50s/60s Britain and Now

[Hroth]

17 hours ago, Colin said:

I remember the early ads for yogurt around 1961/62, marketed by Eden Vale as “The Young Idea”. When I tried it, I found it quite revolting - basically it smelt and tasted just like sour milk with tiny bits of fruit added, urgh.

It was years before I tried another one!

 

I remember the Ski yogurt ads, with cool hipsters lounging around in minimal apartments, dressed all in white (I think the furnishings were all white too).  Funny how tastes change!

 

17 hours ago, Colin said:

What about the collectible cards that were sold at the local sweet shop in a pack with bright pink bubble gum - I think they may have been American in origin. There were various series,

 

Never got them myself, but one series of cards was of the American Civil War, with incredibly gory battle scenes.

 

 

[Philou]

My comics for the week (bought by my aunt whom I've mentioned further up) were, the Dandy (Mondays), Beano (Wednesdays) and for light reading the weekends, Buster and Victor. I think these gave way (or merged with) the Eagle and Lion/Tiger. I remember the cut-aways, one being the proposed nuclear powered train, but I don't recall within which publication it appeared.

 

There was also on the front page of one of them a 'how do you get out of that?' situation. Two come to mind: Car stalled on railway crossing and unable to restart with train approaching - Answer: Put it into gear and use the starter motor to bump it out of the way (of course in those days trains didn't arrive at 90+mph!). Next: Your Land-Rover slides down a slope too steep to climb out - Answer: Use the electric wound cable on the front as an assist (with a suitable tree nearby of course) to get you up and out (this was aimed at 8 - 12 year kids who didn't drive!). However, the first one I have remembered on approaching a level-crossing - just in case! Don't panic Mrs Mannering!!

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

[petethemole]

Definitely the Eagle for the cutaway drawings; more recently a selection were republished in a book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eagle-Book-Cutaways-Ashwell-Wood/dp/0863502857.

 

I had the Eagle weekly and was occasionally allowed the Lion or Tiger.  Beano, Dandy, Topper and Beezer were "common" and not allowed. However I had a friend across the road whose Dad owned a newsagents, so I read them all at his house. He also had a generous selection of Triang trains, whereas I had Hornby clockwork, so I spent a lot of time at his house.  After 11+ I went to a "posh" school, where the common rooms had the same comics.  I still have some Brooke Bond cards.  ISTR another set of cards came from "Kiddicigs" sweet cigarettes, featuring b/w photos of British Railways locos, which I also still have. If I could find them I could confirm the brand but I've mislaid the box for now.  Anyone remember "Smoker's sets"?  As well as sweet cigs, they featured a liquorice pipe, chocolate cigar and "tobacco", desiccated coconut dyed brown.  

[gordon s]

...and when you got to the grand old age of 10, you moved onto these....

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Picture_Library

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

• ( with a brown, stitched, leather ball)

 

Which you didn't head if it was a wet day!

 

Mike.

[Kickstart]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

 

• Frog Models. Not having built but the occasional plastic kit for nigh on 30 years (00 rolling stock doesn't count, I would hazard), I wonder what happened to them and/or the moulds

Think Frog closed in the 1970s. Think the moulds were sold to the USSR and were marketed under the Nova brand name.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[Devo63]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

 

• Frog Models. Not having built but the occasional plastic kit for nigh on 30 years (00 rolling stock doesn't count, I would hazard), I wonder what happened to them and/or the moulds.

FROG stopped production in 1976 with most of the tooling being sold to the Soviet Union and marketed under the NOVO brand name in the West. The USSR didn't want any of the Axis Powers tooling which ended up with Revell Germany. Since the collapse of the USSR the kits have been made by a large number of concerns in Russia and the Ukraine. Some of the tooling has not been looked after and the plastic quality is sometimes fairly poor but you do still find good ones at times. Part of the sale deal was that FROG would tool up a number of Soviet aircraft for NOVO. Four dies were cut but ended up not being supplied to NOVO. A good book on the subject is Richard Lines 'FROG Model Aircraft 1932-1976' which includes the full development story and gives production figures for most of the kits.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Devo63 said:

FROG stopped production in 1976 with most of the tooling being sold to the Soviet Union and marketed under the NOVO brand name in the West. The USSR didn't want any of the Axis Powers tooling which ended up with Revell Germany. Since the collapse of the USSR the kits have been made by a large number of concerns in Russia and the Ukraine. Some of the tooling has not been looked after and the plastic quality is sometimes fairly poor but you do still find good ones at times. Part of the sale deal was that FROG would tool up a number of Soviet aircraft for NOVO. Four dies were cut but ended up not being supplied to NOVO. A good book on the subject is Richard Lines 'FROG Model Aircraft 1932-1976' which includes the full development story and gives production figures for most of the kits.

Is that the same NOVO that took over the Big Big Train?

[Flying Pig]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Oh boy, is that an evocative picture.

 

 

Note the Hurricane with gaps between the parts, excess cement around the canopy and transfers apparently applied to the unpainted plastic - nicely observed.

 

[F-UnitMad]

22 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Note the Hurricane with gaps between the parts, excess cement around the canopy and transfers apparently applied to the unpainted plastic - nicely observed.

