About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Showing posts with label Toys and Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Toys and Games. Show all posts

Thursday, December 22, 2011

C is for Christmas Nostalgia

The other day over on the Moonbase Central blog, they showed an old chocolate-bar multi-pack of the type that were one of the seasonal treats at this time of year in days gone...I can't remember if this was from one of those gift boxes or a set of Christmas crackers, but as the one posted the other day had cut-out figures that caught my eye, it reminded me that this was still in the family games-drawer...

Cadbury's, Rountree Macintosh or Tom Smith? It has cut out counters and a spinner, which would both be things you'd find in budget crackers, and the graphics are so 'glam-rock' post-psychedelia but still trying to be hip-60's...with a set of pantone magic-markers!

Just as cheap crackers would be likely to have a small bag of tiddlywinks to use as counters and a plastic spinner to use instead of the card one, they might also have a mounted Cowboy or Indian to chase each other round the board! Or - if you were really lucky - Roman Gladiators, ex-Quaker Foods.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

R is for Round The Bend!

One of my long-term plans is to reproduce the old Waddington's board game 'Formula 1' as a wooden inlaid coffee-table top. I think the game was also called Grand-Prix at one time and Ravensburger had a Grand Prix with 6 teams of three cars.

I also want to scale it up, so that there is room for 8 teams of two cars instead of the standard 6 teams of one. Scaling should be easy as Waddington's scaled it down for their pocket set 'Pit Stop' in the House of Games series. All I should have to do is work out the scaleing and reverse scale beyond the original to the point where I have a wider track and 8 pits! Ultimately there would be a faster racing-line with semi-fast lines either side, and rule tweaks to enable more pitting over longer races.

As a result I'm collecting micro-cars to make up the teams, I haven't decided whether to paint-up pairs, or wait until I get 8 similar coloured pairs? This is what I have so far and while Green, Red, Yellow and Blue are all well served, Grey, Black and Orange are looking poor, although - typically - just after I took these, a parcel arrived from Bill over at Moonbase Central with a beautiful Grey Jaguar similar to the old Lone*Star treble-o die-cast, but in plastic, so I just need a Black and Orange still.

Top Photo - L-R; 2 from Kinder; 3 from Grand-Prix (?); A colour variant, small space car (?) in yellow, and two slightly different versions of an early racing car, a blue Cellulose-acetate one and a green die-cast one, probably from early board games; The 4 cars from the Pit Stop set, although Boardgamegeek shows this moulding in 6 colours in some editions of Formula 1.

Bottom Photo has the Formula 1 cars in the first two rows, and then cars from two other board games, the first two possibly from a different issue of Pit Stop (?). The final two might be an early issue of Grand-Prix (?) and are plastic copies of the Monopoly car already on this blog somewhere.

Boardgamegeek fails to deliver when trying to ascribe these cars as it has several duplicate entries, and both F1 and GP are common to to many games, with lots of other car race and touring games over the years!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

M is for Monopoly - Playing Pieces Through The Years


Originally posted on the 'Other Collectables' site - which I've now closed down - without text, I guess I should add a bit of text to explain the image...
They are basically arranged oldest to the rear, newest to the front, with a plastic set (which I believe was a limited edition) as the full front rank, with a new car design and a sausage-dog/Dachshund.

During the war there was a set with card flats in little slotted wooden holders/bases, which I have yet to track down, and there have been a few changes over the years with the battleship being replaced during my childhood with a Norfolk Broads type river-cruiser thing, the thimble changed for a scottie-dog, and the slipper becoming a boot. The racing car was also 'modernised' (and one assumes there must have been somthong before the mid-cenury design?

Maybe the gun, as I have seen antiqued lead versions of it, but this one with the other three items are from a recent limited edition. The rat might have no connection with the game whatsoever, and the two plastic cars at the back were from another - racing car - game altogether and were also issued by Tom Smith in Christmas mini-crackers.