Waddingtons Table Soccer

Waddingtons Table Soccer, originally uploaded by mearso.

1970s Waddingtons Table Soccer, This was a very far fetched tiddlywinks, but some how it worked

Bottle Tops Of The UK: 60s-70s

Bottle Tops Of The UK: 60s-70s, originally uploaded by recycletimber2.

Ah Corona Bottle tops
That was a quick way to gain pocket money!

Who remembers that dodge in the 70's?

Winton in the 90's

Cat and Mouse Ornament

Ekkkkkk, originally uploaded by CJ's.

Any one remeber this
Essential ornament for the 1970s home

Space 1999

Space 1999 (Cosmos 1999), originally uploaded by FRANCK44.

How cool was this toy. Based on Space 1999, it was the first attempt since the demise of Star Trek in 1969 at producing a large-scale weekly science fiction series, and the show drew a great deal of visual inspiration (and technical expertise) from the Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. The show's special effects director Brian Johnson had in fact previously worked on both Thunderbirds (as Brian Johncock) and 2001.

It was the last in a long line of successful science-fiction series that the Andersons produced as a working partnership, beginning with Supercar in the early Sixties and including the famed marionette fantasy series Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and Joe 90, as well as the gritty live-action alien-invasion drama UFO. Space: 1999 owes much of the visual design to pre-production work for a never-made second series of UFO which would have featured a more extensive Moonbase. It has since become a cult classic, and is available on DVD.

I-SPY

I-SPY, originally uploaded by Leo Reynolds.

These badges were available with their corresponding book.
The I-SPY books are spotter's guides written for British children, and particularly successful in the 1950s and 1960s.

The I-SPY Tribe was based on the I-SPY Books, some forty small volumes that sold in hundreds of thousands. Each book covered a subject such as I-SPY Cars, I-SPY on the Pavement, I-SPY Churches, I-SPY on a Train Journey, etc. As children spotted objects such as coalhole covers, oak trees, semaphore signals, fire engines, whelks, and so on, they recorded the event in the relevant book, and gained points. Once the book was complete, it could be sent to Big Chief I-SPY for a feather and order of merit.

The company was supposedly run by a Red Indian chief called Big Chief I-Spy. The original Big Chief I-Spy was Charles Warrell, a former headmaster who created I-Spy towards the end of his working life. He retired in 1956, but lived on until 1995 when he died at the age of 106. After Warrell's retirement his assistant Arnold Cawthrow became the second Big Chief, and served in this role until 1978. For part of this time he also worked as an antiques dealer in Islington. Members of the I-Spy Tribe were called Redskins, and the head office was variously known as the Wigwam by the Water or the Wigwam-by-the-Green. The former was located for some years next to the Mermaid Theatre at Blackfriars, while the latter was in London's Edgware Road.

The books were originally self-published by Charles Warrell but, after a brief period when they were published by the Daily Mail, they were taken over by the now defunct News Chronicle newspaper and based in the paper's building in Bouverie Street. The regular I-SPY column, which appeared in the News Chronicle, reverted to the Daily Mail when the News Chronicle ceased publication, and continued to appear until the late 1980s The books have had various publishers over the years including the Dickens Press, a company set up to continue the book publishing interests of the 'News Chronicle' and Polystyle Publications, a publisher of children's comics.

Arnold Cawthrow died in 1993, and is commemorated by a stone plaque placed on the outside of the Boatmen's Rooms, the house where he spent some of his last years in Deal, Kent.

The books became very popular, with print runs well into six figures. Big Chief I-Spy had a succession of assistants, usually known as "Hawkeye". In the early 1970s, this position was held by Ralph Mills. Earlier assistants included Max Heinz and John Tagholm. In the 1980s, following a short-lived third Big Chief, Robin Tucek, David Bellamy replaced Big Chief I-Spy as the person to whom completed books were sent, and the earlier Red Indian connections were quietly dropped.

I-Spy books were still being sold, until recently, by Michelin Travel Publications and there has been talk of Michelin licensing the I-SPY brand to another publisher in the future.

Camberwick Green or Trumpton?

Trumpton Riots, originally uploaded by whitmarsh.

Now name the firemen

CAPTAIN FLACK & Firemen PUGH,PUGH,BARNEY McGREW, CUTHBERT,DIBBLE AND GRUBB

Back in 1966
The series was written and produced by Gordon Murray and animated by Bob Bura, John Hardwick and Pasquale Ferrari. Music was by Freddie Phillips, and narration and song vocals were provided by Brian Cant. There are 13 fifteen-minute colour episodes produced by Gordon Murray Pictures and FilmFair.

