Beleaguered Posties

Just seen the MoonBase postcode on this list of post offices being delayed by local issues. This could explain delays to our post and parcels! Is your postcode here too?

JUST THE JOB

 Some jobs just never made it to the toy factory.

I had a Post Office and a bus conductor and a supermarket as a kid.

I think I might have been an air traffic controller too.

But I never saw a window cleaner toy set or a chimney sweep toy set! For obvious reasons, but they would have been fun!

Even an Action Man outfit for jobs like that would have done. Imagine, an Action Man butcher or a carpet fitter! Why just firemen and soldiers?

What job toy sets would you have liked to see readers?

A PHOTOCOPIER FOR THE SMALL OFFICE

 I was really taken with this unusual rack toy so I saved the pic.

Its a Mini Office Machine or to you and me a photocopier!

With an on-off switch I guess it actually worked! Well maybe a small chit of paper went through at least!

I wonder if there were small toy computers like this to go with it?

ARTO'S ASTRONAUTICS STAMPING SET

Sometimes, and not too often, there's more to a simple children's toy than meets the eye at first sight.

That is why I was so delighted with this Astronautics Stamping Set, made by an Italian company Multi Print of Milan.

The box top features six different space vehicles in a planetary landscape, seen through a circular window of another spacecraft steered by two astronauts. The illustration is signed by Gil. Box measures 22 x 14 cm.

Inside, there's a red plastic insert with six different rubber stamps, an illustrated ink pad, and three colour pencils.

The instructions are found printed on the inside of the box top, with alluring colour illustrations of the stamp motifs.

The motifs are also repeated underneath the stamps themselves, with yet another set of illustrations.

The Astronautics set came also with a blank notebook with a glossy new take of the cover illustration.

Finally, the box side repeats once more those six stamp motifs.

And all this could have been just a colourful box with six cheap stamps inside. Well done, Multi Print!

Arto

Finland

Did You Play Post Office?

Did you play Post Office as a kid?

I loved playing it and lets face it, stationary was made for kids to mess around with.

It was easy to whip up a post office counter. There was always a stack of envelopes and paper in the house. I liked to use those thin blue Air Mail envelopes and pads of paper by Basildon Bond [Jame's brother!].

Another essential tool was a stamp of some kind as any decent sub-postmaster loves to stamp every bit of paper in sight.

Cash could also change hands over the counter and I found Monopoly money ideal for this as well as a bag of plastic shillings.

The counter was usually a dining chair with me stood behind and my customers - mates, family, action man - queuing in front.

Obviously toy companies cottoned onto the appeal of the play post office and some toy sets were released during my childhood.

I had one particular set, pictured below from Ebay, and I must say seeing it again it is a thing of beauty. Everything was there including loads of different bits of paper. Heaven! I so recall that red anti-drip ink well made of red plastic! The make may have been Berwick or Merit. Not sure.

Years later  in the late Eighties when my own daughter played Post Office she roped in an assistant, her pet guinea pig Jonny!

Jonny Pig, bless him, would always give a little snip to any paper you help near his mouth! Like a hairy hole punch!

Did you play Post Office?