Like most houses my Parent's place in Preston was great for playing in.
Bits of the home just cried out for strapping a toy onto or wheeling your cars round.
I suppose there were some official requirements for using the home. Some toys needed clamping to something in order for them to work properly.
Airfix Flight Deck was a good one, where the nylon string could be attached to a door handle so the jet could land on the deck of the ship. A superb thing and a really clever design. I seem to recall it had a breaking hook too. The only problem came when your Mum opened the door and Squadron Leader Woodsy fell to earth!
Plastic die-cast car track needed clamping into something too. You know the stuff: usually bright orange or red with small vertical kerbs and a complete sod to roll up and store. They had to be clamped onto a chair or a table to create height for the starting point. Attaching them to your Dad's crossed trouser leg when he was asleep in the chair always added that surprise element too.
From this altitude the cars of your choice - Whizzwheels, Corgi Rockets, Superfast or my own favourites, Hot Wheels - could be let loose down the near vertical slopes of orange mayhem. Loop the loops could be added for extra thrills and lines of Airfix soldiers would be sacrificed in the quest for speed.
A cruder version of the track was the do-it-yourself road of books. For some reason a long line of them, preferably hardbacks, made a fantastic motorway for cars. The longer the road the better it was and all sorts of interest could be added to the ride: hills, tunnels, bends and elevation. Even better was testing the climbability of bigger toys.
There was something completely satisfying about watching a Scramble Bug or a Marx Hill Climbing Truck trundle along a long bumpy book road! Yes, its what the Encyclopedia Brittanica was made for!
Going down stuff was a universal principle when it came to toys, especially Action Man. Palitoy's fighting hero was often used and abused beyond the call of duty in the name of play. He had the cheek scars to prove it and I don't mean the one on his face!
My favourite dare for him was the death slide aka Mum's washing line! On a non-wash day I would commandeer the plastic cable and remove all the pegs. I would untie one end and re-attach to a tree branch dramatically increasing the height. Before knotting I would slip over Action Man hanging from a string. Eh voila! I could while away the entire morning sending old Action to his untimely doom on the enemy's red hot pokers at the other end of the garden!
What did you do with your toys readers?
I had these little friction powered cars called Darda Buggies.Pull them back and release...and off they went.We had this huge old cast iron bathtub(the kind with monstrous looking clawed feet).The walls were steep and well rounded at the bottom,so the cars would race round and round for at least 10 seconds before launching across the bathroom.Bonus points if you landed your car in the sink or out the doorway.Bad luck if you cracked the mirror or forget to close the toilet lid!
ReplyDeleteThose Darda buggies sound ace Brian. Must admit I've never heard of them. The bathtub idea is sound for pull back n go toys. I bet hot wheels or super fast would do a few laps as well! I always wanted one of those car booster units advertised for hot wheels but never got one. Not sure how they worked, could have been battery powered like a power pack. I did have a corgi rockets booster, which I think was a wound mechanism that sent the cars flying. They'd have zoomed round your bath too!
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