I remember so much and with such fondness those halcyon days when fighting dragons and racing cars, piloting spaceships in galaxies far, far away and playing cards was not a flight of fancy, rather a way of life. Life did not break your heart and offer funerals and divorces, it did not offer up debt collectors and worries about which school your kids went to, it simply allowed the innocence of youth to blossom and allowed the boundaries of my imagination to expand the possibilities of what I could do, before adolescence and responsibility imploded and destroyed the only way of life I knew as a child.
I could have included street games such as Mob, Kingball, Bad Eggs and What’s The Time Mr Wolf? I could recount the games of war we played as a group of street children in the local Morman Chruch grounds. The delight I found in playing Subbuteo or the comfort I sought in solving a Rubiks Cube and then Rubiks Snake. I had so much as a child, so incredibly much. Was I spoiled? Undoubtedly, and I don’t blame myself for that any more than I blame my parents, whose austere Rhondda upbringing had wanted them to allow their children the luxuries they never had. I don’t have horrible childhood memories and I am sure should I dig enough, I could uncover some but why should I? My memory is only as good as the life I have lived and in those days, those magical days of early youth, they were to become a force that would shape me beyond my own understanding.
Star Wars Figures
Any boy can surely relate to this. I am not talking of the current batch of figures with laser cut facial features that make the characters come to life in a child’s fanciful mind. I am talking about the old school figures with legs that only moved at the hips and arms that only moved at the shoulders. I am talking of the figures that looked facially as though they were sexually ambiguous, where Han Solo looked more like Henry Ford than Harrison Ford.
You used to buy them in the little independent toy shops scattered all over the local villages, or on a rare excursion into town to visit the toy department of John Menzies, Boots or Woolworths. Little cardboard packages with your character encased in a hard bit of plastic. Turn the box over and you could see the full range of figures available. And if you possessed a list learning mentality such as myself could soon recite the figures with their list number and who was next to them. I remember these toys with so much reverence I can recall my delight when I received Klaatu as a Christmas present off my Aunty Margaret, or the day IÂ bought Bib Fortuna on a family holiday in Bude during 1983. Joy was uncompounded when I managed to get my hands on Nien Nunb and the Emperor, who you had to send off for with promotional packaging from Weetabix or some other cereal.
Some kids went further and bought the whole range of vehicles and one boy in school even had a homemade death star but these were not for me, I just wanted the action figures. In the end I amassed the whole collection. I even had Sy Snootles, Max Rebo and Droopy McCool, the band who played in Jabba’s palace. There were mini sets to complete too, for the collector. All the bounty hunters, not just Boba Fett; you needed the bandaged veteran Dengar, the lizard faced Bossk and the nine foot tall robot ID-88 to impress . It was no good just having Wicket W Warwick and thinking you knew your Ewoks, talk to me when you knew that Logray was the medicine man and the Chief was Chirpa.
There was something just magical about adding another figure to your collection, be it an Emperors Royal Guard or a tiny Ugnaught. The smell of the new plastic was intoxicating and the hardest thing of all was remembering which tiny gun belonged to which character.
Not long after I was married, we were so short of cash I sold the entire collection for a hundred pounds. You can’t put a price on nostalgia and I accept that, but should I ever choose to buy that collection back it would now cost me thousands.
Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks
I remember these so well, and with such genuine joy, that I now own several copies that I still delve into for a bit of bathtime reading. I also have all available digital versions stored on my smart phone. The first one I received was a complete surprise to me, a throwaway present at the bottom of a nine year olds Xmas stocking. I can still recall the fascination at the cover, a wizard peering into a crystal ball. The title of this book ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’. The cover just had me hooked. All you needed was a pencil and two dice and before you knew it you were fighting orcs, dragons, lost in mazes, chancing your luck against Dark Elves and all sorts of mythical creatures. For someone who had fallen in love with JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth a couple of years before this was manna from Heaven.
You see, this book was different. You read a numbered paragraph and then had to choose from a few options, leading you to turn to a non-sequential different numbered paragraph. In this manner, and following the tagline on the books cover ‘YOU became the hero’. My mother worked in the Deri Stores so had the chance to get her hands on the books on the day of their release because such was the success of the initial book, more followed. I defeated Balthus Dire in his ‘Citadel of Chaos’ and sought Yaztromo’s aid in aiding the dwarves of Stonebridge in locating the two pieces of their stolen, fabled Warhammer. The day I bested Zanbar Bone in the dastardly ‘City of Thieves’ was almost as special as becoming Baron Sukumvit’s champion in the ‘Deathtrap Dungeon’.
