Pannini Stickers

Remember Pannini Stickers? When it came to "Swapsies", the indistuputable king at school were Pannini Football Stickers. These were an evolution of the Soccer bubble gum cards of the seventies. The stickers were swappable until you committed it to the sticker album, then unless a serious swap was offered that sticker was in for good. Though most kids had at least one obvious spot in the sticker album where a stick was steamed off again, and his story of the reasons why he couldnt resist the millions of stickers in return for it.



Each team would have a badge often with Gold or Silver background which made it feel valuable, but by the time you opened the 1oth Everton badge in as many packets it lost its appeal rather rappidlly.

For me the League stickers were the ones, The Euro and World cup were far more challenging as the names made it impossible to know what kids were talking about. I mean saying i'll swap John Jones for Steve Smith is a lot easier than Fibonacci Vesperados from Italy. Still for Italian school kids i guess the rolls reversed.

So what stickers do you remember, we would love to hear from you at Skooldays

The Goodies

The Goodies were a mad cap comic team that rained supreme with there unique and often loose canon humour in the 1970's. The Goodies were Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, and Bill Oddie. The Goodies were a kind of insane Trio based in Cricklewood and were up for any challenge each week. In effect they were a cross between Monty Python and the Three Stooges.



As kids though, The goodies humour was so far fetched it made great fodder for the conversations and stupid pranks the following day at school. No one can forget the incredible Kitty Kong or the amazing Beanstalk episodes.

Their is a club called The Goodies Rule - OK! This Fan Club is an internet based club for fans of The Goodies (Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, and Bill Oddie). The club started in 1995. There are around 5 thousand members in more than 70 countries!

I can remember the "string vest episode" where it was cool to wear string, string vest string pants, every thing was string. To add to its craziness you had well know celebrities pushing the boundaries by appearing on there and supporting the craziness. Poor old Nicholas Parsons got ribbed many a time for his ugly mug. It was crazy , bizarre, but very good fun and as kids it really was a gem that should be repeated one day.

Children's Television

Watch with Mother which included Andy Pandy, Muffin the Mule, the Wooden tops and Poggles woods to name a few, were often the first tv memory kids had in the sixties and seventies.



For many years there was little else except this lunch time treat. Then the after school slot kicked in in the early seventies where Play school generally kicked things off. The format on BBC was pretty much the same for many years. Around 4pm Play School which had already been aired earlier in the morning around 11am on BBC2 now headed the BBC 1 childrens TV spot.

After playschool there would normally be a cartoon of 5 mins from several sources. Crystal Tips and Alastair, Huckleberry hound, Whacky Races, Pixie and Dixie with Jinx the cat, all shared this 5 minute spot.

Then Jackanory made the next section and stayed there for years and years, unless it was Bernard Cribbens it was switch off time. A time to start chewing on my Jam and Marmite mixed sarnies.

John Cravens Newsround came in for a quick 5 minutes of news. This slot was made to make the news pallatable for kids and it really worked.

The next slot was a little open depending on what day it was, it was normally around 20 to 30 minutes. Tuesdays and Thursdays were Blue Peter, other days would be some type of series like Grange Hill, or The Tomorrow People, Dramas such as The Changes, or more exciting shows like Crackerjack and Cheggers plays pop, also Roy Castles Record Breakers were on for many years. Mixed in with the previous list were other cartoon like Scooby Doo or several other Hanna Barberra treats like Hong Kong Phooey, Josie and the Pussycats, The Funky Phantom and so on.

Finally the last 5 minutes was occuppied by another 5 minute cartoon or animation such as Ludwig, the Magic Roundabout, The Wombles, Sir Prancelot and Captain Pugwash. By then Dad was home and everyone was about to settle down for the news - that was so boring as a kid!

AMX Javelin

The Superfast Matchbox number 09 AMX Javelin was one for every boys collection. This was a seriously fast little car and would give most cars a run for their money on any racing track.



The car was first produced in 1964 and normally was seen in green though other rarer colours are known such as blue or red.

The green one had opening doors and the blue one had an additional opening hood with
detailed engine, opening doors and trunk, front wheels turn, 'gem' headlights
The Scale was 1:73

The AMX sports car itself that the model was based on was replaced by the AMX Javelin in the early 70's, a four-seater muscle car. Matchbox produced the javelin in several colors, with a custom hood scoop. In 1978, the Javelin was offered as special edition which included flared body work and wider tyres.

Match boxes

Collecting match box labels was another hobby in the seventies. I Don't know why, but I had a phase as a kid of a bizarre need to collect match boxes. Most kids would be keener on what you could do with the matches - not me. It seems that the fact that there were so many designs and companies to choose from, then match boxes were extremely collectable.



