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Super Flight Deck
Promised so much in the advert, but was a crappy yellow plastic Phantom on a length of fishing line slamming into a target that looked absolutely nothing like Ark Royal.
Stretch Armstrong, utterly pointless. And the Evil Kenevil stunt bike that launched from a big red flywheel
Best toy ever !
I had the Super Flight Deck.
Launched the full length of the garden, dodging shrubs and bushes on the descent before activating the pull-up yellow door.
Saw the thread title, came here to say 'Super Flight Deck', noticed that was the OPs experience too, walks away.
Promised so much in the advert, but was a crappy yellow plastic Phantom on a length of fishing line slamming into a target that looked absolutely nothing like Ark Royal.
If yours was anything like mine then the gizmo that was meant to turn the plane round at the top of its trajectory never worked properly so it either got spun round just after it launched or you were landing it backwards which didn't turn out well.
Johnny Astro. Basically just a fan and a balloon.
TCR
Thankfully I never had one, but the spoilt kids up the road did. One car was just ever so slightly faster than the other, so there was no racing to be had. Whoever had the fast car just held down the overtake button and won.
I swear that you could win by Selotaping down the triggers and leaving the room to get a Vimto and a couple of biscuits.
Spoilt kid round the corner had it too. He used to liven it up with lighter fluid and a box of matches.
The evel keneivel stunt bike was a bit rubbish - the version that was like a easy-rider chopper was properly awful. it only did one thing which was.... fall over.
TCR
Thankfully I never had one, but the spoilt kids up the road did.
yes - great adverts but very much a spectator sport
We had a TCR set (which we 'found' and played with before Christmas and got caught by mum - sorry mum) but I used this as much as anything to keep it going... (if you know, you know).
Pretty much all of them that weren't Lego really. Certainly anything that was advertised on TV was guaranteed to be shit.
Raleigh activator.
Raleigh activator.
Raleigh Vektar!
Never had a Big Trak myself, but the rich kid in our class said it was a major disappointment.
I got TCR instead of Scalectrix for Xmas one year. Yes, it was dull.
*wanders in to cite the biggest gap between advert and reality*
*sees a number of posters already identified Super Flight Deck*
*wanders out*
Never had a Big Trak myself, but the rich kid in our class said it was a major disappointment.
Don't say that. I really wanted one of those. No chance of it happening. I keep seeing them come up on eBay and worry than one drunken evening I might buy one.
raving bonkers. raleigh chopper with sturmey archer gears. stretch armstrong. scalextric. roller skates.
most 70's toys were ****.
Oh crikey, roller skates that laced over your normal shoes instead of actual roller boots.
Almost impossible to control.
thems the ones. they expanded for a 3 to a size 9
As an adult I've bought A LOT of Scalextric/SCX for my kids (ahem).
For Scalextric to be any good you need more than a 10ft figure of eight and two cars. Which is why I can fill a 20"x10" floor and have something north of 40 cars. Get the chaps round with a few a beers and it is quality entertainment.
Covid and a bad knee have really put the knackers on it of late, but this year the Christmas Grand Prix is back!
and that cars stuff that made a loop. it never worked. lengths of track were good for sword fencing fights.
Was that the hotwheels stuff?
Not sure I'd call it fencing, but we did wallop the living daylights out of each other with it.
Subbuteo.
Oh crikey, roller skates that laced over your normal shoes instead of actual roller boots.
Said shitty roller skates broken up screwed to a plank of wood made a skateboard.
That subsequent plank-of-wood skateboard was also shit but kept us entertained for a whole summer! 🙂
and that cars stuff that made a loop. it never worked.
I had some yellow plastic tracking to run Matchbox cars on, thought it was bloody great.
Also used it for fighting, obvs.
Ninja Turtles. I loved the ninja turtles, but the toys were so crap. Hardly any articulation, they came with loads of swords and stuff at least.
Oh yeah and this thing. I think I only knew one kid that ever had more than one of the ghostbusters figures (obviously he had them all AND the car) but somehow every kid seemed to have 1 Peter Venkman and 1 bloody terrible haunted toilet.
ton
Full Memberand that cars stuff that made a loop. it never worked. lengths of track were good for sword fencing fights.
