Christmas Countdown: Japanese tin Robot the " Attacking Martian" by Horikawa

Without doubt one of my all-time favourite toys was the battery operated Attacking Martian Robot by Horikawa which I was given as a Christmas present by my parents around 1966/67. Unfortunately, my robots battery box was broken which eventually resulted in the toy not operating and being consigned to being a childhood ornament before being given away to a friend.

The Attacking Martian robot by Horikawa was a worldwide retail success in the mid 1960's (until around 1969/70)and became a must have toy for many young kids at this time. It came in three colours, brown (my version), silver , and (the much rarer) gold with chest doors that would open to reveal "working" light guns. I had forgotten all about this robot until around 2010 when I came across a series of robot replicas on sale in a shop in Glasgow which my other half (bless her) bought me (see below) as part of a Christmas present that year. This spurred me on to try to track down any information on the robot toy I had and loved so much as a kid back in the mid 1960's. Not as easy a task as it may sound as I found out that there were numerous Japanese robots on sale in the UK at his time

It wouldn't be until 3 years ago when on a trip to Brighton I came across the magazine below. There in the pages of this book/magazine was a picture of “my" robot along with details of what it would cost (on average) to purchase a mid-1960's model- between £300-£600. Sometimes a picture and my memory of those times will just have to suffice!

Favourite Toys: From the days I owned a (MATCHBOX) E-Type Jaguar

Matchbox cars of the mid 1960’s to the early 1970’s were among the most cherished of all the toys I had as a child. The cars themselves were relatively cheap to buy during this time with individual cars costing from 7d (3p) to 2/- (10p) which was on par with the cost of a British weekly comic and a chocolate bar and was within the spending power of your average child’s pocket money even if you had to save up to buy the latest car over a few weeks. I have long forgotten what the first Matchbox car was that I purchased but it would have almost certainly have been procured from the local Woolworths store where I used to live. The entire process of buying a Matchbox car at this time was a visual delight with cars stacked high in their yellow boxes with the tantalising picture of the car inside beautifully rendered on the front of each box. In most shops along with the neatly stacked row of yellow boxes was a separate glass display case that would showcase a selection of Matchbox cars out of their boxes with the vehicles doors fully opened, bonnets ajar showing the car engine detail and any other accessories clearly on show.

My favourite Matchbox cars from this time were a red E- type Jaguar (above) a white Mustang Fastback that had a small plastic lever at the side of the car from which you could position the front wheels, a red Rolls Royce Silver Shadow and a white Ford GT 40 (all pictured below) . Owning a hard to find Matchbox car like the Ford GT 40 in the 1960’s carried with it a certain gravitas and I remember a school pal offering me a stack of 12 US comics and an Action Man for my car, which I declined.

However it was in 1969 that the greatest Matchbox accessory of them all appeared, the Matchbox Motorway set which allowed you to turn all your Matchbox cars into slot cars. The Motorway operated by means of a spring that ran under the entire length of the track and silver foil stickers were provided which you applied to the bottom of any of your Matchbox cars with a plastic pin that would attach to the spring which pulled the cars around the figure of “8” track. As a motorway the cars off course went in different direction but you could also set it up like a racetrack with both lanes going in the same direction, just like with mini Scalextric. To this very day I can still vividly remember the shock and excitement at receiving a Matchbox Motorway set which was a relatively expensive purchase in 1969, as my “big” Christmas present.

Like most things from childhood my interest in Matchbox cars eventually faded from my life to be replaced by the joy, pain and expense of owning a real car. However the memories those little diecast models gave to me as a child are still as strong as ever and if I close my eyes I can still see those iconic yellow boxes neatly stacked in Woolworths and my cars whizzing around my Matchbox Motorway set on Christmas day over 50 years ago.

Favourite toys: James Bond attaché case

It’s strange how some long forgotten memory can pop into your head by the simplest prompts. One such event happened to myself last week when visiting Glasgow to meet up with a few old pals for our 6 weekly guys night out. As is my normal practice I arrived a couple of hours before we were due to meet so that I could have a look around the shops. On this day as I entered the city streets from the rail station I was greeted by a large window display advertising the new James Bond film “ No Time to Die” then as I turned the corner I saw the sad vision of the now closed Glasgow Debenhams store. In the blink of an eye those 2 associated events transported me back to around April 1966 when my mum and dad took me to Glasgow to visits the large Lewis’s department store (pictured below from around 1970) which stood on the location of the now closed Debenhams store, so that I could choose my birthday present. Like many of the other Lewis’s stores throughout the UK it was a stunning looking store that sold everything from delicatessen food to records to the latest London fashions and of course it had a massive floor dedicated to children’s toys. My main memory of that day was the fact that I had so much money (I think it was about £10) to spend and with having so much I asked my parents if I could purchase the above James Bond 007 attaché case, a major purchase for a 6 year old kid at that time.

