To celebrate their centenary, the Morgan Motor Company has unveiled a limited production run of 500 SuperSport Junior pedal cars. Designed for 6-13 year-olds, these stunning vehicles are manufactured in the Morgan factory alongside the usual array of grown-up toys.
Crafted from lightweight aluminum, the 2/3 scale recreation of Morgan's classic 3-wheeler offers a 3-speed crank drive, working lights and hand stitched adjustable seating. Production is planned to start in August 2009, with cars built to order. A £500 deposit is required... at a total price of £2,510 (excluding VAT and delivery). Oh, to be a prince.
p>Here's an old ad for the "Dungeons & Dragons" game. I've never played the game, despite others attempts to pull me in. If a game has more than two six sided dice (I'll make an exception for Yahtzee), it makes my head spin. Besides, when I heard about the game it was clouded in the controversey of whether the game promoted satanism or not. I always doubted it, though after seeing the squeaky clean folks (where are the sulky black t-shirted teens?) in this ad that's just a bit too into the game, I can believe that they are indwelt by demons. There are a few mentions of the games unbridled nature, which sounds cool - though they leave out the part about campaigns and battles being a lengthy commitment, to say nothing of all the paperwork associated with D and D.
The voice you hear is that of Ken Nordine, a famous voiceover artist. He's also famous for his 1950's Word Jazz albums and radio show that still runs today. Here he is using his famous "call and response" style of delivery. It is not to leave you with the feeling that playing D and D will put multiple voices into your head.
The inexorable march of time means that those precious devices that defined our lives become the curious playthings of the next generation. Where you and I might debate the finer points of turntable manufacture, the youths in this video figured out how to build one out of Lego.
Here's a great little project using advanced Technic Lego blocks, a Lego motor, and a few other sundries that might have come from the kitchen drawer. Their unlikely device does work. The spindly fellow plays barely audible music (good music choice, by the way) using the same principles as the earliest limited fidelity platter spinners.
Will the be the future of records? Relegated to science fairs, and celebrated as an arcane oddity on morning chat shows? No matter what the future may hold, the boys should be very proud of keeping vinyl music alive in their own way. Though I wonder how quickly that pride will transform to abject fear once Dad sees what they've done to his Ozzy records.
A very young Rolf Harris recorded this exuberant Stylophone demo record in the late sixties. It's amusing to hear him marvel over a virtually unplayable little instrument that sounds suspiciously like a tuned duck fart. Of course, kids love fart sounds, which ensured massive popularity throughout most of the known universe.
The Stylophone fad didn't last long after parents discovered the bloody thing didn't even have a volume control. Upon being woken by electrofarts several weekends in a row, fathers throughout Britain started a grassroots campaign to smash and hide the buzzy little boxes when their little darlings were otherwise occupied with matches and the neighbour's Persian kitty.
Luckily for us, a couple of dads gave their Stylos to the drug-addled musicians living in the squat across the street. These future pop stars managed to tease a few tuneful bleeps out of their newfound toys, ensuring an irrational cult following that lasted over three decades.
Things reached such a fever pitch that Ben Jarvis - son of one of the original inventors - released an updated version in 2007. He learned from his father's mistakes and incorporated a volume control, headphone jack and two additional tones which I affectionately call 'helium duck' and 'deep duck.'
I'm counting on one of you to incorporate the Stylophone into 2010's biggest hit single, ensuring that decades of future music lovers continue to covet this cheerful electrobleep machine.
German toymaker Tucher + Walther was founded in 1977 by Elisabeth Walther and Bernhard Tucher in Nurnberg. The city has a long history of manufacturing tin toys, and the company got its start by supplying an assortment of vintage toys to collectors.
However, the old toys often required painstaking repair and eventually Tucher + Walther started creating their own limited edition designs. To attract attention at their first toy fair, they created a whimsical Zeppelin demonstration model that generated far more interest than the toys they initially sought to sell. In honor of their early roots, they still sell clockwork Zeppelins today.
The company dreams up as many as ten fanciful clockwork and steam powered toys each year. Each starts life as a sheet of tin plate, which is carefully cut and machined before being hand soldered and painted. These fanciful designs are definitely not intended for kids and carry price tags of up to $1,495 for an exotic Steam Dragon.