Each episode begins with a shot of a musical box which rotates while playing a tune. It is accompanied by the following narration:

"Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play. But this box can hide a secret inside. Can you guess what is in it today?"

The lid of the box then opens and the puppet character that is central to the particular episode emerges. After a brief introduction, the background appears and the story begins.

The series is set in the small, picturesque (and fictitious) village of Camberwick Green, Trumptonshire, which is inhabited by such characters as Police Constable McGarry (Number 452), Mickey Murphy the baker, Dr Mopp (who makes house calls in his vintage car), and the town gossip, Mrs Honeyman, who is always seen carrying her baby. Just outside the village lives Jonathan Bell, owner of a "modern mechanical farm", who has a friendly rivalry with Windy Miller, owner of a clanking old windmill and a firm believer in old-fashioned farming methods. Mr Dagenham, a travelling salesman who drives an open-topped convertible occasionally appears, as do the staff and cadets of Pippin Fort, a nearby military academy run by Captain Snort and Sgt Major Grout. Almost all the characters have their own theme songs. There is one other character who never appears in the stories: an unnamed clown or pierrot who turns a roller caption to display the show's closing credits.

Each week the villagers undergo such domestic crises as a shortage of flour; a swarm of bees; a water shortage; and rumours of an unwanted electrical sub-station being built in the village. At the end of each episode the narrator bids farewell to the puppet character who was seen at the beginning, and the latter disappears back into the musical box.

Camberwick Green is notable for having no overt fantasy content (apart from the musical box). For the most part it is simply about ordinary people doing everyday things, and perhaps for that reason it has remained popular to this day. Unfortunately the original masters seem to have been lost; most of the surviving episodes tend to suffer from scratched, wobbly or grainy picture quality and a muffled soundtrack. Camberwick Green is available on DVD along with Trumpton and Chigley, its two sequels in a similar vein.

Commodore64

Computer I Owned #3 - Commodore64, originally uploaded by SA_Steve.

A mighty little computer with great games such as Trolley Wally put this on the map
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, at a price of US$595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes (64×210 bytes) of RAM with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of that time.

The Commodore 64 is commonly referred to as the C64 (sometimes written C= 64 to mimic the Commodore company logo) and occasionally known as CBM 64 (Commodore Business Machines Model number 64), or VIC-64[1]. It has also been affectionately nicknamed the "breadbox" and "bullnose" due to its shape.

During the Commodore 64's lifetime (between 1982 and 1994), sales totalled around 30 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time.[2] Sam Tramiel, a former Commodore president said in a 1989 interview "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years." [3]At one point (1983/84/85), the Commodore 64 dominated the market with approximately 40% share, even outselling IBM PCs and Apple computers. [4][5] Part of its success was due to the fact that it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores, and that Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost.

Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles were made for the Commodore 64[citation needed] including development tools, office applications, and games. The machine is also credited with popularizing the computer demo scene. The Commodore 64 is still used today by some computer hobbyists[6], and various C64 emulators allow anyone with a modern computer to run these programs on their desktop.

Sinclair ZX81

Computer I Owned #2 -Sinclair ZX81, originally uploaded by SA_Steve.

Black and white with very annoying touch sensitive buttons
They were the days....
Useless without its 16k Ram Pack

As with the ZX80, the processor was a NEC Zilog Z80-compatible, running at a clock rate of 3.25 MHz, but the system ROM had grown to 8192 bytes in size, and the BASIC now supported floating point arithmetic[1]. It was an adaption of the ZX80 ROM by Steve Vickers on contract from Nine Tiles Ltd, the authors of Sinclair BASIC. The new ROM also worked in the ZX80 and Sinclair offered it as an upgrade for the older ZX80 for a while.

As suggested, the computer was similar to the ZX80, but was built around a semi-custom Ferranti ULA (Uncommitted Logic Array) instead of TTL logic. The redesigned system board therefore had only four or five ICs: the microprocessor, the ULA, the 8192 bytes ROM, and either one 1024 bytes RAM chip, or two 1024x4 bit RAM chips.


