I needed to google. Have fun! I have not the patience nor detail-oriented mind (I'm slapdash in practical things) for such things, but I loved looking at models when I went to hobby stores.
I made Airfix kits in great numbers as a boy - sadly just 4 have survived the passage of time, house moves, and being playthings for my nephews. Once I have the two cameras I'm working on now back together, I must get my bottom in gear and finish the Dambusters Lancaster I was bought a good 10 years ago for Christmas. That may be my last, as I realise now how limited my skills really are!
Back in 83 my parents proved they did actually listen to me and I found a Warhammer Fantasy Battles rules box and a couple of blister packs of Orcs and Goblins under the Christmas tree. By mid 85 I was working for GW as a painter which funded me through university and allowed me to be part if the launch of the greatest game of all time, Warhammer 40K. I don't work there any more but as I speak I am clipping a new set of fighty space Nuns off the sprue and getting my paints ready.
Back in 83 my parents proved they did actually listen to me and I found a Warhammer Fantasy Battles rules box and a couple of blister packs of Orcs and Goblins under the Christmas tree. By mid 85 I was working for GW as a painter which funded me through university and allowed me to be part if the launch of the greatest game of all time, Warhammer 40K. I don't work there any more but as I speak I am clipping a new set of fighty space Nuns off the sprue and getting my paints ready.
We like lego recent highlights are the disney pixar up house set (the mini figures are fab) and the big classic spaceship (who's proper name escapes me).
We try to not go crazy with it due to space and finance...
I enjoyed the references to Hot Wheels and Scalextric up-thread. Being into the latter pretty much compelled access to a soldering iron (for when the rivet-y things used to retain the brushes fell off the ends of their wires, as they always did) and that led on to other engineering things, or it did for me.
I think I liked my toy cars which were closely modelled on real ones, the best. UK readers might remember 'Britains' who made very real farm animals (I had some of those), tractors, hay bales and milk churns etc. My favourite was a Britains dumper truck, which from memory must have been based closely on the kind of 70s Thwaites dumper I sometimes get to drive (if it starts) at the engineering museum where I now volunteer. I also thought their muck spreader was pretty cool, but the museum doesn't have one of those. It all sounds very rural for a boy from Laandan / Essex, but my Mum was from Wiltshire when that was all farms so maybe that's where the impetus came from.
If anyone remembers these toys or any of those upthread mentioned by all the posters, you'll remember the exact ones (colour and all) because everyone had the same things made by the same companies. If you get hold of some Ladybird books (UK readers), you'll see super-real pictures of those same, exact things. Even the jumper on the lady behind the counter at the newsagents (or wherever she is) - my Mum had that jumper. That kind of commonality, including what we were watching on 3 channels of TV (well, one for me as it was always BBC children's telly for us) and sharing with our friends the next day at school - will be something lacking or at least different for my own kids, which today's much greater heterogeneity.
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Awesome!!
We try to not go crazy with it due to space and finance...
I think I liked my toy cars which were closely modelled on real ones, the best. UK readers might remember 'Britains' who made very real farm animals (I had some of those), tractors, hay bales and milk churns etc. My favourite was a Britains dumper truck, which from memory must have been based closely on the kind of 70s Thwaites dumper I sometimes get to drive (if it starts) at the engineering museum where I now volunteer. I also thought their muck spreader was pretty cool, but the museum doesn't have one of those. It all sounds very rural for a boy from Laandan / Essex, but my Mum was from Wiltshire when that was all farms so maybe that's where the impetus came from.
If anyone remembers these toys or any of those upthread mentioned by all the posters, you'll remember the exact ones (colour and all) because everyone had the same things made by the same companies. If you get hold of some Ladybird books (UK readers), you'll see super-real pictures of those same, exact things. Even the jumper on the lady behind the counter at the newsagents (or wherever she is) - my Mum had that jumper. That kind of commonality, including what we were watching on 3 channels of TV (well, one for me as it was always BBC children's telly for us) and sharing with our friends the next day at school - will be something lacking or at least different for my own kids, which today's much greater heterogeneity.
I see what you did there!
😉