The stuff with the red rectangles to hold it together, and the rubber band powered launchers? Swords and guns respectively, in my house, you could fire smaller stuff surprisingly far, with a launcher built to fire a diecast car. Dominoes were the ideal ammo.
Any remote control car from the 70s/80s. First ones actually had a wire attached to the remote so you had to run along with them! Then they got sophisticated, but the aerial would always break off the first day you got it, or the batteries had to be replaced every 5 minutes.
Super Flight Deck had a kicking on here previously. I thought it was mint, long before Tom Cruise ‘called the ball’.
Unlike its analogue predecessor, Electronic Battleships was ‘buggy’
Crossfire! The idea was that you shot ball bearings at a big ball bearing that had a plastic ring around it but 1) each player only got about 10 bearings so one decent volley was all you got and 2) the guns were horribly designed so you got blisters just be looking at them. 1) was sorted by my grandfather who acquired a load of spare bearings from his work so we had about 100 each, 2) needed a lot of tape around the guns.
Subbuteo
Yes! And that cricket one that had a ramp from the bowler.
Those slagging off Flight Deck... what did you expect for £3.75?! 😀 I read the wrong one! £2.75!
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Child of the 70's - check.
Father in the Royal Navy serving on Ark Royal - check.
God father was a Phantom pilot - check.
So how the **** did it take until 2022 on some nerdy mountain biking site that I discover there was a toy literally intended for me!!!! Ok, sounds like I didn't miss out on much but even so - jeez Dad (RIP), how come I didn't get a Super Flight Deck????!!??
A mate managed to rip his Stretch Armstrong apart. It was full of a viscous green gel IIRC and was even more useless as a toy with a leg missing.
I had Super Flight Deck too until our cat killed it.
Etch a sketch was a little pointless as a true CAD tool.
Any remote control car from the 70s/80s.
A friend had a 'remote control'Saint jag XJS.
The 'remote control' was a was a sort of clicker - clapping your hands would work as well. It didnt have any steering - one click would be forward, the next one, if it responded to it, would make it reverse, but it turned left when it was going backwards. So basically you could do clumsy 3 point turns.
Super Flight Deck more yellow and infinitely superior (not sure why) to ‘Flight Deck’
£4.99. I must’ve been a spoilt bastard
I had some yellow plastic tracking to run Matchbox cars on, thought it was bloody great.
Me too - loved that stuff
Also used it for fighting, obvs.
Me too - loving doing that
I can still almost see in my head the exact shade of off-white when the yellow plastic strip was forcibly folded in half.
Never had a Big Trak myself, but the rich kid in our class said it was a major disappointment.
I had one. There were two issues that I remember. Out of the box, the battery compartment was really sketchy so you'd to get everything 'just so' for it to work. And it always seemed to list to one side, whether that was down to build quality or nap of the carpet I don't know.
I had that Lotus and March car set too, and a helicopter version of the Star Trek thing that would fly forwards or backwards in a circle and go up and down. IIRC it had a hook on it so you could pick stuff up and move it round the circle and put it back down again.
Johnny Astro.
oh, and Sea Monkeys
Any remote control car from the 70s/80s.
The Tamiya Avante and Kyosho Optima Mid would like to disagree!
I had a thing that at the time I loved but looking back was pretty poor, its name escapes me. There was a lift with an Archimedes screw, a dozen steel ball bearings, three rubber-skinned drums and a catchment area at the far end which was nominally some sort of scoring system. Boing, boing, boing, ka-chunk. In truth, the skill was in setting the bloody thing up so that the balls made it to the end and returned perpetual-motion style. It took hours and the markings on the playmat thing was way off.
There must be loads of toys of this era that promised so much and failed to deliver, like phones in the 2000s. There were tons of things I lusted after, never got and were probably shit. Anyone have Tin Can Alley? Or some thing with a rotating disc where you dropped off parachutists?
