One of my favourite Merit agent sets, the Avengers Shooting Game, a surprise find here in Finland a couple of summers back. Missing only the correct darts.
If you know anyone with spares, please let me know!
Arto
Helsinki Base
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Woodsy adds: you can see the missing rubber sucker darts in this set I saw on Vectis. There should be two. I have seen red shafts as well.
What an awesome vintage toy, agent Arto. I really enjoyed these simple shooting games as a lad. I guess a lot of us did. They ranged from the cheap and cheerful Hong Kong rack shelve guns, to the more desirable TV tie-in toys, like this cool example. Spring loaded sucker-cap darts with exciting and familiar TV targets were always popular with kids. Boxed examples like this are a challenge for collectors to find. I haven't seen this set before. It's new to me and great to see here! I think Merit also produced various Dan Dare guns and toy walkie talkies :)
ReplyDeleteIt is a lovely set isnt it Tone, a real slice of Sixties nostalgia in Arto's amazing collection. I didn't have one as a kid either but I did have lots of other spy toys and it was a great craze, the spy craze. I really enjoyed it ,,,, before I went under cover and disguised myself as an adult!
DeleteIts amazing what turns up near Helsinki Base, i really am quite envious! I've never seen any Avengers toys apart from the Corgi cars, so this is really unusual to see. They painted artwork is glorious, like the LP Space Explorer of Ed's, its typical of the wonderful artwork that appeared on sixties toy packaging.
ReplyDeleteOn of my favourite Merit toys was the air powered Lunar Rocket, which again had beautiful painted artwork on the box.
I agree. Finland is toy heaven! ha ha. I had that Merit rocket too Bill, the water powered one. A gorgeous red and translucent purple cigar shaped missile if I recall. Sort of dumpy. Yes, I remember beautiful box art with a close-up of the rocket flying towards the viewer. Merit were a superb toy firm and like Spears were a big part of the Sixties.
DeleteWhere I worked they still had two of those rockets, boxed!
ReplyDeleteThanks guys for your kind comments. I must admit that there is a story of pure chance into how this Avengers set - literally - came to me.
ReplyDeleteA few summers back, I attended a big summer outdoors fair as a seller with an all-around sortiment of surplus collectibles. A rare occasion, as I prefer to stay on the buying side of things (just love the thrill of it).
At the end of a very busy day tied to my stall the whole day, a very good collector friend of mine who was already wrapping things up came by with the set, asking if I'd be interested as it was left unsold at a very, very reasonable price. And there were 8.000 visitors that day!