Voyage To The Moon [right] is an outrageously complicated $649.95 steam-powered rocket ship awaiting its first interstellar trip. It incorporates a Wilesco stationary steam engine that drives an assortment of flywheel-driven spinners.
Here's cinematic proof that a suit and tie can be worn on virtually any occasion. I suspect the stylish vertical stabilizers would have been dangerously ineffective at low speeds, rendering the vehicle almost impossible to control. In fact, it seems almost as if young Alistair collided with a hedge at the 34 second mark.
The YouTube footage appears to have been taken from the British Pathe archives. The original carried the following description: "Master shot of the hover scooter sitting on the grass as a man, Alistair Pugh, comes into shot. It looks like a funnel with handlebars
attached, on top of a circular base with two silver fins sticking up
from it. He walks round checking it then climbs astride it. Close ups of the
controls as he starts the ignition and of the propeller starting up.
Master shot as the hover scooter starts to move, and the man stands up to steer
it as it glides over the grass, spraying fallen dead leaves about.
More master shots of the machine gliding round as commentator tells us it was brought over from the United
States by a leading motorcycle journal, and goes on to explain the
workings of the machine. As Alistair drives from the grass onto a lake
we are told 'The floating-on-air principal makes it equally adaptable
for water travel'; it creates lots of spray while moving about on the
water.
Master shots and close ups of the scooter on the water; commentator explains 'The so-called air cushion is actually provided by air being thrust downwards under the machine, and steering is by altering (with the handlebars) the angle at which the air hits the ground and by the pilot balancing his weight accordingly.'"
Based on the classic 23rd century design, this $49.99 reproduction Star Trek Tricorder measures a compact 8" x 4" x 2". It requires four AA batteries (Dilithium cells are best, but no-name Alkaline batteries will work in a pinch).
The manufacturer cleverly markets the device as a role-play replica, which is a polite way of saying, "toy for grownups who like to run around in outfits that cause four-year-olds to mistake them for The Wiggles." Kids will be equally confused by the array of sound effects taken from the original series along with some cheesy blinky lights and a removable scanner accessory.
And am I the only one who wishes that real geek gear looked a bit more like this?
Available June 4, 2009 at a Starfleet supply depot near you. Oh, a matching phaser and communicator set is also available, should you lean that way.
How better to celebrate the austere and ancient contest of the minds that is chess than to release a version ready to go down to the disco? Calling it "disco" isn't accurate at all as this set was born in 1971 - same as me. Given the year, it's more psychedelia than Saturday Night Fever.
Kidding aside, chess is a great game. A game of kings, yet one accessible to anyone. Cheap plastic pieces put a chess set within any future Bobby Fischer's reach. Many masters started with just such a set - it's common practice to fill the hollow pieces of a cheap set to aid play. Yet this "World Of Family Fun" uses the clear plastic pieces as an appealing aesthetic asset. By molding the pieces in transparent funky day-glo colors (they call it "Crystalite"), you get a spacey set of chessmen that were probably still rather affordable.
We've said before that sometimes the most interesting time to inject style into an object is when it doesn't really need any. Do the new funky colors make this game more appealing to youth? I doubt it, but it really doesn't matter. Maybe this was some 70's kid's first chess set, and maybe this was the beginning of a lifelong love of the game. It's a great testimony to the centuries-old game of chess that it doesn't suffer at all through innumerable plastic permutations.
From Oak Ridge Associated Universities: "This was the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set
ever produced, but it was only only available from 1951 to 1952. Its
relatively high price for the time ($50.00) and its sophistication were
the explanation Gilbert gave for the set's short lifespan. Today, it is so
highly prized by collectors that a complete set can go for more than 100
times the original price.
The set came with four types of
uranium ore, a beta-alpha source (Pb-210), a pure beta source (Ru-106), a
gamma source (Zn-65?), a spinthariscope, a cloud chamber with its own
short-lived alpha source (Po-210), an electroscope, a geiger counter, a
manual, a comic book and a government manual 'Prospecting for
Uranium.'"
