“DINKY” DAYS 2: SEVEN YEARS LATER

I wasn’t going to bother you with this, but since my previous little tale about my old “Dinky Toys” catalogue went down so well (slight pause to savour a moment steeped in heavy sarcasm), I thought I could “entertain” you still further by telling you all about its faithful companion, which sat alongside it waiting to be rediscovered on that same dusty shelf a couple of weeks ago.

This version dates from about seven years later and is copyright marked 1977, and is in much better condition as it dates from a time when I would have been around thirteen years old and well into my “preservation of precious things” phase.

The world has changed. The price for such a catalogue is now 5p, which in the currency at the time of the old catalogue would have been one shilling, or 12d and represents a 400% price increase over those few short years. It seems odd now, living in a time when 5p has become so much fiddling small change to think about what a mighty figure the shilling once was when £5 a year could once employ the services of a housemaid.

Interesting too that the decimalisation of our currency wasn’t supposed to make things more expensive, but inevitably did, which is something to bear in mind when the Euro is ultimately brought in (should it survive...). Looking back upon those intervening years I can clearly remember the days when people still felt the need to “convert” the price of things into “old money” just to see how expensive they really were, and five divided by twelve was always going to mean that things got rounded up, even with the long lost “half pence piece” doing its best to even things out. Strangely enough, I don’t really remember when people generally stopped doing that (although I occasionally still do…). Equally, even if I try really hard, I have no memory at all of ever handing over one of those huge, brown discs that were the “old pennies” in a shop, although I must have done so many times as a tiny new potato.

Anyway, it’s seven years later and decimalisation is far behind us, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and the coming of Punk Rock are upon us and in this brave, confident new world, “Dinky Toys” remain a cornerstone of many a young chap’s toybox. There seems to be “trouble at mill” though. The exciting new designs being promoted to the eagerly waiting world on the cover are from an American TV show that had ended about the time of that previous catalogue. On the pages within, the hugely popular “Space: 1999” Eagle transporters have had a restyled paint job with the engine cowlings now being presented in a nasty red plastic effect and the freighter becoming “metallic” blue. Dinky have been very loyal to the Gerry Anderson shows, with the “Interceptor” and “SHADO Mobile” tie in toys from his long defunct 1960s show “UFO” still seeming to be popular, although the sole survivor from the previous range of toys in that earlier catalogue, the much-loved “Thunderbird 2”, has now also been resprayed blue.

Heresy!

Otherwise the toys of 1977 remain very similar to those of the late 1960s, even though the way chosen to display them has altered, with slightly blurry photographs just being labeled with enigmatic numbers, and line drawing of the side profile of each vehicle helpfully telling you how big they are, or other “special features” like that. There is even a model (a person model, not a car model… A model amongst the models… Hmmm…) being used to make the pages more “exciting”, although he is a small child wearing a variety of helmets (astronaut, racing driver, policeman, soldier, construction worker… I wonder if he ended up singing with the “Village People”…?), presumably to help remind the potential customer quite what their target demographic actually was.

The cars themselves are a strange late 1970s bunch. John Steed’s “Special” Leyland Jaguar appears to have a spring-loaded door to knock down villains (and diabolical masterminds, obviously), but on the opposite page to one displaying such sportscar greats as a Lamborghini Marzal, a Corvette Stingray, a Porsche and (er…) a Triumph TR7, there are three cars of a less exciting hue, two of which are actually brown; A Mini, a Volvo estate and an Austin Princess, which does actually win my own personal award for the worst single car in the history of car making ever. I bet the kids were blown away by the exciting possibilities that trio offered up.

Much of the rest of the catalogue displays toys of a commercial or military nature which probably shows the way that the sales of toy cars were starting to move in, towards the “serious collector”. Aircraft, tanks and ships sit alongside the diggers, wagons  and police vehicles, although one final surprise does get pulled out of the hat in that year celebrating all things “regal” when Cinderella’s Coach from “The Slipper and the Rose” makes an appearance, although the young model himself doesn’t make an appearance and get to wear a tricorn hat (nor, to be fair, a tiara if we are considering all the potential headwear available to the designers) on that particular page.

The final few pages speak volumes about the various mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in the toy industry during the years between those two publications. Seven pages are devoted to promoting Meccano products, which have also moved with the times, as well as “Mogul” Steel Toys, whatever they were. They look big, chunky and American, as if Dinky were trying another merger to try to muscle in on the then popular “Tonka” market.

As for Meccano, well, the “new” Plastic Meccano has arrived, and the photo for their new “Prima” construction toy even has a girl in it. There was now “Pocket Meccano” (try getting that on a plane nowadays…), a crane building set and even “Multikits” to build Army vehicles (Oddly, I now remember I used to have one of these), Combat vehicles (did toymakers just assume that all boys were interested was “war”?), or Highway construction vehicles (as you were, apparently not…), and the main Meccano range itself now sees to come in sound and sturdy proper wooden cases.

None of these innovative new products would ultimately save Meccano, of course, as it was doomed to failure within a few short years, but it’s nice to see they were still trying.