Friday, 9 November 2018

Hey, ANYONE REMEMBER TONIBELL?



Remember the TONIBELL Miniball?  As far as I can recall, that was the only time I ever saw mention of the Tonibell name, but I spotted this toy ice cream van being sold on eBay recently, so obviously it was once a well-known company for SPOT-ON to make a die-cast van with the name on it.  I did a little light digging and discovered the following photo of a real Tonibell van on the Internet.  Below that is some info about the company, which I found shortly after.


Click to enlarge

And below is an ad for the aforementioned Miniball, plus a photo of my very own, purchased back in the late '60s.  I took the photo seconds before retrieving the ball from the attic of my former home, 19 years after having inadvertently left it there in 1972.  I've now had it back in my possession for 27 years.


TV TOPS - EVER HEARD OF IT?


Copyright D.C. THOMSON & Co., Ltd

Much as I hate to admit it, there are some things I do not know.  The existence of this comic was one of them until a few moments ago, when I saw it on sale on eBay.  I don't know who the publisher was (though going by the type-set lettering on the strips, D.C. THOMSON is the most likely suspect) and there's not even a mention of it in the late DENIS GIFFORD's COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF BRITISH COMICS (which makes it incomplete), so I can't say how many issues there were or anything else about it.  If you bought this comic back in the day and can reveal any info behind its existence, please enlighten your fellow Criv-ites.  (It's clearly modelled after LOOK-IN, but that's about all I can contribute.)