SAMURAIS THROUGH THE POST

 

Salvaged from Christmases Past, these are my two cast Samurai models hand painted in the early Seventies by yours truly.

Not much stuff from my early childhood has survived but some from when I was around 12 years old has.

In particular my martial arts stuff has. I put this down to two things: I collected so much martial arts material, mostly papers and small items, which I'd put in a large document case that's traveled with me throughout my life.

These short metal warriors are two of my most important surviving martial arts toys.

There's a naginata or halberd missing from the right one made by Rubin I think and the Ebira or arrow quiver has broken off the left fellow. 

I remember so clearly getting the figure on the left, a Rose kit, one Christmas in the early 1970's. 

It came in several parts in a small plastic bag and had a distinct and wonderful metallic smell once opened. 

Amazingly I have even managed to hold onto the colour scheme I worked out for this model, drawn on a school timetable! 

This has survived in an old handkerchief box I have pictured below, what I called the 'Budo Box'!

Also in the box is a postal order counterfoil for Miniature Figurines, which I kept after sending off payment for another Samurai model. A postcard from the company, ARGYLE, has survived too. 

It all relates to either the metal Rubin figure to the left in the picture above or maybe the small metal miniatures, pictured below, which have survived in a wooden Indian box my Mum gave me.

This box became the centerpiece of my Cha-No-Yu (tea ceremony) or Iai-do (Japanese Sword) paraphernalia back then when I was 13 and I wanted to be a Zen or Shaolin Monk! Happy days!

The metal figure to the left below is an Orc! I have some more Samurai model stuff [and tons of books] and will dig it out. 

Have you got any samurai models?

THERE'S A TOY CELLAR IN US ALL!

I had another blast from the past at my Daughter's house over the weekend. She returned a plastic box I hadn't seen in years. 

This green box was one of many I had on shelves in my big old sunlit  'toy cellar' back in the 90's, when I used to trade stuff from there and do mail order as well. It was called Moon Zero Toys and I actually had regulars!

Having a full-time job as well, buying and selling old second hand toys was my hobby back then - it still is! - and these plastic boxes were how I divided up my stock into manageable parts. The one in the picture - TV Action - would have held all manner of oddments from the TV shows listed - James Bond, The Saint, the A Team, Bionic Man and Zorro - ranging from key rings, novels, action figures, jigsaws right up to small boxed toys.

Larger boxed toys and board games were stacked as they came, on a separate shelf and the biggest thrill was to see several of the same boxed item stacked up. I remember having three second hand and excellent boxed Batman Animated Batmobiles on top of each other and it used to make me so chuffed. Like a proper toy shop! ha ha

There were some inspirational toy sellers in the 90's, who took the hobby - for them a business - to a whole new level and it was always a buzz reading their mail order catalogues and sales lists on Model Mart magazine. 

Notable among the many was the late great Jim Star Wars Stevenson and the inspirational Andy Foley and his TV Toy Zone, the catalogues of which are still a treasure of mine as they were really the catalyst, along with Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, to start looking for old toys and collect the toys I owned as a kid.

My 'cellar' closed in 2003 when we moved and the new house didn't have one. Also with the advent of Ebay in the UK in 2000 my mail order side had already stopped. It was the end of an era and I was sad to leave that cellar behind. It had been a lot of fun.

I don't have any photographs of the old cellar so when I saw this box again this weekend it brought back happy memories of a time before Ebay changed our lives forever. Thanks for listening to an old man reminiscing!

Did you have an old store room, cellar or attic full of your stuff? Did you buy and sell or swap old toys? Do you still readers?

PYRO MONSTERS BY MAIL ORDER

Woodsy,

Inspired by your summer post about mail-order companies, I dug out one of my flyers for America's Hobby Center, a mail-order business based in New York City that primarily sold model railroad equipment. 

However, they also sold other stuff, like unusual model kits, and I attach a scan of a page of these kits, plus a close-up of those glorious Pyro "Prehistoric Monsters" models. Enjoy!

Rob C
USA

MY MILLENNIUM MAIL ORDER SERVICE

Here's a blast from my past, an old mail order sales list of mine from the year 2000. I traded as Moonzero in those days.

This blog very nearly got called Moonzero Base!

This is one of many lists I sent out in the post. It was hugely enjoyable to trade like this back then. Ebay arrived shortly after and my mail order service ended.

I'll try to find the rest of my old lists and blog 'em. Its a bit of fun from twenty years ago. What would you have bought? Anything?

Did you sell by mail or send your wants lists out?

My toy cellar

I used to sell old toys from my cellar in the Nineties.

Sounds a bit weird but it was like a toy shop really.

Our old cellar opened out onto the garden at the back and was underground at the front on account of the house being built on the edge of a quarry. In fact it was one of a row of quarryworkers houses.

The garden door made the cellar and it was the 'shop entrance' really.

Hard to believe now but I did have some regular customers and they came from far and wide.

Once inside they were greeted by two aisles of old toys stacked on shelves. Some were in labelled plastic bins like loose action figures and die-cast cars. There were bins for other loose stuff from specific lines like Battlestar Galactica, James Bond Junior and Bucky O'Hare I seem to recall.

The best shelves had the boxed items and since it was the Nineties this meant lots of items from films from the past ten years, which often turned up at boot sales complete and still boxed for some reason.

There were the Ghostbusters firehouse, Ecto 1, Backpack, VW beetle, dragster and an electronic board game. These were joined by boxed Action Man telephones, Alien Hovertread, Captain America Coupe and tons more.

I particularly liked having duplicate boxed items on the shelves. It somehow made it even toy shoppier! I think the number one for this had to be a stack of Batman Animated Series batmobiles. They looked great in their boxes on top of each other.

These were joined by my favourite stock - any collactables from the 1989 Michael Keaton Batman movie, which in many ways kicked off my own collecting bug. For sale were loose figures, loose vehicles, McDonald's premiums, posters, jigsaws and cards, together with boxed items like a really cool batman desk tidy I found in a discount beauty store in Dewsbury!

Despite having a few regular shoppers my main outlet for the cellar inventory was mail order, which I adored having had so much fun as a kid getting stuff through the post myself.

Mail order in the nineties was all pre-internet and as such pre-eBay. It was done via snail mail, magazine ads and newspaper classifieds. My first lists were hand written and copied either using carbon paper or a photocopier. Those first lists had line drawings on them for extragarnish! I then advanced to typing lists of items and eventually printed folded booklets I could send out.

I sent all this lot to a growing group of mail customers and folks who responded to ads with their wants lists. It was all done using envelopes and second class stamps.

In 2003 we moved house to a place without a cellar. The cellar toy shop was no more and with the advent of EBay in 2000in the UK so were my mail order lists.

Still I'm glad I got chance to do all that and it was a huge amount of fun.

Did you send out mail order lists, wants lists or maybe even have a 'toy' shop at home readers?

WHAT POSTAL ORDERS WERE MADE FOR: ELLISDONS MAIL ORDER

Did you used to get things by mail order as a kid? Sending off postal orders for stuff from the back of comics or catalogues?

I loved to do it. In some way it kept the thrill of Christmas alive throughout the year.  My favourite source of postal goodness was Ellisdons, the jokes and novelties kings. I must have got something off 'em every month for a couple of years.

None of my bits and bobs survived the ravages of adolescence but I did manage to re-acquire the catalogue I had a few years back. Reading it again was such a joy and I so wanted to send off for something again like some fake flies or King Tut!

Did you buy stuff mail order?