I've been noticing these recently and jogging my memory.
Although my interest in Star Wars is pretty much zero I did like this Lego model my son made.
I like the detail, especially the engines. It's apparently one of the smaller Lego display ships (Although it still cost around seventy quid)
I spotted this unboxed Mattel Battlestar Galactica Cylon Raider the other day at a local flea market. As is common with these toys, it’s missing it’s canopy, Cylon pilot, and a front wheel. But for under a tenner, I wasn’t going to pass it up.
It still has it’s missiles, which do fire of a fashion, although they simply flick out, remaining firmly attached to the launcher.
Missile firing toys were always popular with us kids during the sixties, and it was assumed we were aware of the dangers. I like to think that, even as children most of us had a modicum of common sense. But, it’s obvious accidents are bound to happen, and in the case of Mattel’s Cylon Raider, it’s fairly well known to BSG toy collectors that the toy resulted in tragedy a few days after Christmas, 1978.
4 year-old Robert Jeffery Warren died from chocking on a missile from the Cylon Raider after firing it down his throat. The missile was eventually removed, but sadly however, Jeffery’s brain had been starved of oxygen and the poor child died six days later.
Mattel initiated a recall of the missiles shortly after the tragedy, offering a free Hot Wheels car to anyone who returned them!
A caution sticker on the boxes followed, before all the missile firing toys were modified meaning the missiles remained attached to the launchers.
This incident, and others like it would obviously cause a vast number of safety changes in many of the toy ranges that followed.
