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Our childhood toys

When I was a child there were several 'stable' collectable series, and idea that possible started with Dinky toys. What I mean by that is that over a period of many years it was possible to buy other toys in the same range and from many shops. That is something that doesn't seem to happen now, there might be a quick fad but that's it. We had Dinky, Corgi, Matchbox and Spot-on cars, each range with a catalogue that we could spend hours engaged in wishful spending!
Minic ships was a strange series, die-cast waterline models with plastic masts and funnels. I say strange because there were models of 'the Queens', obviously different, but also 'Ton'-class minesweepers and 'Daring'-class destroyers which were absolutely identical apart from the name cast on the not normally visible base! I still can't decide if that was a clever idea or not. Pity the poor newsagent with a box full of models with an un-popular name.
The range came with a blue rippled plastic mat for the sea, wharves and breakwaters, cranes and warehouses. The whaling factory ship came with a plastic whale. I can't see something like that being made now!
 
Morturn said:
Does anyone remember those miniature gardens you could buy?

Came in a box with little plastic plants, flowers and a piece of plastic with holes in it textured to look like earth. There was a plastic spade with a metal rod in the end that you used to push the plants into the holes to make a flowerbed.
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Wow that's right I remember those now, my sister had one and it was an absolute no go area for an older brother, I think if I'd have messed with that toy I actually may have been buried in it :joy::joy:
 
ade said:
It's got to be the Raleigh Chopper, I can still feel that feeling of shock when my dad opened the door and behind it was the most amazing bright red Raleigh chopper bike. That moment started my love for bicycles, which I love tinkering with and repairing hence the nine bikes in my garage at the moment :)
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Then because it had that banana seat you slide your but all the way back and do a wheelie real easy like
 
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A French friend living in France who collects absolutely anything, found a toy Shop, not sure of the scale called Cowle's. So British. Double bow window fronted with the toy provisions and wares and a till all still inside. And a chest of drawers with a tiny jointed doll and jointed teddy bear inside it.
I remember my friend's doll's house as a child with real glass leaded windows too. Puts the plastic ones nowadays to shame.
I had a farm myself with hinged gates and stippled walls and sort of flock grass and realistic animals all to scale which I used to collect. What do you what for Christmas son, some farm animals please.
 
I think most of us kids made parachutes & cap bombs. You could also get a roll of caps to put in your six shooter. One time somebody got hold of some railway detonators, & said if you throw them hard against a wall they would go off with an almighty bang. Throw as hard as we could, we couldn`t get them to explode which i guess was lucky because we didn`t know what kind of damage they would do!! I also found a box of bullets in the lake at Brookvale park. I took them home, put one in my dads vice & tried to "fire" one by strikng it with a hammer & nail. Fortunately i failed. Oh the stupidity of youth.:cold_sweat:
 
Smudger said:
I also found a box of bullets in the lake at Brookvale park. I took them home, put one in my dads vice & tried to "fire" one by strikng it with a hammer & nail. Fortunately i failed. Oh the stupidity of youth.:cold_sweat:
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In that wonderful film "Hope and Glory" there's a scene in which a group of young lads are doing just that!
 
My word, I remember those, there were a lot of plastic cap rockets around, but these were posh kid die-cast.
 
Edifi said:
Don't know if this as been on before but does anyone remember making Parachutes and CAP BOMBS.
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I remember using two bolts either side of a nut with a cap in between. Then after tying a handkerchief to the assembly, throwing it in the air and waiting for it to land with a bang.
 
Smudger said:
I think most of us kids made parachutes & cap bombs. You could also get a roll of caps to put in your six shooter. One time somebody got hold of some railway detonators, & said if you throw them hard against a wall they would go off with an almighty bang. Throw as hard as we could, we couldn`t get them to explode which i guess was lucky because we didn`t know what kind of damage they would do!! I also found a box of bullets in the lake at Brookvale park. I took them home, put one in my dads vice & tried to "fire" one by strikng it with a hammer & nail. Fortunately i failed. Oh the stupidity of youth.:cold_sweat:
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Talking about the stupidity of youth, I once hacksawed a golf ball in a vice to see what was inside it. I soon found out when I was sprayed in a white sticky liquid.
 
