R is for Rocketry

A couple of poorish images for you in this post I'm afraid, but it gets a new tag in the list and clears some stuff from Picasa, so win-win for me!

I love this, branded to Lyvia, this Hong Kong made money-box has a mechanism which allows you to fire the coin into the cone, how long before it would crack the cone or knock it off is open to question, but what a fantastic, practical 'toy'! I also love it because it has a combination lock at the bottom; when I was a kid, I had a post-box money box, also made in Hong Kong, so there's a nostalgia hit in this. I occasionally see the post-box one on evilBay, but so far have managed to resist!

I never saw one of these when I was a kid, if I had some serious badgering and car-cleaning would have ensued! A forerunner of the modern Estes rockets, and slightly safer, this seems to rely on 'Epsom Salts' tablets and the instructions are interesting reading, comparing what was acceptable for sale as a plaything 40/50 years ago with what is acceptable today...