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My very own FRED FLINTSTONE FLIVVER - snapped in my back garden.
The box is for the remote-control version, and is a reproduction I made myself
from an original owned by someone for whom I repaired it |
It always irks me when I can't be more specific about dates. Trouble is, I never knew the exact dates of some events from my early life, and have to retroactively work them out from other factors, like which house I lived in at the time, whether I'd started school, etc. So I can say only that I got my FRED FLINTSTONE's FLIVVER in 1962 or '63. That's as close as I can nail it down to.
There were different versions of this toy - a remote- control version and a friction-drive one. Most sites show two different-looking flivvers, but it wasn't quite as simple as that because, as well as the two different-in-appearance versions, there was also a friction-drive one which was indistinguishable from the remote-control one - except for not having a remote-control (obviously). All three versions were made by MARX TOYS.
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Here's the other version of the friction-drive toy. Who knows,
perhaps a remote-control version of this one was also made? |
But don't be fooled. When I say remote-control, I'm not talking about a modern, infra-red remote-control, I'm talking about one that was attached to the flivver by a cord, in the same way that TV remote-controls once operated. I seem to faintly remember my flivver having a remote-control, and it lay for years in a box in a cupboard long after the toy itself had been consigned to oblivion.
Trouble is, around the same time I had Fred's car, I also had a little race track with small magnetic cars, which was operated via the same kind of remote-control as Fred's 'deluxe' flivver, so I'm not sure if the remote-control which lay in my cupboard for years belonged to the flivver or the race track. It annoys me not being able to recall with utmost certainty which toy it accompanied because I'm therefore unsure which version I actually owned.
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Looking at the remote-control in this photo, it doesn't look like the one I recall, so maybe
mine belonged to my race car set. Hold it - just seen another one in a book about MARX
TOYS, and the remote-control is similar to the one I remember - different colour though |
However, having spent four paragraphs on the subject, it's not really important to the point of this post. I said earlier that the flivver eventually disappeared, apart from a few disassembled parts lying in the same box as the remote-control, but I had the little plastic Fred driver for at least ten years before getting rid of most of the surviving toys from my childhood in the early '70s.
Little Fred used to accompany me on visits to my maternal grandparents every Sunday. Then, after tea, I'd excuse myself and take a walk along to my former neighbourhood, there to gaze upon the two houses in which I (and Fred) had once lived. It was a strange sensation to return Fred to his old environs, but it helped me to reconnect to my past in a much more tangible way, even though it's difficult to explain in precisely what manner.
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| And another look at my own toy |
Little Fred saw the inside of four houses in his ten or so years, including the one in which I now reside. Close to 20 years ago, I was able to obtain (at immense expense) a replacement Fred and his flivver, and one glance immediately returns me to an earlier point in time that I'm loath to leave. I once re-created my childhood experience of touring my former neighbourhood with Fred in tow, though on that occasion, it was with 'new' Fred, not 'old' Fred. To me however, they were one and the same.
It's strange to think that I've now had replacement Fred for nearly twice as long as his predecessor - it just doesn't seem like it. In fact, the near-quarter-of-a-century gap between the two Freds no longer seems to have existed, and it feels like I've only ever had one Fred, tucked away in a cupboard for years before being happily rediscovered. Some people might think that, as it's not my original Fred, it surely can't have the same nostalgic or sentimental draw, but trust me, there's an odd kind of magic that operates on such occasions, and, in my mind, it's the same Fred (and flivver) that I first got as a kid 54 years ago.
"Wilma, I'm home!"
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| The remote-control version - with a different control to the one shown further up the post |
