Looking at the selection above I like to think I would have gone for the Wham! and Pow! Annual but I don't think that's what I would have got. Well intentioned parents would have picked me something more cartoon in style and probably rabbit or teddy bear based. Which got me thinking..
I had a lot of cowboy and soldier toys when I was a nipper; Airfix, Timpo and Britains. I was just looking through a few online catalogues and was almost embarrassed by the realisation that my parents had bought me so much of it. Maybe my grandparents contributed too. I was ill a lot as a youngster which meant time off school and day trips to the nearby town to visit the elderly relatives for a cup of tea and a catch up. Maybe they felt sorry for me, or maybe it was just a bribe to keep me quiet and distracted while they talked. Who knows or really cares but the end result was a very large and full toy box.
Anyway that Eagle Annual atop, reminded me of this little beautie below. I owned this, I floated this in the sink and even with the metal bar at the bottom I seem to remember that it always listed to one side. I had a bit of an underwater thing going on back then. The oceans were a strange alien world and the frog men were its astronaut explorers. I watched Jacques Cousteau, I owned the Ladybird book of Underwater Exploration and I played Voyage to the bottom of the Sea in the playground when there.
Steve
This is REALLY eerie... We have almost parallel geek childhoods. I had the Countdown, Star Trek and Doctor Who annuals AND I had that sub, only the tanks and breathers on mine were orange! I begged and begged and begged my Mum to buy it from the corner shop. She finally succumbed and I promptly lost one of the frogmen down the bog.
ReplyDeleteIts funny how the stories of how such things were acquired are as memorable as the toy/comic/book itself. And the stories of how they were lost, given away or broken, equally so.
DeleteAnd it fascinates me now to think that there were other kids like me into all this odd,weird and clever stuff at the same time. watching the same tv, reading the same comics etc. No internet back then, no way of knowing just how many of us there were out there. Perhaps that's what we are doing here in the comments section of this blog, correcting the technological failings of the past!
Really appreciate all the comments to the posts. I'll try and pick up the pace of posting a bit more November onwards. So much to look at and discuss. The nostalgia is lovely but I'm equally fascinated by the things that other people had or watched that I didn't.