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As you get older, some events in your personal history become harder to tie down to their specific points in time. Case in point, was it near the end of 1965 or sometime after the beginning of 1966 that I saw a Plaston Tardis money bank hanging on a peg near a cash register in Safeway as my parents queued up to pay for their shopping? Regardless, they bought it for me (it wasn't expensive) and on the way home, we (including my brother) dropped in to a cafe midway between the main town centre and the neighbourhood in which we lived, having moved there only relatively recently. I seem to recall that the toy was in a poly bag with a header card, but the versions on the Internet I've seen were in a shrink-wrapped open cardboard container which seems familiar to me. Maybe it was both.
Same goes for my Herts Plastic Moulders Dalek. (That's me above with my original.) Was it purchased in Woolworth's in Rutherglen or another Woolworth's when we were on holiday one year? As it was only sold in Woolies, it could've been both as I seem to remember having more than one, though maybe not at the same time. However, you won't be interested in any of that as you'll have your own set of memories associated with these toys - if you were lucky enough to have them when you were a kid, that is. The Dalek isn't an entirely accurate representation, but not many '60s Dalek toys were, whether it was by Marx, Cherilea, Herts, or just about any manufacturer of Dalek merchandise. Perhaps the one that came closest was the Codeg clockwork Dalek, but I never had one as a boy so it's not high on my list of things to acquire.
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My interest in toys pretty much stopped when I was a child and I never got i to collecting them when I eas older, so I have forgotten most of the toys I loved as a kid. It's articles like this( and visits to antique shops) that jog my memory, for example I'm pretty sure I had that Hertz Dalek in your picture ( and your previous article on the Cherilea Batman and Robin figures). There are a few toys I used to have that are still in my memory bank but I can't fully place like a tin Japanese robot I was given for Christmas around 1965/6 . I have seen loads of them in shops and online but I can't seem to see the one I had. The older I get those days do indeed seem like a very, very distant land.
ReplyDeleteI think the difference between us is that you've led an interesting life and had many new and varied experiences over the years, McS, whereas I've always looked back to the past since the age of five. Though you might find it hard to believe, I'm rather insular and introverted, and therefore don't seek out new experiences or people. Some others may think me rather sad, but I'm fairly content with my lot. (And I sure have a lot.) However, were Salma Hayek ever to call, I couldn't see me beating her off with a stick. Maybe when we get to the end of our span, we may again find ourselves in that distant land, eh? I think that would be nice.
ReplyDeletePart of me wishes I had kept some of my old toys , I certainly held onto my comics ( or repurchased many of those I gave away) . I enjoy looking back at times past as well, I think most folk do after a certain age but I also enjoy experiencing new things, visiting new places etc. as they are the memories of my ( now becoming more imited) future . Hey if you are content and happy there is nothing wrong with that, thats what most folk aim for in life but with Selma you may burst with happiness. I actually sometimes wonder if we do see or experience the past when we snuff it. Yeah it would be nice.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just toys and comics with me, it's ornaments, furniture and the like, that I'd love to 're-acquire', McS. All the things, in fact, that made my life what it was as a child and teenager. More, I'd love to be able to buy every house I ever lived in and take turns in them whenever the fancy took me. As for bursting with happiness with Salma (Selma must be her sister), I probably would - but I'd try not to do so all over her dress. (Oh, I am awful.)
ReplyDeleteIt's books and comics that I tend to remember fondly rather than toys.
ReplyDeleteI tend to fondly remember all of them, CJ. Just can't help it.
ReplyDeleteLoving objects and shunning real experiences could mean you're on the autistic spectrum and I don't mean Captain Scarlets team but so many fans of things are like that so it's nothing to be ashamed of.
ReplyDeleteOh, they're very much 'real' experiences when I re-acquire them, believe me. And it's not that I shun what you call real experiences, it's just that I don't hunt them down. I don't feel I'm missing out on anything. And if it transpired I suffered from Asperger's, I wouldn't be ashamed.
ReplyDeleteWell, this has nothing to do with toys, but it's a pretty rare comics-jones.
ReplyDeleteAs I was mentioning in some recent essays, one of the comic strips that always had an unusual interest for me was Chic Young's BLONDIE. I saw it both in the funny pages and in comic books, and though I knew it wasn't a great strip by any means, I found its slapstick situations much more memorable than a lot of tamer comedy strips. So I continually quest about for inexpensive comic books, given that the strips aren't something one can collect after the fact.
I'm pretty unclear about how often comic strips made it over to Britain's side of the pond. Did many American strips show up in British papers, and if so, what did you like? I imagine BLONDIE might have shown up in some papers, but my only reason for thinking so is that there have been a lot of articles claiming the Bumsteads colonized a lot of foreign territories.