 

And a missing propeller blade, no doubt after discovering that the model couldn't fly, or even glide.

My Airfix aircraft were just like that, but a decade later.

[Devo63]

29 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Is that the same NOVO that took over the Big Big Train?

One and the same. I gather it wasn't one actual company as such but a group of state run plastics factories making products to obtain hard currency ($&£) for the USSR with the NOVO brand name used as an umbrella identity for the different products. The tooling was shared around between a number of different factories and the quality depended on each one having a sufficient level of training and the right machinery for the job. The early NOVO production was shipped as bagged items to the UK and packed in British printed boxes. The electric motors in the NOVO version of the Big Big Train also varied in quality. Some were made in the Soviet Union while other were brought in from other Eastern Bloc countries. I built a NOVO (or clone) version of the FROG 1/25 scale Morris 1100 which had one of these motors. The original 1965 model was in a soft form of plastic while the Russian made version was in a harder polystyrene.  

[Philou]

Wasn't Minic Motorways sold off to Russia too? I remember the stock in Bud Morgan's being repacked ready for collection being told it was going there - and was I interested in selling mine back? Which I thought a bit bizarre at the time. Never saw any Minic since then. I suppose the nearest equivalent to it now would be the Faller system. I also recall that Faller had something similar to Minic (far more different pieces for roads - but no roundabouts unlike Minic).

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

[TheQ]

6 hours ago, GeoffAlan said:

Yes, a school friend got himself in the local rag after reading up on how to make Nitroglycerine. 

 

Experimenting in the front room of his house, his mam called him to get his tea. He left things 'brewing' on the spirit burner and went for his tea.........

 

The next evening, the local rag had a nice photo of their front garden, complete with Bay window disassembled all over it. I'll not name him as, by now, he may have lived it down!

I wonder if it was the same person,  who left a home brew still running,  while he went for lunch and blew up the entire villa... 

 

Problem was, it was in a Europeans only compound in Saudi!!!! 

 

Only allowed one comic...  And it came out of my pocket money.. 2s 6d...( late 60s)

[Tony Davis]

On 24/04/2020 at 07:38, billy_anorak59 said:

Not quite complete due to the lack of Hornby Dublo, but this painting sums up my 60's childhood bedroom pretty well.

Painting is from a Birthday card sent to me by my sister.

Does the Spangles packet say “pepper”? Don’t recall that flavour!

[Kickstart]

33 minutes ago, Tony Davis said:

Does the Spangles packet say “pepper”? Don’t recall that flavour!

Peppermint flavour you might remember 

 

All the best

 

Katy

[pH]

11 hours ago, gordon s said:

Thanks for posting the Jetex pic, John. Had a few mates with them all those years ago. They were temperamental, but to a kid, the pencil jet once fired was impressive. How we didn’t get burned and end up in Casualty was more luck than judgement, but then we did loads of things that would be banned these days.
 

Maybe we had more common sense......

 

... or luck!

[Tony Davis]

2 hours ago, Kickstart said:

Peppermint flavour you might remember 

 

All the best

 

Katy

Peppermint! Of course! 
 

Thanks

 

Tony

[rockershovel]

One big difference, regarding dangerous toys was that a high proportion of fathers had varying degrees of experience of weapons, explosives or of hard engineering - machine tools, heavy machinery, military service during WW2 or National Service. The perceptions of risk and danger were entirely different. 

 

 

[rockershovel]

Jamboree bag! 

[Mark Saunders]

37 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

One big difference, regarding dangerous toys was that a high proportion of fathers had varying degrees of experience of weapons, explosives or of hard engineering - machine tools, heavy machinery, military service during WW2 or National Service. The perceptions of risk and danger were entirely different. 

 

 

 

The same can be said about the politicians who ran the country in previous years compared with the current ones!

[Colin]

10 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

I remember the Ski yogurt ads, with cool hipsters lounging around in minimal apartments, dressed all in white (I think the furnishings were all white too).  Funny how tastes change!

 

 

Never got them myself, but one series of cards was of the American Civil War, with incredibly gory battle scenes.

 

 

I remember those cards, there was another series about WW2 which “featured” horror scenes such as executions and enemy soldiers butchering the wounded in hospital - what on Earth were the manufacturers  thinking of?

[Kingzance]

57 minutes ago, Colin said:

I remember those cards, there was another series about WW2 which “featured” horror scenes such as executions and enemy soldiers butchering the wounded in hospital - what on Earth were the manufacturers  thinking of?

Today the makers of video games achieve that and more with CGI!

[Steamport Southport]

7 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

Today the makers of video games achieve that and more with CGI!

 

Nothing like shooting hookers in GTA. 

 

I know what people mean though. Some of those Commando books were also pretty gruesome, especially the ones about the Japanese.

 

 

 

That's GTA as in Grand Theft Auto not GT3. No Gas Turbines are harmed.

 

PS. I don't even play games...

[The Johnster]

We used to have indoor fireworks on the dinner table at xmas.  The outdoor fireworks were lethal, as they'd tell you in any casualty department on Nov 5, especially Jacky Jumpers, which were completely unpredictable and would have caused panic to both sides in any battle!

[Nearholmer]

Nobody's mentioned music or football ..........