Steve Berry - TV Cream Toys Lite

Corgi, meanwhile, hitherto known for modern nuts-and-bolts stuff (branded articulated lorries, Routemasters, Land Rovers–especially for the Tarzan fold-out box set), aimed for a classier market with official film tie-ins. Yes, that does mean the camp Adam West Batmobile, but let’s not forget Bond. 007’s Goldfinger Aston Martin DB5 cemented Corgi’s reputation for attention to detail, with faithfully reproduced battering rams, bullet shield and that all-important ejector seat. Their Spy Who Loved Me Lotus was even better (but mainly ’cos the Esprit didn’t actually look like any car we’d ever seen before, even when it was in the film).

Stock carsCollectors’ catalogues listed new toy ranges, such as Adventure 2000 (below) and Space 1999 (bottom).

Dinky, thinking on their feet, had thrown their lot in with Gerry Anderson, creating tie-ins to his younger-demographic-skewed Supermarionation shows. A shrewd move, it turned out, as the mammoth success of their Joe 90 range in 1968 proved–they became the top-selling toys of that Christmas. Spectrum SPVs and Thunderbird 2s capitalised on the F.A.B. vibe. Even Space 1999 got the Dinky treatment, the Eagle Transporter mopping up some of T2’s leftover metallic green paint (‘cos ver kids don’t like ‘all white’ toys, right?).

Eventually, it was simplicity that did for the die-cast dinosaurs. The stoic, some might say plain, British brands simply didn’t inspire excitement (where were the go-faster stripes, the flame decals or the ability to transform into a fighting robot, say?). They weren’t big enough to have action figures in ’em (MASK) or small enough to hide in your mouth (Micro Machines). In fairness, Matchbox did have a desperate last attempt to liven up their standard car range by introducing the Motorcity packages (bumper-value multiple-car pile-ups and elaborate multistorey playsets), but it was all to no avail.

It all went tits up for Matchbox in 1982 (perhaps their equipment was requisitioned for the Falklands?), and the others soon followed in a great mess of mergers and acquisitions. The companies may be dead but the brand names live on. Never say die.

1 It’s as if we never learn, isn’t it? Maybe, just maybe, we Brits aren’t good enough at this stuff. That’s something to ponder over a Starbucks latte and a Krispy Kreme donut, eh?

2 The poster (inspired by those similarly personalised ‘El Cordobes’ bullfighter one-sheets, we’re saying–perhaps Mr Matchbox had been sunning himself on the Costa Brava in ’77?) was a poisoned chalice. You could request three names to be printed, presumably to keep siblings happy, but one had to be credited under the threatening alien baddie also pictured. Two heroes, one enemy. Oh, the arguments!

See also Stop Boris, Battling Tops, Hungry Hippos

There’s something about the sheer size of so many toys and games of our era: they weren’t just played in the house–they took over the house. Nowadays, everything’s been reissued in petite ‘coffee-table’ versions on sale at Firebox.com 1 Back then, you needed French windows just to get the likes of Crossfire indoors.

Basically a combination of pre-Pac-Man arcade favourite Air Hockey and a fairground rifle range, this two-player combat game required the steady aim of an SAS-trained marksman and the ruthless determination to win of an American athletics coach. The object of each round? To score goals against your opponent by firing a constant stream of steel ball-bearings–that’s steel ball-bearings, folks–against a rolling puck (also steel) until it passed through his net (incidentally also made of steel). Any ball-bearings that fell into your half became your next round of ammunition (to be loaded into the top of chunky red firing pistols at either end of the long chipboard playing area). 2

Crossfire could be a fast and furious game (to paraphrase the advertising spiel, The only game as exciting as its name’) and, by crikey, it was certainly a noisy one. In addition to the endless chime of ricocheting steel on steel, the pistols themselves had a stiff and clunky trigger mechanism that not only discharged each ball with a loud crack but also had a tendency to jam mid-game (calling for a swift and strident blow to free the offending ammo). If nervous relatives felt the need to leave the room, who could blame them? In any case, the footprint required for both game and players to play in comfort (i.e. lying full stretch on the floor) meant that the settee had to be moved, so good riddance.

Two other important words to bring into the mix here: agonising blisters. Never mind the potential for RSI, endless chafing of fingers on a red-plastic trigger made for a certain unforeseen amount of bloodshed. The problem could be alleviated mildly by the application of a plaster or insulation tape around fingers or gun, but Crossfire would inevitably end up a messy game. Still, there’s no such thing as hygienic warfare.

As with all ball-bearing-dependent games, some would be lost over time. Had it been possible to detach the pistols from the field of play, however, and brandish them, airgun style, in the street, we concede that they would’ve gone missing a hell of a lot sooner.

1 Case in point: you can still buy Crossfire in the shops although now it boasts a so-called ‘giant playing field’ of just two feet New manufacturers FEVA are British though so we’ll let them off.

2 Given the fundamentally two-player nature of this game why any parent would buy this for an only child a mystery. An alternative Crossfire scenario for such unlucky kids was to create a Roman-style combat amphitheatre for woodlice by lobbing a few of them in the middle and blasting off a random bombardment of balls.

See also Action Man, ROM the Space Knight, Dr Who TARDIS

This early 70s Strawberry Fayre range–actually Takara Henshin originals imported from Japan by Denys Fisher–beats later incarnations developed around the same theme (including Timanic Cyborgs and Micronauts) by virtue of being constructed to a larger scale. In playability terms, that meant they could be pitched in interspecies war with Action Man , Dr Who and the Bionic pair

Cleverly manufactured in a combination of clear plastic, chromed parts and die-cast metal, they were very cool-looking toys (in two flavours, Muton and Cyborg). There was, naturally, some comic-strip business on the back of the boxes setting up an interplanetary war back-story, 1 but kids just make up their own, don’t they? Chief factors in their appeal: you could see their internal organs and pull them limb from limb (what kid could resist that?).

There was also the slightly scary implication, not exploited by the later brands, that we would all one day become part human, part machine, with plastic or metal replacing what once was flesh. Which, when you were a youngster conversant with the plot of the Six Million Dollar Man (the TV series was based on Martin Caidin’s 1972 book Cyborg) , seemed eminently plausible. 2 Forget the rubber-suited Cybermen or the monotone Borg–here’s a frightening notion: when the Queen Mum had her hip replacement, she technically qualified as a Cyborg. A PR opportunity missed there, we feel.