CRIME SPREE

To round off my look at TV related diecasts, here are the Corgi and Husky entrants to the fold from the 1966 Corgi Toys catalogue, an unusual landscape format with long pages.

The landscape format coming into its own with great splash pages for the new models, such as the TV Batmobile. This lovely robust model has lots of action features, with the saw blade to chop through chainlinks, firing bat-missiles (to be replaced by bat-matchstalks mere hours after I opened mine and promptly lost the originals) and the pop out flame from the engine exhaust. The early models came with a small 1" fabric sticker, which I proudly plastered onto the front forks of my Raleigh bike (to be joined soon after by 007).

Speaking of which, the wonderful gold Aston Martin DB5 was another winner, with so many action features packed into a small toy, it was ahead of its time. It would be expanded upon some years later, by a silver version with tyre shredders added, but this was the one for me. Heavy and compact, with the pleasure of gleefully ejecting the SPECTRE agent from the car on a hard bend. The little blue figures were always a sore point for me, as after losing all the bat missiles inside the dog or in the fire, my dad decided that I was not fit to hold the licence to thrill and surrepticiously kidnapped all the spare figures, until only one remained. As soon as he was shot off into the farthest corner of the living room, he too was reclaimed and stored away in the secret cupboard. Oddly enough, the toy was lost to the mists of time (given to my young nephew to play with while I was at college), but some time after my dad passed away and I was going through his books and stuff, I came upon a small tin, tucked away amongst the pens and pencils and inside were the three small blue figures from the car. I still have them today.

 The next vehicles completely passed me by, probably as I was more interested in the Dinky Gerry Anderson toys by this point. As much as I enjoyed the Avengers, having a soft spot for Tara King - even at an early age - I was never taken with the cars. Similarly, I never watched The Man from UNCLE, finding it a bit dry for my tastes, so the Avengers cars and the Thrushbuster never found their way to me.

On a smaller scale, Mettoy were not one to miss out on the impulse buying market and their smaller, pocket money range of Husky toys were also graced with a similar line up. This time in a more authentic silver, the DB5 came with an ejector seat and a tiny toffee coloured figure that could be ejected at the touch of a button. Having seen what was coming with the Corgi model and the high probability of an agent going missing in action, my dad took no chances and after granting me a day of blissfully popping the hapless passenger out onto the rug, he took decisive action and glued him firmly into place while I was in bed. He's still there now, the Aston Martin having survived the vagaries of time by being relegated to the rank of 'just another car', with the fun part disabled.

Jumping forward two years, Husky ramp up the action by adding small versions of the Monkeemobile and the cool Batboat and amazingly produced my all time favourite Husky model, the Man From Uncle Pirahna. Even without being a neat futuristic shape, it fired missiles which with glorious foresight I managed to squirrel away so that I had the luxury of losing them all in my own good time, while playing with it. The Pirahna has luckily survived over the years and is currently languishing in the attic.

The little Batmobile was a nice model, even down to the tiny moving exhaust, but the plastic Batmobile nailed it, with the pin sharp moulding and raked fins. Just a shame it would never float upright!