Great toys from childhood.

[stevezodiac]

There was this small piece about the Johnny Seven gun in this weeks Weekly News. My friend had one of these in the 60s and I was envious. Too expensive for my poor dad but he did get me a nice metal Winchester rifle for £2.10.6 which I still have. If you look closely you can see at the bottom there is a gun butt and trigger - this pulled out as a handgun, also had a grenade thrower and rocket launcher. Can't remember all seven gadgets.

[STARBOY]

Droooool ! the Johnny Seven gun was (along with a Chooper bike) the toys I dreamt of having as a kid but knew Id never get (costly things back then in 69-72) - my pals cousin got one and I remember thinking how cool it was - if you go on Youtube you can see the old US and UK adverts for it (if your nostalgia chip is in overderive that is)

[steelclaw]

My mate had a Johnny Seven, I would have liked one like you starboy I knew I would never get one I don't think I even bothered asking my parents, I didn't get a Chopper Bike either.





I did get one of these, which was brilliant still got it, and I play with it. (Spiro Matic that is)Much better then Spiral -Graph


And these.



I've been buying a few Airfix kits from the 1970's recently , I got a Spitfire & Kittyhawk they have to be in the bag like this though as I remember buying them.

[AndyB]

Lego still rates as the best toy. I've just spent a nice evening building the Technic Space Shuttle 8480...

[Digifiend]

Lego was always one of my favourites too. And in my day (1990s) there wasn't any reliance on Star Wars or Harry Potter to get sales (which is what I always see nowadays, what's gone wrong with today's kids?), it was generic stuff like firemen, police, hospital, and even a petrol station. A lot has changed in the last decade...

[NP]

... in my day (1990s) there wasn't any reliance on Star Wars or Harry Potter to get sales (which is what I always see nowadays, what's gone wrong with today's kids?), it was generic stuff like firemen, police, hospital, and even a petrol station. A lot has changed in the last decade...

I sense you're going to be more disappointed year by year! To me, today seems EXACTLY like the 90s!

[Jonny Whizz]

When I was little I had a great BRIO wooden train set. I had most of the main Thomas the Tank Engine characters - Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Toby and Duck - plus Stepney and City of Truro, real locomotives that appeared in Thomas episodes. I loved trying to re-enact Thomas episodes, for example putting a brick wall in front of Henry in the tunnel or pulling Gordon at high speed over a bridge and pretending that his dome got blown off.

I also had some of the diecast ERTL Thomas toys (which I also recreated episodes with, and I sometimes put my trains under a table pretending it was the big station) and also battery-operated TOMY trains - I had a big Thomas set, plus Gordon and Henry, my favourite engines as a kid. I gave away the BRIO and ERTL trains but I think I still have the TOMY ones in my loft, though IIRC Thomas is broken.

I'm a keen railway modeller today so that must have been the start of me, indeed going slightly off topic watching Thomas the Tank Engine really did get me into railways at a very young age.

[AndyB]

The Fire Station and Police Station are still the centrepieces of the City theme, which is entirely activity based these days - fire, police, construction, transportation etc. Houses have to be got from the Creator collection.

The whole lot are a heck of an improvement from the mid-90s when the city line was horrendously dumbed down to be fit for a 5 year old, even the big sets which were formerly designed for 8 year olds and older. The instructions are still longer than they would have been then, but the models are more intricate than they have ever been - we're even getting car doors again.

[Digifiend]

It's not the modern designs I don't like, it's the fact that the shops seem to be stocking more of the licensed stuff instead of the traditional ranges such as City, probably because they think kids are more interested in that kind of thing. It would be interesting to know which lines are the most popular. It's probably Star Wars or something, rather than City. Lego is a classic, it shouldn't need to rely on licences IMHO.

[steelclaw]

My mate the same one who had the Johnny 7, (around the early 70's) also had like a black plastic spy like suitcase about the size of a laptop, it had a camera inside that took pictures from a small hole in the corner,and through a another corner hole it fired bullets, inside I think it had a gun. May have been something to do with James Bond.
Anyone remember this? I'm sure I'm not going mad.

Actually just had a search, this could be it.



And ones for sale on ebay, I'm bidding for it £1000 Not

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1965-James-Bond-0 ... 335ede3203

[colcool007]

That is just so cool. When I was on the look-out for toys, I wanted the Evel Knievel wind-up stunt bike. It looked brilliant, but I saw it a few years ago and I think that I was glad that the chance passed by. The other one that looked great as a kid was the Super Flight Deck where you controlled the landing of an aircraft on what was a mock-up of an aircraft carrier. I saw it recently on a 70's advert stream and it looked terrible!

Isn't it a shame when the toys of your dreams never live up to expectations?

[Peter Gray]

I always put on my Christmas list old comics But also Big Truck...got old comics one year and has to be the best Christmas present I ever got..never got Big Truck..Big Truck was when you pressed a keyboard to make it move...and boy it needed a lot of batteries in looking back..

I loved the play people which were given away in Whizzer and chips..
Always wanted the huge Play people pirate ship for the bath never got that..probably because it cost a lot..a lot of my toys which I enjoyed were from car boots...did like the scalextric which was second hand But a great toy..

still not getting expensive toys probably made me a better person...two kids were given every expensive toy under the sun (including Big Truck ) and the children grown up don't talk to there parents now who are also divorced...you can't buy love..

[stevezodiac]

They also did the black secret agent attaché case as a Man From UNCLE tie-in. Very rare and valuable today. All through my childhood I had a small army of those one inch military figures from Airfix. They were 48 soldiers to a box and I had the Union and Confederate armies as well as US Cavalry. I still have a couple of boxes that i picked up a few years back. Also remember my Chad Valley Give a Show projector - I had the Hannah-Barbera slides, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound etc.

[steelclaw]

A few of my games I saw adverts in comics that I got.

Like this Chartbusters game, that was in Wizard in 1970/71.
Alanultron you would love this game, I did I still have it.



And this Football Game also in Wizard.



An ad for this Mamod Steam engine + others steam driven engines was another toy that was advertised in Wizard a lot 1970/71.



My sister had this toy it was quite cool.

[STARBOY]

Steel: that 007 case and gun etc just took me back to being 10 years old again even as an old git I still thinks it's soooo cool. I had the 007 gun with the silencer on its own and thought I was the greatest thing ever (still remember going to Lewis' in Glasgow for my birthday to get it and a few other things with my mum and dad) I also had the 007 Gorgi car of course (or was in Dinky?) -I also remember getting a bag/box of 007 underwater divers that were from one of the 007 films (Thunderball?). I was always intrigued by that Socceramma game I couldn't understand how a board game would work as football (plus I had Subbuteo at the time so was in seventh heaven with that) and remember having a similar type Formula 1 board game that wasn't (to me) very good so it put me off Soccerama but always remembered it and loved the design on the box. When I was a kid Lego was so expensive and it was a lot of money/birthdays to get enough kit together to make anything worthwhile (Mechano seemed better to me as a kid although Lego as Digi states is a fantastic toy). Great stuff thanks for the pictures. And how cool is that Johhny Seven gun ?