The books were written by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, and when Steve Jackson launched his Sorcery! series of four books I was equally as hooked. ‘Khare – The Cityport of Traps’, a particular favourite. These types of books have often been imitated but never, in my honest opinion equalled, let alone bettered. ‘Out of the Pit’ was a companion book launched a couple of years later which listed 250 different types of monster/creature that you could encounter. I knew the stats for every beast contained within. This really was a light version of Dungeons and Dragons with far less emphasis on role playing and far more linear naturally, due to the constraints of storytelling within bound covers.
Toy Soldiers
Now let’s be very clear here, these are the ultimate toy for a geek. Hugely collectable and with so many different manufacturers it is almost impossible to ever see a complete collection of all types available. I was first given a box of British Infantry 1/35 scale soldiers. I think there were about sixteen figures in the box. For a young mind that had never been exposed to war it not only opened up a genuine fascination into military history but also reinforced in me at an early age that a person’s vocabulary is only limited by his inability to study different areas of life. I knew what platoons, brigades and mortars were long before I knew what an idiosyncrasy was.
I would place the soldiers at the back of my father s freshly dug borders and throw stones at them from five or six yards away, mud would spray and soldiers would die. I soon moved onto the smaller 1/72 scale as this allowed for packs of 50 soldiers to be bought and therefore the scope for larger scale battles was wider. Airfix and matchbox were the primary manufacturers at that time and although Airfix had a wider range, Matchbox produced far more detailed and actionlike figures.
I would spend hours during the holidays waging wars with these little men. I would set all of them up (and by the end I had literally thousands) and then sit at the other end of the living room throwing pretend bombs at them or firing little ball bearings from a Crossfire gun (Crossfire being a great game in its own right).
I knew the difference between a Japanese Officer and an ANZAC auxiliary rifleman by the age of 8. I knew that the Africa Korps were nor from Africa and that the 8th Army had old Monty at their head as they drove Erwin Rommel’s troops out of Northern Africa. I knew what a Ghurka was and the history behind their famous Kukri knives. I could identify the rank structure of both Allied and Axis forces. So what? Well other than being a shoe in for a place on Junior Mastermind if it had been around then, it proved that through playing as a child it can open up doors and expose pathways to knowledge that simply are not there in the general curriculum. Playing is simply a form of learning in my mind, whether in the direct manner of interaction or through the way I allude to above, with it engaging the inquisitive mind to broaden its scope for development.
The biggest problem I had was that my dog Sherry, had a taste for the little fellas and my dad would go apoplectic when a Japanese Infantry flag bearer would not pass through her rear end and he was called in to extricate it. When he discovered I had bought a box of German Mountain Troops with their figures often carrying skis across their shoulder, he actually apologised to the dog in advance.
Top Trumps
What possibly was there not to love about Top Trumps? Both fun and educational, these were the mainstay of many a rainy day amongst the kids on my street when parents forbade us from playing outside. Incredibly simple to play and massive amounts of variety. We would host tournaments in the street, spending hours laughing at the worst cards that always seemed to pop up when you least wanted them. For those unfamiliar with the idea, you had a pack of 28 cards on a subject, and it could be any subject from Battleships to Dinosaurs, Wild West Heroes to Horror characters. Each card would list five to six statistics, such as weight, height, age etc. You simply stated one and if your card had the highest stat then you won the cards off the other players. When you had the whole deck you were the winner.
Have I mentioned I am a geek? This will prove it. I would often play top trumps on my own. Placing the cards face down, I would host my own tournaments, whittling the cards down until there was a winner. Not geeky enough? I would award the cards points based on their performance of reaching the final, semi-final and so on and then draw up ranking lists. Geekdom on an entirely new level.
The real bonus with these cards, as touched on with others toys already, is the huge educational value that was contained within. You would learn without even being aware that there were lessons being taught. By the age of 7 I knew the names of the major battleships in the world and what the displacement for the USS Nimitz was. I knew the wing span of the Vulcan bomber and the cruising speed of the Lockheed SR-71a Blackbird. I knew how many men Billy the Kid was reputed to have killed and the length in metres of a T-Rex. It was the perfect tool for teaching me basic facts on a huge range of different subject matter and no doubt was instrumental in my continued love of learning, for finding out obscure facts about even more obscure subjects.
Hand held electronic games
At the start of the 80’s Donkey Kong came to life. A little orange portable device with a flip screen that allowed you to propel Mario ever upwards over the girder strewn path to his destiny, toppling Donkey Kong and rescuing his true love. The big ape at the top right of the second screen would repeatedly hurl barrels down the path that Mario would have to jump over whilst maintaining his momentum.
This was to signal the advent of numerous copies and sequels. We had Donkey Kong Jr, Shark Attack and copious amounts of inferior copies. What it did do however was prove to the big companies of that era that there was a huge market for this type of entertainment and within three years technology and customer demand saw the market soar. Pacman was introduced onto the latest upgrade, a larger hand held device that would no longer fit in the pocket, Space Invaders would follow and arcade hits such as Scramble were released.
