Xmas 1972 ish, me and my best mate Mark both looked forward to, and got this, from Santa and loved it.
I got a dragon 32 one year as a birthday Xmas combo…. Conned my mum into thinking it would be educational…. 10 print BFC 20 go to 10 Hours of fun. Especially as games were a fortune and then stopped being made after about a year…
1969 - 70 as a 4 or 5 year old I wanted the proper man's stuff, like wot my Grandad had. Got this from the hardware corner shop at the top of the road - vividly remember going to choose it with my mum and dad.
Loved mine, and still resent my Dad for throwing all my childhood stuff away when I fled the nest :-( Was a great game.
1975 ish, another Grandad influence. A proper manly wireless, with a proper manly aeriel. Mine had the proper military style dials and was faux-leather bound.
Another 1973 ish .......... I got an Action Man with gripping hands, to replace my hand-me-down original. Not only that, I got the Helicopter!!
1978. Once again hoping to impress Grandad - all he did was take the p155. "How do you tell the time looking at a black face? Why should I want to press a button to tell the time?". He had a point I guess, but that was a ruthless Xmas day.
I had the Pulsar but Omega did the original, hideously expensive as you'd expect... Great advertising slogan for it...'' Press his button and watch his little face light up. ''
1976/7 train set woes. My best mate was getting a Hornby Inter City 125 train set with about 500 yards of tracks with loops, figure-of-8's, stations platforms. I loved it. We sat and stared at the Grattan catalogue since about October, counting down the days. I asked for the same; things weren't too good at home by then. I got the GWR freight set, with about a 3 foot circle of track, and unlike the image, no transformer. So off we went to grandparents for Xmas day, armed with new present and my dad's 1950 transformer with a 3 pin round plug. I spent most of the day watching Dad and Grandad re-wire the ancient transformer. At one point they blew a fuse. The tree dimmed, Sound of Music went off ............ still, at least we had each other. Some months later, with a gift voucher and pocket money I bought a pullman carriage. Somehow it didn't look right being pulled around by a Steam shunter and Kellogs truck.
My parents were the opposite. They urged me not to get rid, but I was too daft to listen. I wish they'd just taken it away and boxed it up. That's what we did with some of our kids stuff. We're now slowly digging it out again for our grandson to play with - it's like discovering buried treasure.
The year after, LCD was all the rage, and my posh mate got a Casio with a stopwatch that counted 1/100ths of a sec. I got a cheap imitation made by 'Roterna' from memory, which counted in 1/10ths of a second. Strangely, the battery went if you used Stopwatch too much. We used to time silly things, like how long an advert lasted, or how long you could hold your breath.
Anybody of a certain age get any wall-walkers / wall-creepers, early 70's? They were good on 1970's vinyl-silk emulsion walls
I once wrote to action man (early 90s) and asked them to send me a new beret as the one I had didnt fit a particular doll. I arrived back home from school a week later to find they'd sent me 4(!!!) Action Men as an apology. I was gobsmacked and over-the-moon excited/grateful
We got this in 82ish i think and pretty much defined my route into technology and computers which became my career. Also had Amstrad CPC464 a few years later then an amiga but the speccy was the first and we spent most of our childhood on them and at computer clubs copying games etc and getting cheats for games. Awesome bit of kit. We even got a book of games and hand typed all the lines of code to make the games.
Also rememebr the Raleigh Boxer XL - had the flappy mudguard that you could bend over and make it sound like a motorbike until it wore away then we used to use a can or bottle. https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/...pper_360_ee8d60837b75fae012e0ed5d8cb7a942.jpg
I had a Raleigh Burner in gold with oval pipe. It was second hand and the previous owner had fitted front and back stunt pegs. Wish I'd still got it now, they're a fortune on ebay.