Monday 14 October 2013

Coveted childhood toy soldiers

I was reading the very enjoyable 'Mannie Gentile: Toy Soldiers Forever' blog article about where his obsession with toy soldiers started and this put me in mind of the first time I really got excited and wanted to own my own plastic army.

When I was very young I used to enjoy the American comics published by Harvey, in particular I was a fan of Casper the Friendly Ghost (I kid you not)! But what always used to catch my attention were those fantastic adverts for amazing toys that they had in the back of the comic...


Oh, how I wanted those 204 Revolutionary War Soldiers! I would read and re-read the list of what was included and imagine how good the collection would look on my bedroom floor.

Of course I never got my grubby little hands on them and eventually forgot about just how much I REALLY needed them. But Mannie's post had me thinking about them again and I wondered if I could find any photos of what they actually looked like. Would they be as fantastic as I had imagined, or would they be as disappointing as I have since found out that many of the other 'amazing' toys were that were advertised in these American comics (like the child-sized Polaris Submarine which turned out to be little more than a cardboard box).

Well I eventually tracked dow a blog which unmasked the Revolutionary War Soldiers - 'Plastic Toy Soldier Pictures' has some nice photos which show exactly what you got for you $1.98...And it's pretty much what you might imagine you might get for that amount (though as a kid I still think I might have been mildly impressed, maybe)...



I guess the moral of this story is - don't revisit things you thought were 'amazing' as a child as you will invariably be disappointed!

2 comments:

  1. I was always intriqued by the live sea creature eggs you could send off for too...

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    1. Ahhh, the 'Sea Monkeys'! Yeah - I loved the happy little faces they put on them in teh advert, I suspect a lot of kids were disappointed that they didn't have jolly little faces in reality! :)

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