With Spring sunlight pouring onto our lives once more like a nurse my mind is slowly returning to going outdoors for longer than five minutes.
As a kid in the Sixties some toys came with me outside but as with all memories they are hard to get hold of completely.
I can remember an outdoor explorer set I loved. It had a canteen for water, a compass, a belt, a torch and maybe more. I think it was this Thomas Salter set.
I've forgotten the binoculars that were in the set. Plastic ones that really focused. I can feel its strap around my shoulder even now.
I doubt very much there was a pocket knife in this set but I did have some. One that I recall had a curved blade edge, a sort of shiny brown grip and a chrome bulbous top to it.
It came in a sheath and I think it was called a camping knife or sheath knife, a lot like the one in the picture. Very much out of favour nowadays, here in the UK Sixties Kids played out a lot and I suppose our society wasn't as violent then so we carried things like this when we went camping.
It attached to my belt which was elasticated and the buckle was a curious but clever snake design, where a single snake hooked each side like the one shown or two snakes inserted into each other. These may have been figures of eight rather than snakes.
Plastic rifles were part of my outdoors too. Johnny Seven of course, ping pong ball bazookas, water pistols and proper toy rifles. I know I had a 1930's style Gangster tommy gun with a loud ack-ack sound chamber.
I'm also pretty sure I had a long army rifle which fired plastic bullets like Johnny Seven. It had a cocking L -shaped handle made of metal with a black plastic cylinder on it for a handle. The whole thing was green and looked like something from World War Two but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called. Can you?
Did you have any outdoor toys?
[pics: Ebay and Amazon]
The rifle sounds a bit like the Airfix FN rifle (but it was black). It had a removeable magazine that you loaded bullets into and a bayonette that you could fix to the muzzle. I had one and loved it.
ReplyDeleteCould have been black Kev now you mention it.
DeleteI thought of the Airfix FN rifle from your description, but as Kevin said, it was black. Airfix also made a Tommy Gun which fired plastic bullets, which was also black. Lovely spring/summer article, Woodsy. A nice piece of time travel to start the day with :)
ReplyDeleteCheers Kev, I do think it was the black Airfix FN Rifle like you and Kev say. I loved that metal bar for cocking the toy gun!
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