You could run up a debt equivalent to Greece if you purchased the batteries that were needed to power these things up, or you could get a universal adaptor that would simply plug into the socket on the wall. I wonder how much money the Electricity Board made when these games were introduced. According to my father I paid for them to go on holiday the amount I burned.
My personal favourite, Astro Wars. Even the tinny sound of that machine to this day evokes a wave of nostalgia I could drown in. As a small kid at the turn of the 80’s I would learn to swim at Empire Pool. Following a session there I would wind up in the cafeteria, having a Wagon Wheel and 10p to go and play Galaxians in the far right corner, where the console stood. To play this game in my own home, sitting in my own chair was a dream come true.
These days, kids are spoiled for choice with the huge number of games and graphics that are a thousand times, if not more, improved on what we ‘suffered’ with. That said, there was a simplicity and an appeal that today’s generation could never relate to. The satisfaction of completing a mission on GTA 37 can be no more satisfying today for them, than finishing the third level of Frogger was for us back in the day. You see, ultimately you can dress something up as fancy as you like, but as with everything the true value lays at the very core. Gameplay cannot be replaced by pixelated shaders and gamma correction.
Hindsight often comes with rose tinted glasses but in this instance, I would willingly take a step back in time for one more chance to play these games as we did back then.
Board Games
Now this will cause controversy for some as firstly board games are a genre, and some I will name can trace their origins back a lot further than the 80’s!! Regardless, no Christmas was complete without the addition of at least one board game to the collection. They may be seen as something that is or was dragged out of the cupboard solely at Christmas time but I referred to them as ‘bored games’. They were a failsafe means of whittling away a few hours either with friends or by making up rules so that they could be played alone.
My personal favourite was Stratego, a chess like game involving 40 pieces per side. The rules were very straightforward and to me was a happy medium between the simplicity of draughts and the insanely complex chess. The premise was that using the pieces at your disposal you would try and locate, then eliminate the enemy Field Marshall. The only problem was that only another Field Marshall could take this piece, or the Spy, and the Spy could be taken by any other piece on the board.
Monopoly was always going to feature and many, many an hour was spent with my neighbours battling it out over Park Lane and Mayfair. Mousetrap, The Game of Life and of course, Scrabble, were all welcome additions to the portfolio and I still love Scrabble to this day, not that I get many challengers of a serious nature. I was never a lover of chess or backgammon. I could play both but the serious nature of chess was too off-putting and for some reason I associated backgammon with decrepit, piss soaked gentlemen at the bar who had lost the energy and will to even attempt to play bowls!
My books
Simply put, I would die without books. No dramatic overuse of the word there. I may continue to breathe but my brain would crumble to dust. I love reading and always have. Even on the toilet I have to read! As a child however there were two book collections that I would read over and over. The first was a series of books called the Piccolo Explorer books. These were the most indescribably informative books I had ever encountered. Split into subseries there was one called History Makers comprising of four books. They covered Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc and rather strangely seeing the military connections of the previous three, Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing. To learn so much at such a formative age, an impressionable age is really a big deal. Of course I didn’t think that at the time, it is only the ability to retrospectively reason with myself as to why I still thrive to learn every day of my life I get drawn back to these books. There was one called ‘The Violent Earth’ and it discussed Tsunami’s and their cause. It looked at earthquakes and for volcanoes used Vesuvius as a case study. Now this could, and maybe it did, have made me incredibly precocious but you know what, so what. To know about the D-Day landings, understand the rank structure of the Roman Army and learn about the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire was simply irresistible.
The second book series was one that served some educational purpose but was read mostly for fun. The Goscinny and Uderzo created characters of a little Gaulish village that held out against the yolk of the all conquering Roman army. If you don’t know who I am referring to now then the names of Asterix, Obelix, Getafix and companions will mean nothing. There was a fishmonger called Unhygienix, a blacksmith called Fulliautomatix and a tuneless bard called Cacofonix. This play on words is something that I still find humorous and anyone who knows me will know how much I like punning. It all stems from a little moustachioed Frenchman and his fat mate.
Adidas Tango football
Now, this is important. I am not talking about any Adidas football here. I’m talking about THE Adidas football. Originally the World Cup official ball during the 1978 tournament, four years of technological advancement saw the ball used for the 1982 finals, the Adidas Tango Espana the ultimate football. It was the last ball to have a complete leather coating and even though the Azteca that was used four years later blatantly copied the design, it was not the same.
