Practically the first thing Ruth did this morning, while she was still in bed, and shortly before I'd arrived back in the bedroom with her first cup of tea, was to check her emails on her new Samsung All Singing All Dancing Galaxy mobile phone plus.
I'm a notoriously slow adopter of technology myself and I'm still at the 'Go to the computer stage' with this particular endeavour. The Galaxy has got one of those screens that you move stuff around on just by touching it. I'm not too comfortable with this idea. If it hasn't got buttons, I don't really trust it.
Anyway, I handed over the tea, and then, as as aside, I said to her 'Back in the 70s, when we were messing about throwing Action Men out of the windows, we never would have imagined we'd have been able to do stuff like this in the future. We were lucky in those days if we were even allowed a go on the big beige phone with the dial that could have your fingers off. Mostly, if you even asked to use that, your mum told you not to be ridiculous, and just go call for someone'.
We didn't even get any clues from Tomorrow's World that this kind of thing was in the offing, they mostly seem to have pointless stuff on there, that no-one would ever want, like kettles that could park your car, and lamps made out of string.
'Oh, did you do that as well, she said, I thought it was just me?' She meant throwing Action Men out of windows.
'Yeah, I even had the Action Man Parachute', I said, although they should probably have been prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act for calling it that, it was basically just a plastic bag and some string. He usually died when it failed to open, although I think in practice your bedroom window is not usually high enough for a parachute to work properly in any case.
It turns out, Ruth used to play with Action Men a lot in the 70s. They had much better kit than Barbie, she said, but she never had any of her own, she had to borrow her brother's when he wasn't looking. He used to hide them.
I think, if mine and Ruth's experiences of Action Men are anything to go by, they had a pretty hard life back then. I mean, which other toys would have been dunked head first in a tin of blue paint, drowned in the bath till their fuzzy hair fell out, had their legs bent back until they popped out of the sockets? I don't remember My Little Pony being melted in front of the fire, thrown out of windows and painted with nail polish and Airfix model paints to looks like a transvestite. If you could scale Action Men up to be real-life soldiers, they'd be invincible, because they took all this, without saying a word, and the only way you knew they were suffering was when their little eagle eyes would move from side to side. Other than that, they never flinched.
I used to have a Steve Austin toy as well. Not that wrestler guy, the original Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. He was great, and the toy had extra modifications, that the real Steve didn't. As well as two robot legs and a robot arm, he had a big plastic button at the back to raise his arm, and they'd cut a hole right through his skull so you could use his head as a telescope. I bet that kind of surgery absolutely knacks.
I think it's probably a normal stage of development, wanting to try and break stuff, when you're a child. That's probably why they designed Stretch Armstrong, a man whose sole purpose was to be stretched out of shape. They made it seem on the adverts, as if he was infinitely stretchy, but he totally wasn't. Some friends and I managed to stretch him so far, that the rubber all split open and you could see the wires inside. What a wimp.
I used to collect Matchbox cars for a while too. These are quite collectible, although they cease to be quite so valuable if you take all the ones you own, and smash them up to make a junkyard. I may have been suffering a bit from short termism when I did this, because it's a bit like smashing an egg and frying it. You can only really do it once. It's quite a good way of annoying your mum though, I found.
I used to annoy my mum a lot in those days, not just with legging Action Men out the window and hitting Matchbox cars with a hammer. I used to play a lot with Toy soldiers too. For some reason I always wanted to be the Germans. I think the uniforms were better. My mum always insisted on self-building stone fireplaces in the 70s and covering them with pointless ornaments. Saucers and ash trays and other shite (we had horse brasses on the wall too, what was that all about?).
I've found through experience that ceramics provide pretty flimsy cover for German soldiers, and if you catch them a direct hit with an oversize rubber band, or a pair of socks rolled into a ball, they just smash. The Germans were always having to pick ashtray shrapnel out of their heads. That's the thing about playing soldiers by yourself, you have to play for both sides, but I always tried harder when I was the Germans, sometimes I'd cheat a bit and throw bigger stuff when it was their turn. Things could get really messy then.
I've talked about Tonka Toys elsewhere, so I won't list their destructive qualities here, but I also used to have another guaranteed skirting board chipper of a toy. It was called Richochet racers. Somebody thought it would be a good idea, to take a tiny little car, and fire it out of a massive gun. Ace not only for chipping paint, but also for knocking the legs out from under sideboards. What the hell is a sideboard anyway?
I also used to have something similarly destructive to Richochet racers. It was an aircraft on a catapult. The makers had sensibly given it a soft rubber tip, so if you accidentally hit anyone with it, it wouldn't shatter their kneecaps. We had a 4 day trip to Blackpool in about 1980, my mum, my brother and me, and for some reason we took our elderly neighbour Gertie with us. We called her Auntie but we weren't related. Her house was bloody freezing, she would never put the fire on, and she was about as much fun as having your eyes poked out with a cappucino spoon. Anyway, I used to claim it was an accident of course, but when she'd gone to sleep I used to fire the catapulted plane at the wall just above her sleeping head. It used to give her a bit of a shock as I recall. I don't think she lived for much longer after that (she was ancient though, it wasn't anything to do with me).
So, on reflection, I'd have to say that these little modern gadgets with their little touchy feely screens, where you have to swoosh things to one side with your fingers, are probably a very sensible distraction for us modern folk. Apart from anything else, we don't have to spend as much time smashing stuff up.