Devonjim,knew it was what they put in old carriage lamps .But the brain takes a long time to click in at 80 :yum
 
Probably calcium carbide. It releases acetylene in contact with water. I would have thought that you would only get an explosion is there was also a heat source. Dave.
 
farmerdave said:
Probably calcium carbide. It releases acetylene in contact with water. I would have thought that you would only get an explosion is there was also a heat source. Dave.
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Acetylene gas will explode or spontaneously combust when subject to pressure.
 
There was another version of these cap rockets that I only saw sold in a cycle shop in Cumberland. It had an orange polythene tail that made it look like a dart. On the tip was an aluminium bullet-nosed part that fitted into an aluminium thimble into which we placed caps plural. We would drop these from our Nana's bedroom window as, being a terraced house, the pavement came right up to the house. When they hit the ground the dart part would fire upwards, pretty much up to bedroom height, leaving the thimble behind and hopefully not to hard to find.

Another cap toy that I only saw on sale once, (Woolworth's Plymouth), was a time-delay bomb. Almost certainly branded 'Lone Star', it was a die-cast box with a flat face that lay on the ground and an upper face that was marked like a hand grenade. In the upper face was a cut out that let you pull over a sprung arm that had a rubber sucker on the end. Eventually the sucker would come away from the base plate and the arm would fly back to strike a cap. I think the idea was that you would hide it 'behind enemy lines'. Unfortunately the time delay was totally unpredictable!

I found one!
bomb.jpg
 
Mention of 'Lone Star' and caps reminds me of all those different guns that they produced, ranging from the pocket Derringer to the rifles modeled on those carried by the stagecoach 'shotgun' riders in the cowboy series of our childhoods. I never had one but there was a fancy 'quick draw' model that had a frame that was strapped to the arm which allowed the gun proper to slide forward into the hand. I think the idea was that you could have it 'up your sleeve', but would the sheriff gun you down for cheating?
spudgun.jpg
(Mine was blue)
My favourite 'Lone Star' gun wasn't a cowboy gun but a clever dual-purpose water pistol/potato gun, far superior to the standard potato gun made out of tin-plate! I'm pretty certain that I bought that gun myself as my parents, having just come through a war, probably were gun averse. For us though cowboys seemed to be everywhere, we didn't even need the props, lots of small boys galloping around the playground, slapping their backsides, a sort of man-horse combination! (Probably nothing to do with cowboys at all but I came across the term 'scotch-horses' that was new to me but involves two or more people linking arms behind their backs. I don't know what they called it then but that was certainly something that girls at my primary school did quite often).
'Girl Games' are worthy of their own topic I think, part of a fragile culture that rely on children of a certain age passing on to the class below.

P.S. Did the girls call the linked arm thing 'stagecoaches' or have I got cowboys on the mind?
 
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I remember the Lone Star cap firing spud gun, as we called them, sold in LIttlewoods. There was also a cap firing spud rifle, had a little cartridge that you could load with spud and cap, then load it into the rifle.

I wanted one for Christmas, my mom said fine. About two weeks before Christmas, my older brother took me to mom wardrobe and showed me the present she had bought and told me how farther Christmas was only a story and it was my mom who came inot the room in the night. I was gutted.
 
Morturn said:
I remember the Lone Star cap firing spud gun, as we called them, sold in LIttlewoods. There was also a cap firing spud rifle, had a little cartridge that you could load with spud and cap, then load it into the rifle.

I wanted one for Christmas, my mom said fine. About two weeks before Christmas, my older brother took me to mom wardrobe and showed me the present she had bought and told me how farther Christmas was only a story and it was my mom who came inot the room in the night. I was gutted.
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My husband isn't a member but is really enjoying this thread. It is bringing back many memories and leading to discussions about the chemicals that were accessible in the past. (He is a retired science teacher)
 
cba said:
My husband isn't a member but is really enjoying this thread. It is bringing back many memories and leading to discussions about the chemicals that were accessible in the past. (He is a retired science teacher)
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I had a merit chemistry set one Christmas, I absolutely loved it. I would spend hours with it.

Its did contain a few chemicals that folks would see as dangerous today. I certainly made hydrogen sulphide, the bad egg gas in stink bombs. Managed to make some chlorine gas too and the odd thing that wold go off with a fizz.
 
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