I'm pretty sure that some US strips would've made it over here, GP, but I couldn't say precisely which ones (well, not all of them) off the top of my head. Blondie did appear in UK newspapers, on September 8th 1930, and Nancy appeared in a weekly comic, The Topper. Also, Batman newspaper strips were cobbled together as two pages for reprinting in a '60s comic called Smash!, but I'm not so sure about newspapers. Apart, that is, from Spider-Man, Superman, etc., which appeared in some newspapers in the '80s, I think. Did I have any favourites? Not really, as I didn't read newspapers as a youth, apart from The Broons and Oor Wullie in the Fun Section of The Sunday Post. If you'd like to sample them, type their names (individually) into the blog's search box.
ReplyDeleteMy father (born in 1927) used to mention reading Blondie in newspaper strips.
ReplyDeleteMy brain must've been asleep, CJ, 'cos we also get Calvin & Hobbes in the UK, and other US strips. And isn't The Wizard Of Id and Hagar The Horrible from America? There's probably loads more.
ReplyDeleteWhen the pop group Blondie came along my father wondered if they'd taken their name from the newspaper strip.
ReplyDeleteI'd say it's entirely possible, CJ, though the 'official' explanation on Wikipedia (just looked it up) is that the name derived from truck drivers calling out "Hey Blondie" to Debbie Harry as they drove past.
ReplyDeleteMy father also said there were films featuring Blondie and according to Wikipedia a whopping 28 Blondie films were released from 1938 to 1950. Have any of these films been shown on TV because I can't recall ever watching a single Blondie film.
ReplyDeleteI do seem to recall seeing some Blondie films on TV, CJ, though it was a couple or so decades ago now. Can't remember whether they were any good or not.
ReplyDeleteMeant to say, there's a still from one of them in The Penguin Book Of Comics.
DeleteThanks for the responses. Yeah, the BLONDIE movies, while not as slapsticky as the comic strip, might be one of the few ways the franchise is still known today, at least by old-movie buffs. I think most of the films came out once or twice a year, so in the days before TV was in most homes, the series was the equivalent of a sitcom, only you only saw the show just two or maybe three times a year. I think the Charlie Chan B-movies came to U.S. theaters with the same frequency. Once TV came in, that was the end of most B-movie serials. Most of those franchises tried to move to the new medium, and a few, like TV's CISCO KID, eclipsed the movie serials in the popular imagination. Not BLONDIE, though, since two live-action sitcoms came and went with no more than a season each.
ReplyDeleteThese days a lot of American comic strips, declining as the newspapers do, attempt to keep a readership by showing their wares on Internet portal pages. I also don't know if that practice shows up in markets outside the U.S., because the comics syndicates almost surely have to pay for that privilege.
Jumping back to the toy conversation, I didn't get a lot of stuff during the Bat-craze. But I wish I'd kept all of my Topps BATMAN cards. I also remember seeing a Batman punching bag in some convenience store. I didn't buy it but now I wish I'd bought it as a toy-token of the craze. Of course, I'm sure that if it would been worth mucho dollares now if kept in pristine condition.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the Charlie Chan serials, though they probably wouldn't be allowed today unless an actual Oriental was playing the part. When the UK comic The Dandy came to an end, attempts were made to turn it into a digital comic, but it didn't really take off. Incidentally, the Topps Batman cards were reissued in 1989 to tie-in with Michael Keaton's first BM movie. They were on superior card stock and you could probably track down a boxed set on eBay.
ReplyDeleteSince this turned into something of a miscellaneous thread, I was wondering if you were exposed as a kid to the H-B show "Peter Potamus." I don't remember thinking it was anything special as a kid, but one UHF channel's been showing it again, and I find myself checking it out when convenient. At least the show's goofy hero is pro-active about running about righting wrongs, in contrast to all the boring animals trying to escape their parks or zoos or whatever,
ReplyDeleteAs a kid I was sure that Potamus' secret weapon was the "Hippo Hurricane Holler," but subtitling insists it's " Howler." Wonder if any comics of the time immortalized the term in print?
The name does sound familiar, GP, but I can't recall whether I ever saw it or not. Talking of subtitles, I'm constantly amazed by some of the errors I see on screen. It's as though the subtitlers are listening to a different soundtrack sometimes.
ReplyDeleteIf you never saw the one season of Peter Potamus, you still could have seen the character in one of those multi-character H-B ensembles they used to do. I generally disliked the ones I glanced at; such ensembles never gave any of the characters any chance to do their schticks, being too busy seeking treasure or winning space races.
ReplyDeleteThere was just one issue of PETER POTAMUS, which I looked through on Read All Comics Online. It didn't solve the problem of pronunciation, but it gave me a minor nostalgic moment. I remembered having read the first story in the comic as a kid, and probably only did so because the gimmick involved Potamus meeting a bunch of pirates with color-coded beards-- Bluebeard, Redbeard, and even (long before Graham Chapman used the name) Yellowbeard.
I Google-searched him and he looks familiar so I guess I must've seen him at some point. However, whether it was on TV or in a comic I couldn't say for sure.
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed that out of all the colours available, there seems to be only a few that work attached to the word 'beard'? Blackbeard, Bluebeard, Redbeard, Whitebeard (maybe), Brownbeard. Other colours don't seem to work so well. (Purplebeard, Indigobeard, Greenbeard, etc., just don't sound right.)