W is for Watch with Mother

Photographed at the recent Plastic Warrior (I only have Mrs. Bear and a couple of lose arms and legs and they're in storage!), these are among Lone Star's more esoteric output.

Once TV had got going children's programming followed the pattern of 'Listen with Mother' on the old home service (by my childhood; renamed Radio 4) with a midday section of programmes which started with simple things for infants and got progressively more sophisticated to cater for the the elder children. There was a limited number of programmes, which were endlessly repeated over the years (1950's to 1970's), meaning the characters all became very well known and there was much merchandise produced.

One each of the main characters; PC Plod (top right), Mrs. Bear, Big Ears, Noddy and Golly (left to right - bottom row) along with three paint variations of the evil (well...'naughty'!) Goblin. The figures are about 50mm and polyethylene with Lone Star's usual flaky paint and a 'swoppet' style of plug-on arms, legs and heads.

These days the Gollies have been whitewashed out of both new TV productions and the reprints of Enid Blyton's books, but when I was a kid he was just 'Golly'...not 'Gollywog' and a lot of kids had soft toy gollies, with no racist intent. There was however a believed racist history behind the term and a definite racist history behind the character in general culture, and modern mores demand he slip from the public conscience. Also, while Mr Golly was a good character, I seem to remember the other gollies tended to be the wicked characters if the goblins weren't around?