I'm a notoriously slow adopter of technology myself and I'm still at the 'Go to the computer stage' with this particular endeavour. The Galaxy has got one of those screens that you move stuff around on just by touching it. I'm not too comfortable with this idea. If it hasn't got buttons, I don't really trust it.
Anyway, I handed over the tea, and then, as as aside, I said to her 'Back in the 70s, when we were messing about throwing Action Men out of the windows, we never would have imagined we'd have been able to do stuff like this in the future. We were lucky in those days if we were even allowed a go on the big beige phone with the dial that could have your fingers off. Mostly, if you even asked to use that, your mum told you not to be ridiculous, and just go call for someone'.
We didn't even get any clues from Tomorrow's World that this kind of thing was in the offing, they mostly seem to have pointless stuff on there, that no-one would ever want, like kettles that could park your car, and lamps made out of string.
'Oh, did you do that as well, she said, I thought it was just me?' She meant throwing Action Men out of windows.
'Yeah, I even had the Action Man Parachute', I said, although they should probably have been prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act for calling it that, it was basically just a plastic bag and some string. He usually died when it failed to open, although I think in practice your bedroom window is not usually high enough for a parachute to work properly in any case.
It turns out, Ruth used to play with Action Men a lot in the 70s. They had much better kit than Barbie, she said, but she never had any of her own, she had to borrow her brother's when he wasn't looking. He used to hide them.
I think, if mine and Ruth's experiences of Action Men are anything to go by, they had a pretty hard life back then. I mean, which other toys would have been dunked head first in a tin of blue paint, drowned in the bath till their fuzzy hair fell out, had their legs bent back until they popped out of the sockets? I don't remember My Little Pony being melted in front of the fire, thrown out of windows and painted with nail polish and Airfix model paints to looks like a transvestite. If you could scale Action Men up to be real-life soldiers, they'd be invincible, because they took all this, without saying a word, and the only way you knew they were suffering was when their little eagle eyes would move from side to side. Other than that, they never flinched.
I used to have a Steve Austin toy as well. Not that wrestler guy, the original Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. He was great, and the toy had extra modifications, that the real Steve didn't. As well as two robot legs and a robot arm, he had a big plastic button at the back to raise his arm, and they'd cut a hole right through his skull so you could use his head as a telescope. I bet that kind of surgery absolutely knacks.
I think it's probably a normal stage of development, wanting to try and break stuff, when you're a child. That's probably why they designed Stretch Armstrong, a man whose sole purpose was to be stretched out of shape. They made it seem on the adverts, as if he was infinitely stretchy, but he totally wasn't. Some friends and I managed to stretch him so far, that the rubber all split open and you could see the wires inside. What a wimp.
I used to collect Matchbox cars for a while too. These are quite collectible, although they cease to be quite so valuable if you take all the ones you own, and smash them up to make a junkyard. I may have been suffering a bit from short termism when I did this, because it's a bit like smashing an egg and frying it. You can only really do it once. It's quite a good way of annoying your mum though, I found.
I used to annoy my mum a lot in those days, not just with legging Action Men out the window and hitting Matchbox cars with a hammer. I used to play a lot with Toy soldiers too. For some reason I always wanted to be the Germans. I think the uniforms were better. My mum always insisted on self-building stone fireplaces in the 70s and covering them with pointless ornaments. Saucers and ash trays and other shite (we had horse brasses on the wall too, what was that all about?).
I've found through experience that ceramics provide pretty flimsy cover for German soldiers, and if you catch them a direct hit with an oversize rubber band, or a pair of socks rolled into a ball, they just smash. The Germans were always having to pick ashtray shrapnel out of their heads. That's the thing about playing soldiers by yourself, you have to play for both sides, but I always tried harder when I was the Germans, sometimes I'd cheat a bit and throw bigger stuff when it was their turn. Things could get really messy then.
I've talked about Tonka Toys elsewhere, so I won't list their destructive qualities here, but I also used to have another guaranteed skirting board chipper of a toy. It was called Richochet racers. Somebody thought it would be a good idea, to take a tiny little car, and fire it out of a massive gun. Ace not only for chipping paint, but also for knocking the legs out from under sideboards. What the hell is a sideboard anyway?
I also used to have something similarly destructive to Richochet racers. It was an aircraft on a catapult. The makers had sensibly given it a soft rubber tip, so if you accidentally hit anyone with it, it wouldn't shatter their kneecaps. We had a 4 day trip to Blackpool in about 1980, my mum, my brother and me, and for some reason we took our elderly neighbour Gertie with us. We called her Auntie but we weren't related. Her house was bloody freezing, she would never put the fire on, and she was about as much fun as having your eyes poked out with a cappucino spoon. Anyway, I used to claim it was an accident of course, but when she'd gone to sleep I used to fire the catapulted plane at the wall just above her sleeping head. It used to give her a bit of a shock as I recall. I don't think she lived for much longer after that (she was ancient though, it wasn't anything to do with me).
So, on reflection, I'd have to say that these little modern gadgets with their little touchy feely screens, where you have to swoosh things to one side with your fingers, are probably a very sensible distraction for us modern folk. Apart from anything else, we don't have to spend as much time smashing stuff up.
No comments:
Post a Comment