Toys from your Childhood (5 Viewers)

Malaka

Well-Known Member
When I was a kid, my favourite toys were called swoppets. Westerns were the thing to watch, and you could get swoppet cowboys and "native americans". They were quite detailed, and "swoppable" The head or legs could come off and mix and match with others. Used to get them from a shop called Swifts i think, by the General Wolf.

The neckerchief, holsters, guns etc were all individual pieces, as were the bow and arrow, head-dresses, knives etc. Even the saddles on the horses came off.
Yes it was Swifts, it was mostly bikes that they sold. I had a friend at school whose dad owned it
 

eastwoodsdustman

Well-Known Member
Yes it was Swifts, it was mostly bikes that they sold. I had a friend at school whose dad owned it

We always used to go to Pollards on Binley road and get bits and pieces for our BMX's as kids. Must have been in there once a fortnight for brake blocks, cotter pins or inner tubes.
 

dancers lance

Well-Known Member
I had a toy steam engine that ran on paraffin, I wish I still had it because they are worth a small fortune now. I also had chemistry sets and make your own indoor fireworks kits, would never happen today.
 

Terry Gibson's perm

Well-Known Member
Proper Transformers... Not this plastic shit they have now.

I had Soundwave and Grimlock... But always wanted the Pteradactyl but could never get my hands on it - think it was called Swoop

Just bought my boy 3 of the new ones £71
 

dancers lance

Well-Known Member

I wanted one of these for ages when I was a kid, when I finally got one it was shite.
 

Terry Gibson's perm

Well-Known Member
Subuteo, we also had a huge Scalextric track in the loft than ran the width of the house had loads in the middle and then went down the other side.

My dad gave us a Wembley set from his youth that we had hours of fun with.

No laughing know I had a book that had players names in it, I would then transfer the players between the teams all of the 92 teams and then would write down the scorers and the final scores, City won a lot of leagues:)
 

Gaz71

Well-Known Member
I used to have space 1999 eagle, they are on eBay £200-£300!!!
cb322b844eb29aba9dcf2c2778a3a820.png
 

clint van damme

Well-Known Member
The magic of Google! Raving bonkers was the one I had. Looks like it was a rip off of knock em sock em!
 

dutchman

Well-Known Member
This will probably pre-date what most of you guys remember ... but back when I was little, Westerns were the big thing on TV (The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, Boots and Saddles etc.) and every kid wanted a cap gun. You could buy rolls of 'caps' which you loaded into the gun and each time you pulled the trigger a hammer would come down on the next cap in line and make a bang and you could smell the gunpowder.

Call me posh! I had a replica revolver where the caps were loaded into dummy cartridges and the cartridges inserted through a loading gate. It had an ejector lever under the barrel too. It was ridiculously heavy for a kid of my age and hard work pulling the trigger.

Also had a lever action Winchester replica but it worked nothing like the real thing.
 
Last edited:

Gazolba

Well-Known Member
<snip>. I also had chemistry sets and make your own indoor fireworks kits, would never happen today.
The chemistry set I had came with a square piece of asbestos to put the bunsen burner on. I hope no-one got cancer from those.
 

Gazolba

Well-Known Member
There was a time when kids made their own toys. When I was at Caludon there was a period when kids made 'tanks' out of an old wooden sewing thread bobbins (they were all wood back then and all mothers sewed). You took the empty bobbin and a lollipop stick, threaded a rubber band over the lollipop stick and through the hole in the center of the bobbin and secured it on the other side. You then twisted the lollipop stick a few dozen times, placed the 'tank' on the floor and the force of the lollipop stick unwinding made the bobbin roll along the ground. There were various improvements creative kids made to the design.
 

Gazolba

Well-Known Member
I don't remember those but I was an avid toy soldier collector and I once bought some plastic toy soldiers (from a toy shop in Bournemouth I believe) which had three separate parts, the head, body and legs. The three parts could be snapped out and back together. You could also twist the head and body around to form different poses. Their bodies were red or blue and self-coloured i.e. not painted. They were unique, in all the dozens of toy shops I visited I never saw any others like them. All my toy soldiers ended up getting thrown out by my mother.
 

dutchman

Well-Known Member
Timpo also made interchangeable figures, not as detailed as Britains but a lot cheaper. They even made a train set to go with their cowboys and indians. I remember the tiny shop next to the Dun Cow Inn used to sell them.
599_l.jpg
 

Ranjit Bhurpa

Well-Known Member
View attachment 5742
I had one of these and one of these
View attachment 5743

and this
View attachment 5744
and this
View attachment 5745

Trashed the lot, I never looked after my stuff
These bring back memories. Remember being lucky enough to get the original DB5 for Xmas 1965 or 1966. I'm sure it was silver/grey and the bullet shield popped up when you pressed the exhaust pipe. Can't remember other features though. Apparently Dad scoured the Midlands to find one and I too ended up trashing it. Sacrilege!
 

Ranjit Bhurpa

Well-Known Member
I remember one Xmas getting something called Operation Moonbase or maybe Moonbase which was produced after the first moon landing in 1969. There was a large piece of plastic resembling the moon surface with a flat area in middle, on which you had to land the spaceship which I think had a balloon attached to it.
A long time ago so my memory is a bit sketchy.
 

Gazolba

Well-Known Member
My brother and I had a Hornby clockwork train set. You wound it up with a key. We overwound it and the spring broke not long after we got it. Have no idea what happened to it, but it would be worth a small fortune today. After that, we had an electric train set but my parents could only afford an oval track and we soon got bored with that. A kid across the street had a more complex layout and several trains so we spent more time at his house than ours.
 

Houchens Head

Fairly well known member from Malvern
I used to love buying "stink bombs" from the joke shop. We'd go to the 'Tanner Rush' at the Gaumont (or Odeon as it became) and when we came out, we'd nip round the corner to the joke shop which was just inside Whitefriars St and buy a couple of packets. Then walk round town, wandering into Owen Owen, C&A and all the big stores, dropping them on the floor! Hours of fun! :)
(By the way, if you're not old enough, you won't know what the Tanner Rush was!) ;)

For those of you that remember the Tanner Rush, there's a great memory here. Sums it up perfectly! Ha ha! ............... http://www.margatehandbook.co.uk/?page=articles&article=93
 

eastwoodsdustman

Well-Known Member
I used to love buying "stink bombs" from the joke shop. We'd go to the 'Tanner Rush' at the Gaumont (or Odeon as it became) and when we came out, we'd nip round the corner to the joke shop which was just inside Whitefriars St and buy a couple of packets. Then walk round town, wandering into Owen Owen, C&A and all the big stores, dropping them on the floor! Hours of fun! :)
(By the way, if you're not old enough, you won't know what the Tanner Rush was!) ;)

We used to get them and drop them on the bus as we got off. Got chased by more than one bus driver in our youth.
 

Houchens Head

Fairly well known member from Malvern
We used to get them and drop them on the bus as we got off. Got chased by more than one bus driver in our youth.
Wouldn't this have been in the days when we had conductors and the old "back-loader" buses? You could leap off the platform when it slowed down for a corner! Got a few scraped knees doing that!
 

trevelfarandwide

Well-Known Member
I had a spool tape recorder

For some reason, that reminded me of those tagging machine toys that were around in the 80's? Saying that, I was probably the only one who had one...still, it was fun tagging childish swear words on my dad's car, like ''dad pooed his pants on saturday'', which he actually did do, incidentally. :)
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top