Released in 1965 by MPC and based on the attaché case seen in the 1963 Bond file “From Russia With Love” the toy case included a Luger pistol, complete with a shoulder stock, viewing scope and silencer which converted it into a rifle, a ’Code-o-Matic’ code machine, code book and pencil, wallet with paper money, James Bond 007 business cards, a passport, and twelve red plastic bullets. The case itself also had a few tricks such as a hidden black plastic dagger concealed in the side, a mechanism which would fire one of the plastic bullets from the case itself, and a lock which could be set to “explode” (by firing a cap) if the case is opened incorrectly. From memory I also spent some of my birthday money on a couple of Timpo Knights.

My interest in James Bond at this time was ignited by seeing “Thunderball “ at the movies with my parents and brother so I’m not sure if the attaché case was my first Bond related toy as like many other kids of my age I had the iconic Corgi Aston-Martin DB5 which was released in October 1965. As my version was the gold coloured car (as opposed to the silver one seen on screen in the previous year’s Goldfinger) this may well have been my first Bond purchase.

Despite being fortunate enough to have had the above 2 iconic Bond toys, my favourite from the franchise was the Thuderball scuba diver set that I bought in Woolworths around 1967. Although my interest in James Bond is only in the films (usually bought on DVD) it’s good to see that Bond, unlike Lewis’s and Debenhams, has remained a constant beacon of familiarity in an ever changing world.

Favourite Toys: Action Man, chicken feet and the Mr Benn antique shop time machine

It’s true that most of us all-too-often struggle with attachment. We cling to people, places, and things like comic books and toys from our past for all sorts of reasons. Moving home especially our first home can be a truly emotional experience as we are leaving behind the home where we developed our first friendships, where we first went to school or where we played with our favourite childhood toys.

My family first moved into what was to be my first real home (pictured above as it looks today looking very run down ) when I was around 3 years old in 1963. Dubbed the “electric flats” we moved into the top floor of a newly built two storey maisonettes just outside Glasgow as part of the redevelopment of the city. It would be fair to say that I was lucky (not all kids were) I had an idyllic childhood with loving parents, a kind/fun brother and great friends living in an all mod cons new house in a time when it was encouraged for kids to simply be kids. Yet despite having had a great life for the 5 years that we stayed in that house I had almost no memory of the day I left my first home. Well, that was until around May this year when visiting a local antique market, I came across the above Action Man Ski Patrol outfit that was on sale in a ridiculously overpriced stall in the market.

The mind is a strange thing in how it makes connections to the past, as immediately upon seeing that ski patrol outfit and those Action man stars I was transported back to the living room of my maisonette home on Christmas day circa 1965 playing with my Action Man (actually it was a GI Joe that I had) decked out in his ski patrol outfit as he undertook a dangerous mission on our lamb’s wool rug (used to simulate snow) in front of our toasty 2 bar electric wall mounted fire. That memory then triggered a series of other half-forgotten events from that time including the day my pal Ronnie received a Johnny Seven toy gun for his birthday (I’m still jealous some 55 years later) and the time his cousin broke his arm while playing “dead man falls” trying to re-enact the effects of being hit by a German grenade. Stranger still, I had a vivid flashback to when a group of my pals and myself were playing round the back of some local shops and we came across a bag of chicken parts from the butchers. The bag contained some chicken talons (I know disgusting), but you can imagine the fun a group of 6-year-old boys had with that and the torment we must have put the poor girls thorough.

So, what has all this all to do with the memory of me leaving my first home, well in the same display case that housed the Action Man outfit was a small blue plastic cap rocket. I used to have loads of these as a kid but on seeing the blue rocket I had an almost instantaneous nano second flashback to the day when my pal Ronnie had given me a similar rocket as a going away present just as we were leaving our old house in my dad’s Ford Anglia to move to our new home. I can still see my dad’s car in my mind’s eye with the family all crammed in and carrying some items we hadn’t managed to put into the removal van and the sight of our neighbours and my pals waving us goodbye as folk did back then. Like Mr. Benn I plan to visit that antique market again very soon to see what items may trigger some other long forgotten memories.