As a child I was used to using loads of different footballs, match days were the domain of the Mitre Multiplex and we used horribly pimpled rubber coated balls for indoor training that were awful to head but great to strike, but without doubt, no single ball has ever come close to the perfection the Tango represented. It was the sheer simplicity of the design; the symmetrical markings and the sheer ‘feel’ it provided. I remember being the happiest child alive when I had one and despite the pleading of my father insisted on taking it to school. In those days there may two or three impromptu games taking place at dinnertimes on the school field but not if someone saw the Tango. It was more than iconic; it genuinely was a one off in footballing terms. Easy to control, hugely responsive to spin and trappable whatever pace it arrived at, this ball was yet another reason I fell in love with the beautiful game. The fact it was a ball used in one of the most exciting World Cups in history is no doubt subliminally etched in my mind when the celebrations of Tardelli and Altobelli were scant consolation for a child who had fallen in love with the yellow and light blue of Brazil. This was the best team to never win the world cup, and such is my confidence in that statement I refuse to even debate this point anymore. The sublime skill of Zico and creative genius of Socrates, the maverick striking of Eder and the box to box battling of Gene Wilder lookalike Falcao, they made me believe in magic.
I scored some great goals of my own in the three weeks before someone stole it from me, and no matter what today’s youth claim, take it from someone who really does know his football, this ball will never be improved upon. In terms of durability, fashion and other aesthetic qualities perhaps it may one day be equalled, but in terms of total playability it was the absolute pinnacle.
Matchbox/Corgi toy cars
Forget the Micro Machines, the radio controlled cars and the airfix display models, there was nothing to surpass the feel of an original diecast model of a Datsun Sunny, or a Ford Cortina in your hand. I owned up to fifty at one point in my childhood. They were kept in an orange vegetable rack and as mentioned before, allowed the geek in me to flow out to the highest extent. I would race them up and down the living room all day long. I would race all fifty, taking to turns to push them with the same force and then it was up to them. A good car would make the length of the living room with three good pushes, the inferior or simply cumbersome vehicle taking up to six. Of course they would then be ranked as was my forte.
I still remember the best of the best and the worst of the worst. I loved a little red mini, and I loved my bright orange Formula 1 car, which was deceptively slow on medium shag pile. I would make jumps and obstacles for them to hurtle over and around, and then one day I read about the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race. My mother immediately informed me I was no staying up all night so I hatched a new plan. On a few occasions I would use the route between my neighbour’s front porch and my own as start and end points for outdoor races. They would encounter a small piece of pavement, probably no more than eight metres to traverse but the plot was hatched. If they could cope with eight metres they could cope with a hundred. My little cul-de-sac featured a little roundabout and so I thought this was the perfect track. Banned from the road for safety reasons I used the pavement. I hardly slept the night before such was my childlike excitement. Even when the next day it rained it made no difference.
Everything went well for the first fifty metres or so but then a real tragedy occurred, one that still upsets me today. I had spent a month’s pocket money on a black and white Lamborghini. It was tearing the race up, leaving all other cars in its wake and then…… it fell in a drain, and I howled. I screamed in despair that my race favourite and clear leader was now gone. My dad had explained what drains were for and with all Gods as my witness, whenever we went to the beach for the next few years I would pray, literally, that this car would wash up on shore. It never did, and life was never the same afterwards.
Scalextric
This was one step up from the diecast models. These cars were exact replicas of the Formula 1 and other racing cars we would see on World Of Sport and Grandstand. My first set was a standard figure of 8 track with a two cars included, a red mini and a yellow one. Within two years my collection had grown to 8 vehicles. I had a six wheel Tyrrel Elf, a yellow Renault, the obligatory Ferrari and Porsche and a rather out of place Ford Escort. Not only did I have the extra vehicles but also extra track pieces that could be purchased in toy shops and model shops. Ihad a chicane, a lap counter, a hump backed bridge and a few other additional extras to make race day more interesting.
The rules were simple enough to master. You placed a car on a track that contained two grooves running the length of the section, bordered with metallic strips, (you could, if your parents were rich, get four lane tracks!!). You then held down the trigger on a gun like handset and the car would shoot around the track. All too often though the cars would career off the track and this soon became more my idea of fun. I am sure a psychologist would make a field day of this but I would set soldiers up all over the track and then race the cars, casting a warped wake of destruction and carnage in their trail. I therefore think in hindsight the creators of Grand Theft Auto actually should honour me financially. I was a visionary twenty years ahead of my time after all, wasn’t I?
The huge draw back to Scalextric was a very simple one, the sheer size of the tracks. For more than a basic figure of eight set up you needed a huge amount of space and with houses continuing their decrease in overall size from the 60’s to present, it is easy to see why this is now very much a niche market when once it was actually a very, very popular childhood game.
So there you have it.
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