The Tamiya Avante and Kyosho Optima Mid would like to disagree!
ANy remote control car that was affordable to a normal family then!
For Scalextric to be any good you need more than a 10ft figure of eight and two cars. Which is why I can fill a 20″x10″ floor and have something north of 40 cars. Get the chaps round with a few a beers and it is quality entertainment.
We did this a few years back, cept we didn't set up the track till after the pub, fitted 3 crossovers & couldn't work out why one controller would work both cars
Spirograph. What were they thinking.
O think the 70s were all about selling turds, austin maxis, flight deck, flairs, roller boots.
Spirograph was ace!
Which is why I can fill a 20″x10″ floor
That's about half a metre. 😁
A mate managed to rip his Stretch Armstrong apart. It was full of a viscous green gel IIRC and was even more useless as a toy with a leg missing.
Wasn't it also really toxic? I've half a memory that it was recalled or banned or something.
Which reminds me. Remember the things that were like a rubber sausage but the topology of a donut so you couldn't keep hold of them? Something like "magic snakes" or similar, they were all the rage for almost minutes. Apocryphally perhaps, they were allegedly filled with nasty water too.
Cougar
Full Member
I had a thing that at the time I loved but looking back was pretty poor, its name escapes me. There was a lift with an Archimedes screw, a dozen steel ball bearings, three rubber-skinned drums and a catchment area at the far end which was nominally some sort of scoring system.
Cascade.
Another Super Flight Deck victim here.
Utterly beyond shite.
Always wanted Stock Car Smash Up.
Ended up with Action Rebound.
Meh.....
Amyone remember the John Craven newsround edition on the Moonbase 1999 Eagle space craft toy?
It came with yellow barrels, about the size of a 1/2 of an AA battery complete with radioactive stickers attached
Some genius parents found these and thought they were actually radioactive due to the stickers.
The fact they were constructed from the finest Chinese plastic was lost on them and there were police involvement and possibly the bomb squad
They removed the stickers on future models iirc although i could be totally wrong and dreamt this.
The evel keneivel stunt bike was a bit rubbish – the version that was like a easy-rider chopper was properly awful. it only did one thing which was…. fall over.
Sounds pretty realistic to me...
The Avante was released in 1988. I was sponsored by RiKo back then so raced one for a couple of years. I'd rather have had a Yokomo Dog Fighter but that would have meant paying for it.
Flight deck was great! Not so great?
Battling tops (wanted it for 4 or 5 Christmases on the trot, what a massive disappointment when my parents relented)!
Scalectrix (My dad was beside himself with excitement, I was bored with it after 5 minutes).
Etch a sketch
Rock em sock em robots (shit plastic boxing robots)
Sea Monkeys - utter shite.
ZX81 - 16K RAM Pack - again, utter shite.
There was some real shite for sure. But early 70s chemistry sets had a lot more explosive oomph than (thankfully) anything I was able to buy for my kids...
Never had a Big Trak myself, but the rich kid in our class said it was a major disappointment.
I had a Big Track and loved it.
And it always seemed to list to one side, whether that was down to build quality or nap of the carpet I don’t know.
Yea, mine did that as well.
ZX81 – 16K RAM Pack – again, utter shite.
Revolutionary you mean!! The joy of copying code out of computer magazine and watching in awe as letters flew around the screen. 😱
ZX81 – 16K RAM Pack – again, utter shite.
Revolutionary you mean!! The joy of copying code out of computer magazine and watching in awe as letters flew around the screen. 😱
You mean the utter frustration of spending hours copying code out of a magazine only for a butterfly to flap its wings in the Amazon and the whole lot would disappear before you managed to commit it to tape. I only found out years later that there was a design flaw in the interface that meant if you even looked at it funny it would disconnect losing all power and therefore all the code you had painstakingly typed in.
I bought a as new,boxed, original Big Trak from a charity shop for £12 👌😂
ANy remote control car that was affordable to a normal family then!
The cheaper Tamiya's were affordable, something like a Thundershot or Madcap. I'm being a dick anyway and know exactly what you mean. Tandy were serial offenders.
