Reading Jerry Rasmussens thread on sweets/candies from your childhood brought back lots of memories of the toys and novelties that were around when I was growing up. I'm talking about the days before "Action Man" when the nearest thing to it was "Johnny Combat".
Johnny didn't have jointed knees and elbows, he couldn't hold his gun without an elastic band to hold it in place and, because his feet were at permanent right-angles to his legs, getting his boots on and off was a lengthy proceedure. He came with a choice of one camouflage outfit and had a definate squint. I played with my "Johnny Combat" for hours on end until he lost his head to our dog who had mistaken him for a bone.
There was another toy about the same time called a "Combat 5", or was it 7? I can't remember now, a multi-functioned rifle-come-grenade launcher which made a machine gun rat-a-tat-tat noise quite similar to the sound I used to get by fastening a lolly stick to the front forks of my bike so that it caught in the spokes as the wheels turned.
I think the Combat 5 lasted about a week before the spring went on the grenade launcher and the bits were lost but no matter, by then I was the proud owner of a pair of "Tuf Trackers"!
These were the latest shoes on the market. A selection of animal footprints on the sole meant that you could identify and track all manner of exotic wildlife, from Deer to Badgers and Otters!
The problem was that in the industrial landscape of North-East England the nearest thing to "wild-life" we ever saw was the mangey dogs on the estate. (We used to say if you saw a dog with both ears it was a stranger.)
Another great feature of the "Trackers" was the useful compass hidden inside the insole, under your heel. Great! apart from the fact that you had to take your shoes off to use it and, as we barely knew our Left from our Right, figuring out North and South was beyond us but that didn't stop us from feeling intrepid as we ventured off the estate and into previously undiscovered building sites and back fields.
The comics would have "give-aways" inside them, as they do today, but they would be those cardboard triangles with a piece of folded brown paper tucked in. When you swung the triangular card in a rapid downwards motion the brown paper would catch the air and pop out with a BANG!..........Fantastic!
I'll bet there's someone sitting on a warehouse full of those just waiting for the right time. Probably next to the one full of "Clackers". Remember them?
I don't know about life being simpler then but I'm sure we must have been!
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
C-flat.