For once, the common sense gene kicked in...

When I was a kid I looked after my toys. They got the odd chip in the paintwork from being played with if they were particular favourites, but by and large they didn't suffer much damage. Some of the more fragile plastic ones would get glued together when inevitable accidents occurred, but even they would not be harshly treated until the signs of obvious repair became to great to meet my exacting standards¹.

Once a plastic model had deteriorated to the point of no return, it was fair game for destruction in the back garden with games involving stones, marbles and as many vocally-generated Ba-booms as I could manage. In Telford there is even a house with a busted model of Stingray built into its foundations, though that was accidental as it hadn't quite reached the level of degeneration required for toy martyrdom,² and somewhere out on what the locals call the cinder-hills if they haven't been built on yet, there is a very weathered 40 year old catapault-fired Fireball XL-5 glider I lost when I was 7. I think it disappeared into a gorse bush, but that's only a guess. I never found it again much to my annoyance.

Anyway, the point is, that the metal toys, being generally more robust tended not to meet this sort of fate. When I finally grew out of toys, several neighbours' kids and junior cousins inherited a fair collection of toy cars and such pretty much in full working order, and only partially scratched or chipped.

Except for my Batmobile which one day fell victim to an unexpected and still unexplained bout of vandalism involving a claw hammer, a bottle of lighter fluid and a box of matches. I have always rather regretted that act of destruction, and have never properly explained to myself why I did it, other than noting thatI wished I hadn't done it almost as soon as I'd finished smashing it to smithereens.

Now, nostalgia is a wonderful thing, and I do have a fair collection of pointless if not worthless goo-gaws and totems around the house (excepting, of course, the TARDISes, which are neither worthless nor totems)³. It occurred to me that e-bay is the place to go to acquire a nostalgia-fuelled replacement for the toy I destroyed all those years ago. It would look nice collecting dust on the shelf along with John Steed's Bentley⁴. So I looked on e-bay with a view to bidding on a 1966 Corgi Models' 267 Batmobile (It had to be the 1966 version 267 as the early 1970's re-issues did not have the red bat-logo on the wheels, and some had towing hooks for the Batboat, for Heaven's sake. My standards haven't fallen that far).

If I still drank strong liquor, I should have had to calm myself with a double scotch.

You should see the prices even quite tatty models are fetching out there! It's insane. All the more so when I consider that the toy I had probably cost my parents around 5/- (25p) back then. Even allowing for forty years' inflation, that does not work out at £399.99 as I have seen a couple going for (I doubt they'll sell with an opening bid at that price, but I have seen them creep up in bidding wars from around £30 to well over £200). I still occasionally look to see what they are currently fetching on e-bay -this weekend in fact, thus this post- but this ritual has turned into a sort of morbid curiosity, which is laced with a deeper regret that I smacked the bejasus out of something that would have netted me a handsome profit all these years later.

Thank the Lord that I managed to hold onto all my old Lee & Kirby Fantastic Fours from the 1960s!



¹Exacting to the point that I wouldn't mix toys of different scales beyond a certain point. I could just about accept a 1/72 scale Airfix aeroplane in the same game as an 00 scale Corgi car, the pilots were just rather tall, which of course they should be, since being a fighter pilot was a very glamorous job; but I looked with contempt at those kids who played happily with a 1/100 scale Matchbox double-decker bus and a 1/48 tank in the same game. What were they thinking?

²Someday archaeologists will wonder about the significance of this little plastic "ritual" object. If only I could be there to see their faces.

³Not in my little world they're not, thank you very much. Stop giggling at the back.

⁴It is a sign of how far my standards have slipped since I was 10 in that it does not worry me that the Corgi model of the car is based upon the 1927 Bentley in British Racing Green, whereas John Steed actually drove a 1935 Bentley in British Racing Green.

For once, the common sense gene kicked in...

When I was a kid I looked after my toys. They got the odd chip in the paintwork from being played with if they were particular favourites, but by and large they didn't suffer much damage. Some of the more fragile plastic ones would get glued together when inevitable accidents occurred, but even they would not be harshly treated until the signs of obvious repair became to great to meet my exacting standards¹.

Once a plastic model had deteriorated to the point of no return, it was fair game for destruction in the back garden with games involving stones, marbles and as many vocally-generated Ba-booms as I could manage. In Telford there is even a house with a busted model of Stingray built into its foundations, though that was accidental as it hadn't quite reached the level of degeneration required for toy martyrdom,² and somewhere out on what the locals call the cinder-hills if they haven't been built on yet, there is a very weathered 40 year old catapault-fired Fireball XL-5 glider I lost when I was 7. I think it disappeared into a gorse bush, but that's only a guess. I never found it again much to my annoyance.

Anyway, the point is, that the metal toys, being generally more robust tended not to meet this sort of fate. When I finally grew out of toys, several neighbours' kids and junior cousins inherited a fair collection of toy cars and such pretty much in full working order, and only partially scratched or chipped.

Except for my Batmobile which one day fell victim to an unexpected and still unexplained bout of vandalism involving a claw hammer, a bottle of lighter fluid and a box of matches. I have always rather regretted that act of destruction, and have never properly explained to myself why I did it, other than noting thatI wished I hadn't done it almost as soon as I'd finished smashing it to smithereens.

Now, nostalgia is a wonderful thing, and I do have a fair collection of pointless if not worthless goo-gaws and totems around the house (excepting, of course, the TARDISes, which are neither worthless nor totems)³. It occurred to me that e-bay is the place to go to acquire a nostalgia-fuelled replacement for the toy I destroyed all those years ago. It would look nice collecting dust on the shelf along with John Steed's Bentley⁴. So I looked on e-bay with a view to bidding on a 1966 Corgi Models' 267 Batmobile (It had to be the 1966 version 267 as the early 1970's re-issues did not have the red bat-logo on the wheels, and some had towing hooks for the Batboat, for Heaven's sake. My standards haven't fallen that far).

If I still drank strong liquor, I should have had to calm myself with a double scotch.

You should see the prices even quite tatty models are fetching out there! It's insane. All the more so when I consider that the toy I had probably cost my parents around 5/- (25p) back then. Even allowing for forty years' inflation, that does not work out at £399.99 as I have seen a couple going for (I doubt they'll sell with an opening bid at that price, but I have seen them creep up in bidding wars from around £30 to well over £200). I still occasionally look to see what they are currently fetching on e-bay -this weekend in fact, thus this post- but this ritual has turned into a sort of morbid curiosity, which is laced with a deeper regret that I smacked the bejasus out of something that would have netted me a handsome profit all these years later.

Thank the Lord that I managed to hold onto all my old Lee & Kirby Fantastic Fours from the 1960s!



¹Exacting to the point that I wouldn't mix toys of different scales beyond a certain point. I could just about accept a 1/72 scale Airfix aeroplane in the same game as an 00 scale Corgi car, the pilots were just rather tall, which of course they should be, since being a fighter pilot was a very glamorous job; but I looked with contempt at those kids who played happily with a 1/100 scale Matchbox double-decker bus and a 1/48 tank in the same game. What were they thinking?

²Someday archaeologists will wonder about the significance of this little plastic "ritual" object. If only I could be there to see their faces.

³Not in my little world they're not, thank you very much. Stop giggling at the back.

⁴It is a sign of how far my standards have slipped since I was 10 in that it does not worry me that the Corgi model of the car is based upon the 1927 Bentley in British Racing Green, whereas John Steed actually drove a 1935 Bentley in British Racing Green.