A great conversation with my grandson

My miss spent child years

One of the comics used to have all sorts of wonderful freebies when I was in Junior school.

There was a clapper that made a right old noise. The boys loved them and the girls ran away.

e.g. https://comicsuk.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7024&start=165

The balsa wood planes with or without elastic bands were mesmerising to us little boys.

Tell your grandson about these, John:



I don't know if they still sell them.

That's a toy I well remember, cap guns

not met my latest grandson--5 months old now--had photo sent this morning.

I remember them well.

My favourite was Subbuteo football and cricket!

No guns in our houses, but I do remember them

I had Subbuteo football in the late sixties and didn't realise they made cricket too.

I remember a room at school with about ten Subbuteo pitches, and I had a cracking Uruguay team (I just liked their colours) on the green, stretched pitch. It was taken quite seriously.

I went to school in Knowsley and quite a few of us were threatened with punishment if we did not tell the teachers who made a dangerous toy.
It was two 3 or 4 inch bolts attached to the same nut in the middle.
Caps were placed inside the nut between the two bolts and then the boys would throw them with quite a bang made.
None of the boys owned up and no-one grassed up the person who brought the nut and bolts into school.
It was real Dennis the Menace stuff.

Snitches get stitches we made the same, put loads of caps in, we also made catapults and fired ball bearings readily obtainable by the hundred from the shipyards, then we discovered thermite........

wasnt there a space capsule you placed caps between the two bits of metal and threw it in the air waiting for it to land with a bang?

There was, that was the original with the tail fins

Back of Kelloggs packets I think

I don't remember a space capsule but boys who screwed the bolts tighter but not too tight.

Retro 80's cap rockets still available
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-...op-Retro-Space-Boys-1970s-1980s-/282908209068

One of the best things the boys did was to use the pointy end of a dart attached to a piece of thin cane with two playing cards at the opposite end to the dart point and squeezed into the cane which was sliced into four. Everyone used to get a piece of rope then used it to launch the projectile which seemed to fly for miles (to us).
Exciting for boys but very dangerous and could only be attempted on the football/playing fields..