Yokomo Dog Fighter
Forgot all about them but they were the boys! Yeah, Avante was/is a lovely looking thing but always outperformed bitd.
Zoids! Hours building the bastards just to watch them saunter across the Lino and start to fall apart like a necrotic transformer. Good luck if you just had carpet in your house.
I had a pair of those strap on roller skates that had a switch underneath designed to stop you from going backwards. They did this by just locking up and attempting to kill you.
to keep it going… (if you know, you know).
Oh I know. And the little pickups that wore through. Maddening.
design flaw in the interface that meant if you even looked at it funny it would disconnect losing all power and therefore all the code you had painstakingly typed in.
This was probably the end of my aspiring career with computers.
My kids will look back at crap toys. It's not my fault their favourite toys are cardboard boxes and empty bubble bath bottles.
The cheaper Tamiya’s were affordable, something like a Thundershot or Madcap.
For some value of 'affordable'. I still have my Madcap, I was in my 20s when I bought it.
Lego
And it always seemed to list to one side, whether that was down to build quality or nap of the carpet I don’t know.
I put it down to the nap of my carpet but it just added to the challenge. Forward 10 left 1 repeat to navigate my parent's long narrow hallway.
I didn't have the trailer for it but u remember the ad where the kid used it to deli er the apple to his dad.
Other than lego it was my only decent toy. Im not posh either, IIRC it was a joint Christmas and birthday present from parent and grandad parents.
Ambush. It was a mix of a board counter game where you could move your cowboys around the board, and a shooting game where you could bump your opponents cowboys off if they got close to your end of the board. All played on a moulded plastic relief board so they could nominally hide behind hills.
In theory great, cowboys and shooting!! In practise, unless you were playing someone with a total lack of co-ordination it was impossible to get your men close, and in any case someone would inevitably nudge the flimsy placcy board and knock all the figures over every single turn, meaning 90% of the game was standing the figures back up and arguing over what spot they were on.
Honorable mention for Scalextrix and Subbuteo. Both great games, but took so long to set up that by the time you were ready to start you couldn't be arsed any more. But HMHB said that way better than I could......
Lego
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Bloody hell! People criticising toys, that I couldn’t have even dreamed of when I was little! I still have my original teddy bear, I would have had Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox toys, or I was given books. Which is why I was able to read well by the time I went to primary school.
<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">No toy was rubbish, everything was a treasured item, given and received with love. </span>
Even a cardboard box was reused into a play item
Oh, and I was given a little bike with stabilisers on, fell off trying to ride it up the garden path and badly grazed my leg on a rough garden wall, refused to ride it after that. I was about five or six. Then I was promised a grown-up bike for my birthday, so I took the little bike up the road away from the traffic, came back ten minutes later, saying I can ride it, can I have a new bike, please? I would have been about ten, then. Took a while, mind, and then it was second-hand.
Sold it eventually, it was a BSA StarRider, and I wish now I’d kept it, it ran 27”, or whatever they’re called now, and had a 3-speed Sturmey rear hub. Could have put light bars on, a better hub, and gravel tyres.
We didn’t have much money, a new toy car or something once a month, if I was lucky, or a comic every now and then - I don’t recall anything that had batteries, other than maybe a torch.
Seeing pre-teens wandering around with a smartphone is almost impossible to comprehend to my very much younger self.
I'm a +1 for Lego.
Early '80s Lego. We had a big ice cream tub of it. Just blocks and plates. I'd go at it thinking I could make a house, manage a single wall and then go outside and "do something less boring instead" like football, throwing things at other kids or bike riding.
It was a million miles away from the stuff my kids have spent more of their lives doing than anything else. They've never had expensive kits, but can take the parts from all of the kits they do have and create something completely different out of their heads.
Bit younger here by the looks of it.
Sega mega cd. What a pile of turd.
Fmv games or mega drive games with red book audio. Waste of money.
Sonic Cd was good. Rest was rubbish:
Sewer shark, road avenger, cobra command, Sherlock holmes, night trap. All crap.