Over 9 million Daisy Red Ryder air rifles have been sold, making it the most popular and long-lived BB gun in the world. Simplicity is paramount - there are no laser sights, speed loading clips or CO2 canisters to fiddle with. Instead, the 177 caliber ammunition reservoir holds 650 BBs. Just pump and shoot.
Daisy air rifles were heavily advertised in the comic books of my childhood, although I could never convince my parents to purchase one for use within town limits. The Red Ryder is constructed from metal and wood, a rarity in the plastic age. With a muzzle velocity of only 280 fps, this isn't a high performance air rifle. However, it's quite accurate and more than sufficient for plinking tin cans and learning the basics of gun safety. An adjustable rear sight allows you to tweak aim as required, and a crossbolt safety is built in to keep you from shooting your eye out.
The best part? This classic kid's air rifle retails for less than $40.
Blame it on the cold war, blame it on James Bond, blame it on the Bossa Nova... say what you will, but the 60's were the birthplace of some of the coolest secret agent toys. Hideously dangerous, life-threatening toys. One of the secret agent toys that put the "boom" in "baby boomer" is the Agent Zero M Sonic Blaster. When looking back on their violent boyhood years, a majority of my boomer-aged friends have vivid memories of the Sonic Blaster. Nearly each one raised their voices to say something like, "FOOOOM!
Who can blame them? The pump-action gun fires a powerful column of air toward distant targets. With the Sonic Blaster, we can set our sights on cardboard target buildings that hate America, and a pile of leaves that undoubtedly hides a dirty communist. Ideally, these foes are dispatched with little actual damage. Yet each of my friends remembers harnessing the powerful poof of air to propel dirt, rocks, and in one case ladies' cocktail skirts at one of his parent's parties (at a distance of over 30 feet). Check out the unrelentingly bleak commercial voiced by William Conrad (also narrator of "Bullwinkle" around the same time).I'm
fascinated by the somber closing image of the lone 10 year old agent
standing vigil over the quiet valley; with only his wits and giant toy
bazooka to make his way in this crazy world.
The Sonic Blaster survived war-torn toy store shelves for years despite the danger posed by such a powerful air cannon, but it was also really loud. Poking around for info online I found several boomers claiming to still suffer hearing loss because of their favorite toy, but the most damning words were from Consumer Reports magazine:
"The Mattel Agent Zero M Sonic Blaster 5530 fires compressed air with a deafening blast. Our measurements top out at 157 dB–above a level that can do permanent damage to the hearing of an adult. We rate the toy Not Acceptable."
It goes without saying that this kind of toy would have a hard time making it to market today. As cool as it is (and I'm sure that the guys from Mythbusters will build a butane powered one out of PVC within minutes of reading this), it poses way too many hazards to be in the hands of children - or most adults. Besides, why in the heck is it a "Sonic" Blaster? Does "Pneumatic" Blaster simply not pack enough propagandist punch?
Deep pocketed Retro Thing readers have a chance to pick up an incredibly rare unused Sonic Blaster on. This was the kind of toy that boys beat up, and many Blasters simply broke apart with play. Here's an Ebay Buy It Now sale on the Sonic Blaster still in its original packaging. This particular gun changed hands at one of the famous Hake's toy auctions in the early 90's for over $3000, which is what the current owner is looking for today. Good luck, agents, and please plug your ears when blowing over the terrorist headquarters disguised as backyard wind chimes.
I've got a lot of View-Master 3D photo reels around, and when my friends around my age instinctively pick up a reel and drop it into a viewer, they are often astonished at the lifelike realism of the photography in those tiny little pictures. Many had forgotten just how breathtaking the View-master experience can be. Most of the reels from my childhood were of flat cartoon characters that floated in flat layers, but the reels I pick up now are of scenic vistas, and 3D story-telling dioramas built specifically for View-Master reels. It's easy to forget that there was a time that View-Master reels were originally intended for the whole family.