A 16-KB RAM pack that plugged into the rear of the ZX81The base system as supplied (in the UK for approximately GB£70 fully built and GB£50 as a kit requiring soldering, or US$100 in the US) had 1 KB of RAM. This RAM was used to hold the computer's system variables, the screen image, and any programs and data. The screen was text only, 32 characters wide by 24 high. Blocky graphics with a resolution of 64 by 48 pixels were possible by the use of the PLOT command, which ingeniously selected among a set of 16 graphics characters.

To conserve memory, the screen bytes were stored as minimal length strings: for example, if a screen line was only 12 characters long, it would be stored as only those 12 characters followed by the code for a new line, the rest of the line being automatically assumed to be spaces. Using this knowledge, it was common to write programs that kept to the top left of the screen to save memory. As another memory-saving feature, BASIC keywords were stored as 1-byte tokens. If memory grew short, the number of lines displayed on the TV screen would be reduced.

Even so, there were many games and applications that ran in the minimalistic 1 KB, including a basic game of Chess. It was not that hard to get to know, understand, and control the computer completely, something almost impossible with the computers of today.

Originally sold via mail order in kit or assembled form, but a later deal with high street retail W.H.Smith saw the ZX81 and all accessories being sold on the high street (ZX81 was £69.99, 16K RAM pack £49.99, Printer £49.99)

The ZX81 was used as an analogy in the Comedy cult series Red Dwarf (S05E01 - Psiriens) in exclamation that their ship had survived a collision and crash landing wholly intact "Starbug was made to last, sir. This old baby has crashed more times than a ZX81"

1966 Corgi Batmobile

1966 Corgi Batmobile, originally uploaded by Bolmits Models.

Top Corgi

Wacky Races premium car set

Wacky Races premium car set, originally uploaded by Astronit.

Straight out of Wacky Races
in order
Penelope Pitstop
Dick Dastardly
Peter Perfect

Kelloggs Frosties, 1970

Kelloggs Frosties/Ricicles Radio, 1970's, originally uploaded by Roadsidepictures.

They're greeeeaaaatttttt
They're simply corn flakes with sugar
They guaranteed to rot your teeth - well thats what mum told me!

Downfall

DSCF1787, originally uploaded by unloveable.

This game was a classic
the advert used to say

"Get your counters down and block your opponent. Watch out, a wrong turn could lead to your downfall !!"

Super Auto Sticker Cover

Super Auto Cover, originally uploaded by skooldays.

Panini 1977
One of the first sticker sets i remember by panini

Mexico 86

Mexico 86, originally uploaded by coderkind.

Panini Sticker collections
after paying £104.64p on stickers it surely would be cheaper to just buy the book (and it would have all pictures included!)

Sinclair ZX spectrum

sinclair_spectrum_2, originally uploaded by iougs.

This made a big impact in the UK in 1982

Tooty Frooties

Tooty Frooties, originally uploaded by davescunningplan.

1963 - Tooty Frooties introduced.
John Mackintosh & Sons Ltd become Rowntree Mackintosh Ltd

Evel Knievel Chopper

Evel Knievel Chopper, originally uploaded by Uncle Den.

1976 Ideal Evel Knievel Chopper Motorcycle...Never opened, mint in box, no creases, as good as it gets. Please do not ask for reserve. New Ebayers email me first or your bid will be invalid. All US Paypal must be Verified and Confirmed, no alternate ship address, no po box. All International Paypal must be non-US Verified. Paypal due within 2 days of auction ending, money orders(US Ebayers Only) due within 7 days of auction ending. Please use Ebay checkout. International Ebayers: please email me BEFORE bidding for ship rate quote, buyers pay all shipping costs, and any import costs upon delivery. I will not change shipping values, so please don't ask. Some guitars may require neck off packaging. Payment received on Friday & Saturday will ship the following business day. Please check my other auction items, thanks for looking!

Mouse Trap

Mouse Trap, originally uploaded by unloveable.

The Gameplay of Mouse trap:
Players travel as mice from one end of the board to the other, moving in a turn based manner guided by a six sided die, supplied with the game. Upon landing on a square, they either retrieve a piece of cheese, or assemble a piece of a complex mouse trap contraption that is the game's namesake, and which was inspired by the work of Rube Goldberg. The contraption has gears, a marble which rolls from end to end down a miniature staircase, ramps, rubber bands, a diving man, and ends of course in a mouse trap, specifically a dome-shaped cage which clatters down a toothed pole. Upon reaching the end of the board, all players travel in a circle, ending up underneath the 'net' of the trap, or on a space to 'trip' the trap. Operating the contraption requires a piece of cheese, gained earlier.