Didn't double dip and get a 32x though.
I had a dog and my brother's old bike! Best toys ever!
Never had a Big Trak myself, but the rich kid in our class said it was a major disappointment.
Didn't it get a re-issue a few years back?
He used to liven it up with lighter fluid and a box of matches.
We used airfix planes with flight deck. Stuff a French banger in the fuselage, followed with some meths soaked cotton wool, catch it on fire then try to land the flaming plane before it blew up!!!! Great memories............
convert
Full Member
Child of the 70’s – check.
Father in the Royal Navy serving on Ark Royal – check.
God father was a Phantom pilot – check.So how the **** did it take until 2022 on some nerdy mountain biking site that I discover there was a toy literally intended for me!!!! Ok, sounds like I didn’t miss out on much but even so – jeez Dad (RIP), how come I didn’t get a Super Flight Deck????!!??
I would imagine your dad and his work mates 'tested' one and relised it was shit.
My dad was a depot supervisor at a HST maintenance depot bitd, he bought me a British Rail HST set, and it was taken to work to check it all out first (play with), being Hornby is was all good so I did get it on Christmas Day.
After my time, but... Transformers. I mean, WTAF? A robot that transforms into a cassette tape?!? What, to render itself helpless? Or penetrable by a biro? Hell, even the Porsche 911 was a step down from the robot form that could fly. Clearly a concept invented by the Mattel execs looking for a Christmas bonus.
@gobchul
Yep, Bigtrak brought back recently, I bought a load for coding/programming fun at school. Totally original spec so had to faff with D cell batteries and 1 unit of distance was still a foot so kids using 30cm rules had to account for the discrepancy when trying to drive them long distance around the school corridors! 🤣
I had a thing that at the time I loved but looking back was pretty poor, its name escapes me. There was a lift with an Archimedes screw, a dozen steel ball bearings, three rubber-skinned drums and a catchment area at the far end which was nominally some sort of scoring system. Boing, boing, boing, ka-chunk. In truth, the skill was in setting the bloody thing up so that the balls made it to the end and returned perpetual-motion style. It took hours and the markings on the playmat thing was way off.
. @Cougar - Cascade.
The massive D-cell batteries that powered the Archimedes screw tower lasted all of 8 minutes.
https://www.doyouremember.co.uk/memory/cascade
I had a Sketch-a-Graph, a sort of pantograph thing. I remember being very taken by it thanks to its adverts, mainly so I could use it to upscale drawings I think. It turned out to be so flimsily constructed that it couldn't accurately reproduce anything, especially when configured to upscale. And my dad had access to a photocopier at his work so it was only the upscaling feature that was particularly appealing to me.
. @Cougar – Cascade.
Yeah, Rusty identified it earlier. Cheers.
I found an overly long video on YT which confirmed my memories. Clever ideas, shonky electrics and an absolute pain to set up. That noise though... 😁
Mousetrap. Never ever met a set where all the different things would work, if you could even get half of them balanced in the first place.
On the other hand, if you want to recreate the magic of playing games when you were 5, buy Buckaroo. You'll find that as adult, you can easily get all the stuff on the donkey without setting him off. Now fill all the hollow backs of the bits with blu-tac, then have a couple of pints or so of beer, and suddenly it's a massive shock again when he jumps... just like when you were tiny 🙂
Ker-Plunk.
Played twice because setting it up was such a faff. Like trying to reupholster a porcupine.
singletrackmind
Full MemberAmyone remember the John Craven newsround edition on the Moonbase 1999 Eagle space craft toy?
It came with yellow barrels, about the size of a 1/2 of an AA battery complete with radioactive stickers attached
Some genius parents found these and thought they were actually radioactive due to the stickers.
The fact they were constructed from the finest Chinese plastic was lost on them and there were police involvement and possibly the bomb squad
They removed the stickers on future models iirc although i could be totally wrong and dreamt this.
So I just today picked up these from a facebook ad locally:
Only one radioactive barrel sadly but they go well with my own one...