The key to getting the most stunning 3D viewing experience is to get abundant light to shine through the reels. Most of the commercial viewers are okay; my favorite is one that was only in production for a relatively short time that looks much like a big eyeball. When you're ready to get serious about looking through (and I do mean "through"! </rimshot>) your collection you can upgrade to viewers from 3D Concepts. These viewers have all the trimmings - adjustable interocular (distance between the eyes) lenses, improved optics, various magnifications, even daylight-balanced light sources built in. They look pretty chic too, and they should as models range between $200-400.
I'm anxious to check one of these viewers out, even in the shadow of the recent news that View-Master will no longer manufacture scenic reels. That's a real misfortune because most of my guest's favorite reels end up being the breathtaking photos of nature's majesty. I guess that new View-Master reels will be aimed only at children from now on.
In the mid 70's, pretty much every boy that I knew had the Six Million Dollar Man action figure (I just got mine two weeks ago from the thrift!). Steve Austin's TV adventures were crucial viewing for more than just kids, among viewers were toy executives hungry for the next success in the world of media tie-in toys. Today the massive marketing madness starts six months before a movie hits theaters, but back then a large toy line based on a TV of film was a new idea. The 12" GI Joe toy line was a legendary toy industry success that Kenner was anxious to duplicate with their own extensive Steve Austin collection.
For years the toy industry wanted to duplicate the success of the Barbie Doll, but in a boy's toy line. GI Joe taught the industry that relabeling the doll an "action figure" and providing a steady stream of realistic accessories yielded stratospheric sales. Sales didn't end with a single action figure. The toy gained value as the boy's collection grew, and in this case the TV series provided plenty of fodder for play. Sixxy's TV adventures had action, science fiction, even sasquatch! All of these inspired many toys.
The Six Million Dollar Man (that's about 29.5 million today) figure was the hit toy of 1975, and it's easy to see why since the basic figure is so feature packed. Peering through the back of Austin's head lets you see out a small fisheye lens in his eye socket (explaining the somewhat eerie visage in Steve's otherwise good looks). Turning his head right and pumping a switch on his back would elevate his right "bionic" arm (to pick up small plastic engine blocks and girders). There were even accessory arms with built in flashlights and "bionic grip".
The bionic arm was originally covered in a flesh-colored rubber skin that you could roll back to reveal cool-looking removable circuit blocks. Over the years, the rubber skin on most figures has deteriorated to a hard residue. Fortunately the collector community has come up with a solution. I found a seller on Ebay offering replacement arm sleeves in bionic-friendly nylon. The sleeve closely matches the figure's skin color, and is a good value at $8.50 shipped, especially considering how difficult these must be to make in small quantities.
The action figures themselves are a rather plentiful and affordable collectible on Ebay these days too. So for well under six million in U.S. tax payer dollars, you can have a working bionic Steve Austin. You can re-build him. You have the technology... and about twenty bucks you can spare, right?
It's amazing how many of the toys I enjoyed during my childhood are still made today. I had a safe much like the one pictured, although mine didn't have a fancy alarm. Nor was there ever any money in it, thanks to a well-stocked comic book rack at the local store.
Other gems offered at Fat Brain Toys include original TEDCO Gyroscopes, several Erector Sets, a baking soda and vinegar powered rocket car, and even a reissue of Uncle Milton's classic 1956 Ant Farm. Just don't tell mom if the ants escape, OK?
Many
North Americans probably don't know the name of the German firm Märklin, but they are known
the world over for producing fine quality model trains. Many hobby shop shelves in the U.S. are filled with cheap mass-market junk, so it may be hard to find (or justify)
the expensive models that Märklin offers. Märklin has made a name for themselves by making high quality trains and
other toys for more than 150 years, so their declaration of bankruptcy on February 4th came as a bit of a shock.
There are few
things I actively collect (from what we've seen on Retro Thing, I'm sure that's
hard for you to believe), but I've been a longtime aficionado of Märklin's
Z-scale - the smallest commercially available model railroad gauge. At 1:220
scale, it's an amazing achievement especially considering that the line was rolled
out in 1972. Sophisticated miniaturization may not be the big deal today that
it once was, but it's still breathtaking to see a working model steam
locomotive that fits inside a walnut.
The Super Mini cassette player has no controls. After inserting the tape, simply turn the volume knob to click the device on.
