TOYBOX TREASURES Of The PAST: HERTS DALEK And PLASTON TARDIS...

Characters copyright relevant & respective owners

As you get older, some events in your personal history become harder to tie down to their specific points in time.  For instance, 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.

I mentioned in a previous post back in 2016 that I eventually slit open the doors of the Tardis so that I could insert my Marx Yogi Bear, detached from the yellow friction-drive scooter he sat on.  I snapped a photo of him (a replacement) next to a different, more contemporary Tardis, but now I include another pic of the bold bruin alongside the Plaston one, to more precisely capture a memory of bygone days in the mid-'60s.  And thus do I live out whatever time I have left to me; re-creating my childhood by the acquisition of toys that were once (and still are) dear to me.  This time, though, they're simply ornaments, signposts to an earlier era, not playthings.  I like to sit and just look at them from time-to-time, remembering what was but can never be again.  Outside of a memory and an old photo, that is.

Any of you Crivvies ever think about some of the toys you used to have and thought so much of, or do they seem like a dream of a distant land you're not quite sure you ever visited?  Do tell, if you'd be so kind.  Oh, and don't worry, unlike some insecure bloggers who resent someone expressing a different opinion to them, I don't regard honest comments as 'trolling'.  (Such an infantile word, don't you think?  The first resort of infantile people - especially when they're wrong!)