Many of the labels started to encourage their collectableness by providing images in a series. One set i collected as a boy was of trains. While writng this i'm still looking for this set that's lodged in my memory.

Swan vestas were quite different to all other boxes. Different size, different in colour and pink headed long white sticks. But they stood out as very different and therefore no collection would be complete without it.

Android 2

By the look of these graphics i know what you're thinking, if this is version 2, then how bad were the graphics on version one?. Well actually at the time this game was well above its rivals, a well polished look and feel and solid game play.



Similar to Ant Attack, it was a a 3D maze, with the aim of the game quite clear...to destroy 5 Millitoids. a Millitoid is a large worm-like creatures which roam around the maze. The maze is also filled with other enemies, landmines, trees and other features.

Android 2 was a shoot 'em up maze video game written by Vortex Software in 1983 for the ZX Spectrum. The game was compelling as it was challenging on every level.

The Millitoids were destroyed with three shots to the head. When all five are destroyed, the player moves onto the next of three mazes.

Sinclair User found the graphics to be an outstanding feature, the 3D effect being novel for an early ZX Spectrum game.The main Spectrum users magazine CRASH gave Android 2 one of its highest ratings.

What do People do All Day? Book

In 1968 a book entitled "What do People do All Day?" was released by Richard Scarry. This gem of a book has continued to be a massive seller.

With incredibly detailed illustrations, kids would spend hours and hours on a journey of detail scanning and double scanning each page of illustrative detail.



The book is about what people do all day. Since different people all do different things, the book covers a lot of topics. The first section looks at a standard Busy Town itself along the high street. The book cleverly shows scenes above ground, and below ground in intricate detail. We see the men digging tunnels and the underground pipes, street cleaners at work, and peeks into the bank and various shops as well as the fire department, doctor, dentist, and so on.

Other sections of the book show what Mummy does all day at home, what the farmer does, the door to door salesman, the policeman, the fireman, the blacksmith, the postmen, the ferry workers, and so on. Of course over the years these things have changed and so the intricate detail of each drawing to has undergone revisions to align it with the latest thinking and political correctness.

For many young ones this is a genius way of educating young ones for the first tine and on-going education. I'm sure many young kids remember learning there first understanding of certain trades and businesses from this great book "What do People do All Day?".

Candy Stick Cards

Talk about politaclly and morrally incorrect. In the 70s if you could teach kids the wrongness of smoking from an early age, then rot their teeth at the same time! today they are known as candy sticks, which keeps everyone happy and means the red tip is no longer needed on the end of the stick.



The hook wasn't nicotine, but the set of 40 to 50 cards to collect. There were loads of weird looking animals like some set of drawings from Ricky Gervais' Flanimals. They were called Animals of Secret Island and were availble in 1975 onwards. They were the same size as Brooke Bond tea cards and were aimed at younger children, surrounded the antics of the inhabitants of a secret monster island.

Follow the exploits of Dinosaurs Dippydactus & Babydactus and their friends, Hector the Frog, Maxwell the Spider and the Glumph. Very weird and difficult to understand why Bassett produced such weird combinations.

Apparently the range of cards were so successful that a competition was held for children to design their own monsters to appear in Series Two - however the second set was a real mistake, relying on the original children's drawings rather than adapting them in the same style, producing a set of scrap drawings from 3 year old, as they were just that.

Weetabix promotions

Back in 1974 when Robin Hood was at the cinemas as the latest Walt disney release, kids could collect these great cardboard standups and scenery to act out a scene from the cartoon. This promotion featured a set of card characters and backgrounds printed on the cardboard of the box packaging. The more weetabix the bigger the scene or amount of characters.



In the mid-1970s Weetabix ran several other promotions on various themes - all featuring stand-up, card characters and colourful backgrounds with which children could recreate action scenes. As well as the Walt Disney Robin Hood cartoon characters. The other set i remember were Dr Who and the Cybermen and also the Asterix cartoon characters.

Fisher-Price Activity Centre

I never had one, but boy as i grew up i wish i had. They were chunky and clunky, with moving wheels, and clicking dials, dingers and squeeks and stronger than a Tonka truck. This really put a new spin on kids going to work.



The unit comprised a mirror, a hare and tortoise slider, a pump-action style bell and at least three different types of spinning discs and finally a telephone dial.

It's true i really wanted one the first few times i saw it, but now as an adult i must admit hearing it for a few minutes soon helps me change my mind. It would drive any adult nuts!

There have been loads of updates and various versions of this product, but the original Fisher-Price Activity Centre will no doubt remain in the minds of many of you.