One day, back in 1965 or '66, while out shopping with my family in SAFEWAY's, I saw a Dr. WHO TARDIS money box (manufactured by PLASTON) on display at the front end of one of the checkout counters. It was inexpensive so my parents purchased it for me, and on the way home we stopped in at a cafe in the shopping precinct halfway between the town centre shops and our house.
In memory, the cafe seems like something out of HAPPY DAYS. It had a checkerboard floor and a Juke Box in the corner, and was a typical 1960s example of pseudo-American culture* that such British establishments usually modelled themselves on at the time. It's now been a chemist's shop for decades, but I can't pass it today without remembering it in its '60s heyday.
(*To be clear, that's the British imitation of American culture which is 'pseudo', not American culture itself.)
The money bank was of a soft blue plastic, and some time later (don't know how long), I slit along the outlines of the door, so that I could place my MARX TOYS YOGI BEAR (sans scooter) inside its interiors. (Remember, I was a mere 7 years old at the time.) Then, in my imagination, the bold Yogi would traverse the vast distances of time and space in his borrowed time machine, landing on barren, alien terrains in faraway universes.
If you're like me, you probably sometimes played with your toys in bed (behave, not those sorts of 'toys'), and the topside of one's drawn-up knees under the bedspread provided a perfect mountain ridge from which the 'hero' had a vantage point over any and all enemies who might assail him. And so it was with Yogi, who'd emerge from his Tardis (with my assistance of course) and scan the horizon for DALEKS - or the insidious RANGER SMITH.
Anyway, around a couple of years ago, I acquired a replacement for Yogi, but I've not yet managed to obtain an exact duplicate of that particular Dr. Who Tardis bank. However, a few years before WOOLWORTH's closed its doors for the final time, I bought a modern-day equivalent Tardis money box, which has served as a stand-in in the absence of its illustrious predecessor. (True, it's a darker blue and a harder plastic, but it's still an official Tardis bank, which'll do for me.)
Anyway, in a completely self-indulgent (and frivolous) exercise in boyhood nostalgia, I decided to reunite 'Dr. Yogi' and his Tardis for your pictorial pleasure (though this time he's brought his scooter along). See the lengths to which I go in order to provide you with the finest examples of absurdity available on any blog? You don't see delightful nonsense like this elsewhere! (Whaddya mean "Thank goodness!"?)
(Update: I've now acquired an original Plaston Tardis, so here's a pic of it alongside Yogi.)
