!

Whilst I might have 'grown up' to the point of no longer playing with toys, I hadn't forsaken my love of TVSF. In my latter years at secondary school and my early years at university, my obsession was 'Blakes 7'. I absolutely adored the show and spent ages in my school's machine shop trying to fabricate a teleport bracelet out of acrylic plastic! 

I lost count of how many times the room resounded to the sound of the chuck key flying out of the lathe and hitting the wall because I'd forgotten to take it out again! Toys weren't an issue, there was only one that I was aware of (at the time, I learned a lot more later!) and that was the Corgi Juniors Liberator! 

I got mine as soon as I saw one and spent a whole day scouring the shops (yes, there were real shops back then!) looking for the big one as I'd never seen a Corgi Junior that didn't have a Senior somewhere! Sadly there never was such a beast (it would've been great!). I was already too old to play with it, so it was only ever an ornament and was never going to be hard to find space for. 

When I left home it didn't, spending quite a few years in my Mum's display cabinet with her ornamental glassware and pottery figures. It stood on the tips of its Neutron Blasters, trying not to look embarassed next to a Spode tortoise. 

At some point I retrieved it and added it to what was then a sizeable Blakes 7 collection, including many costumes from the actual show itself. The Spode tortoise didn't fare so well, it eventually lost a leg and had to be humanely disposed of.

The other great survivor is a toy I that I must've got as one of many Christmas presents in the late 60's but I don't remember when. TVSF was always my number one thing, but I did get other toys, military, yesteryear and so on, my Mum would just choose ones that she thought I'd like and she was a pretty good judge. 

So it was that I became the proud owner of a TN Toys DC9 airliner. I had several planes, helicopters and cars that were part plastic, part tinplate and battery powered but this one was always the best, it did so much. It would taxi, stop, open its door and deploy a stairway, then that would retract and the engines would rev up and off it would go, heading towards V1 and liftoff. 

Even up to a couple of years ago, it still worked perfectly well, but alas, it seems to have just stopped now, I believe chemicals in the motor system eventually break down. It's survival was, I think down to how good it was, my Mum's cupboard came to its rescue again, but it would seem that once out of that stasis chamber, the Laws of Thermodynamics have taken hold once more. (Things have an inherent tendency to fall apart).

These almost random artefacts serve as a special link to a special past. I would never part with them now and they'll always be just that little bit more important than the rest of the toys in my collection.

Kevin D.