Steve Berry - TV Cream Toys Lite

As with the later figure collections, there was an abundance of accessories, in this case, weapons sets (various arm-replacements for Cyborg, including the Cybo-Liquidator– a water pistol–and the Cybo-Eliminator) , flying discs a la the Green Goblin and the prohibitively expensive CyboInvader spaceship. Muton even had actual outfits to wear, known as ‘subforms’ and comprising Torg (a horned demon thing), X-Akron (a red roboty thing) and Amaluk (a green fishy thing). Third member of the team and Johnny-cum-lately Android, seemed cast in a different manner, being more ‘brittle’ and lacking the rubber head. His chest panel popped open to reveal a four-missile launcher, which could be fired by pressing a button on his back.

Sadly, the only real-life cyborg we know of is the University Of Reading’s Kevin Warwick, who seems to make a living by implanting microchips in his forearm and telling newspapers that he’s turned into C3P0. This should not reflect too badly on the university’s robotics department as, before this, it was most famous for building Sir Jimmy Saville’s special Fix It chair.

1 Muton was an intergalactic space-parasite-type who’d decided that it was Earth’s turn to be laid to waste. Humanity’s best scientific minds got together to create the ultimate defender of the human race, Cyborg. Android was designed later as an extra ‘hero’ toy to gang up on poor of Muton. A million bullied kids sighed in recognition: two against one.

2 Bloody Hazel O’Connor and her cha Eighth Day misanthropy didn’t help matters much either. This 1980 tune wrapped quasi-religious bunkum in with ‘machine becomes sentient’ lyrics, while the video featured O’Connor herself going mental in a TRON -inspiring neon skeleton suit. Proper worrying.

Yet another thing the Yanks did bigger and better than us. For the Cream-era child, hardly a week would pass without kids’ telly showing yet another colour-saturated videotape of record-breaking domino topplers in a Milwaukee aircraft hangar. Thereon, jaundiced-looking Spielberg-alikes would spend days setting up elaborate domino displays under hot sodium lamps (usually suffering a cataclysmic setback when a stray grasshopper knocked over a 10,000-tile Flags of All Nations set-piece overnight). America, Holland, China…you name it, everyone had a crack at the record books.

Just not the UK. What hope of government funding for a would-be domino athlete, eh? You’d just about scrape together enough cash for one wooden, slidey-top box of those Bakelite buggers. The carefully positioned mosaics and pixellated patterns (albeit created by teams of Stateside nerds) may have lent the domino an exotic air it never would’ve acquired from years as an old man’s knock-on-the-table game in murky brown pubs. Plus, with only the living room to experiment in, future British domino topplers would be lucky to get together a run of ten, never mind an entire course of dominoes sliding down chutes, setting off rocket launchers and swinging across mini-ravines.

Confidently stepping into this gap in the market came Action GT and its Domino Rally sets (mark 1, mark 2 and, perhaps inevitably, mark 3), featuring masses of brightly coloured tiles 1 plus all kinds of gimmicks, stunts and tricks for them to perform (loop-the-loops, elevators, steps, slides and ‘sunbursts’). Domino Rally also had one extra-special ace up its sleeve: most of the dominoes were fastened along flat, perfectly spaced lengths, so resetting them was a quick flip of the wrist away.

See also Cascade, Mousetrap, Guess Who?

However, the unique selling point of domino toppling (not much more than ‘set them up, knock them down’ as the box blurb reiterated) started to feel a little like too much effort after a while and, as the young player him/herself tumbled inexorably towards adolescence, the plastic set took up final residence in the loft. 2 Nowadays, if you hear someone say they fancy dominoes, you’re more than likely expected to get the pizzas in.

1 The technical term is apparently not tiles but ‘stones’, which makes them sound very rock ’n’ roll, doesn’t it? Hence, we suppose, why Eric Clapton chose the pseudonym Derek and the Dominos to record Layla. And, erm…well, there’s also Fats.

2 You can, however, book now for the annual Domino Day in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. They need 80 volunteer domino-setters. But beware–according to their website, ‘It is hard work, often on hands and knees, and requires an enormous amount of concentration.

This 70s entry ticks nearly all the boxes required of a board game. First off, even before the lid was lifted, you had the double-meaning implicit in the name (successfully exploited by the burglar-centric telly ads) insofar as not only did the red and yellow counters of the opposing sides ‘fall down’ through the vertical playing construct but also, while you were trying to win, you could have been assisting your competitor in their attempt to plot your ‘downfall’.

Second, it required only minutes to understand how to play, set up and go. For the record, the counters–two sets of five, numbered and in different-coloured sets to vary the manoeuvring difficulty if required–were loaded into feeder chutes and all the combination-lock-inspired dials were set to a required start position. Then, in turn, each player made a single spin of any dial in an attempt to pass the counters through the dials and down to the waiting tray at the bottom. 1 Most satisfying was being able to navigate a full set of counters into the bottom dial for the final turn, before watching the crestfallen reaction of your opponent as they tumbled out en masse. 2

More recent versions of the game have ditched the original board’s institutional blue and grey in favour of the usual kid-friendly acid colours or, in one case, stripping out the board altogether and leaving just some key-operated tumblers floating in midair. Call that iconic? Pah!

The aforementioned mid ’80s ads played on the addictive qualities of the gameplay: apparently, even housebreakers would find it impossible to resist just one more go, giving the police plenty of time to turn up and arrest them. ‘You’ve won!’ ‘I think we both lost!’ If only there’d been one of these set up in Tony Martin’s Norfolk farmhouse, he could’ve avoided a lot of silly bother.

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