The object of the game is to build the trap, and to trap the other mice. The original version, designed by Marvin Glass and Associates, allowed the players almost no decision-making, in keeping with other games for very young children such as Candyland, The Game of Life, or Snakes and Ladders. However, the unpredictable nature of the trap mechanism means that the game has an additional layer of sophistication that makes the game far more interesting than others where the chief randomizing agent is a pair of dice. In the 1970s, the board game surrounding the Mouse Trap was redesigned by Sid Sackson, adding the cheese pieces and allowing the player to maneuver opponents onto the trap space.


Details of the mouse trap contraption
This description accompanies the illustration on this same page. The player turns the crank (A) which rotates the gears (B) causing the lever (C) to move and push the stop sign against the shoe (D), which tips the bucket holding the metal ball (E) which rolls down the stairs (F) and into the pipe (G) which leads it to hit the rod held by the hands (the hitting of the rod is probably the most difficult and frustrating area of the mousetrap's design, leading often to the mousetrap not succeeding) (H), causing the bowling ball (I) to fall from the top of the rod, roll down the groove (J), fall into and then out of the bottom of the bathtub (K), landing on the diving board (L). The weight of the bowling ball catapults the diver (M) through the air and right into the bucket (N), causing the cage (O) to fall from the top of the post (P) and trap the unsuspecting mouse (i.e. the player who occupies the spot on the board at that time).


Licensing controversy
The game designer Marvin Glass (and his company, Marvin Glass and Associates) refused to pay licensing fees or royalties to Goldberg, despite Marvin acknowledging being inspired by Goldberg as well as the clear similarities between the game and a Goldberg drawing. Glass went on develop two less well-known games based on Goldberg designs, [[Crazy Clock]] (released 1964) and Fish Bait (1965), neither of which credited Goldberg's influence. Elderly and near retirement, Goldberg declined to take legal action against Glass and chose to sell licensing rights for his drawings to another toy company, Model Products instead.

KerPlunk Game from Ideal

KerPlunk Game from Ideal, originally uploaded by SpacePotato.

Challenging game and great fun

KerPlunk is a game first marketed by the Ideal Toy Company in 1967.

It consists of a plastic tube, a number of plastic rods called straws and a number of marbles. The plastic tube stands upright on a base that contains four separate trays and the straws are passed through holes in the side of the tube to form a "web". The marbles are then placed in the top of the tube and held in place by the web.

At the start of play, the entire tube is rotated so that a hole in the base of the tube is aligned with the active player's tray. Players take turns removing a single straw from the cylinder while trying to minimize the number of marbles that fall through the tube and into their tray. Once a player has committed himself to a particular straw by touching it, they must remove it. The player who accumulates the largest number of dropped marbles loses.

The onomatopoeic name of the game derives from the sound of the marbles tumbling to the base of the cylinder when a straw is removed.

The game is still available today, manufactured and marketed by the Milton Bradley Company in the UK and by Mattel in the USA, although the modern version uses a pink tube rather than the original amber-colored tube..

Rebound

Disarray, originally uploaded by Rivertarts.

This looked so good on the advert
in effect it was bowls with ball bearings

Excelent nostalgia from the 70s by a company called ideal

Ford sports car

ford group 6, originally uploaded by * Rezinha *.

matchbox lesney
1969

Good scooper on the track

Plastic Cars

Plastic Cars, originally uploaded by Glen Mullaly.

These were great as they never chipped the skirting board - kept the family happy

No. 41 Siva Spider

No. 41 Siva Spider, originally uploaded by bucharest_impalers.

Matchbox ©1972
P:articularly the ca to have in the Evil Knievel era

Dodge Charger Big Banger, Matchbox 1972

Dodge Charger Big Banger, Matchbox från 1972, Loppis!, originally uploaded by Nosas.

This was the one
Top Banger
Dodge Charger Big Banger, Matchbox 1972

1971 & 1973 Matchbox Formula 1 Racers

1971 & 1973 Matchbox Formula 1 Racers, originally uploaded by sallyjenn.

These were the top cars to have in the 1970s

alfa-cabro-pink-matchbox

alfa-cabro-pink-matchbox, originally uploaded by martin_nolan35.

This was a significant tool on a matchbox track, it scooped up any other car in its way

Hot-Wheels (1968)

Hot-Wheels (1968), originally uploaded by el estratografico.

Were these the cars that you needed a key to change the wheels on?