Childhood

My childhood in one photo

Oh wow! what a great idea for a photo! brings back a lot of memories. For me tho, it would need a few smaller star wars guys

Excellent variety of figures from different lines and in different scales! Fun times those must have been!

And still are, if this is a recent pic!

Is that Dr. Steel from the Big Jim line there in the background? Funny coincidence, as I am featuring a reference to Dr. Steel in a small diorama project I'm currently working on; currently, as in, I still have glue on my fingers as I'm typing this!

That was one great childhood Dean!!

A few years after mine but very similar!

SCU_HQ wrote:

Is that Dr. Steel from the Big Jim line there in the background?!

Dave, Big Jim was released in the UK as 'Mark Strong' in 1971 but unfortunately only lasted a couple of years.

somekindajoe wrote:

Dave, Big Jim was released in the UK as 'Mark Strong' in 1971 but unfortunately only lasted a couple of years.

Mark Strong? Interesting, I did not know that. I wonder why they changed the name in the UK? Focus groups, marketing research, or copyright issues, I suppose.

SCU_HQ wrote:

Excellent variety of figures from different lines and in different scales! Fun times those must have been!

And still are, if this is a recent pic!

Is that Dr. Steel from the Big Jim line there in the background? Funny coincidence, as I am featuring a reference to Dr. Steel in a small diorama project I'm currently working on; currently, as in, I still have glue on my fingers as I'm typing this!

I think the guy your referring to is a fighting furies ..capt peg leg figure ...( the bald one) not dr steel

somekindajoe wrote:

That was one great childhood Dean!!

A few years after mine but very similar!

SCU_HQ wrote:

Is that Dr. Steel from the Big Jim line there in the background?!

Dave, Big Jim was released in the UK as 'Mark Strong' in 1971 but unfortunately only lasted a couple of years.

I had a mark strong figure when I was a kid ...he came in a white karate outfit ..I wish I had one now..I remember both his hands snapping off ..I think I used to celotape guns to them as his hands were straight and couldn’t grip

The 'Mark Strong' paperwork!







The hip balls failed on mine. I remember my Grandad repairing them with wire.

I had the Karate suit, Track suit, Race driver and Scuba diver. The Scuba set was better than the VAM version and the face mask fitted the figure much better.

Yep. Pretty much everything in that photo was in my toy-box - except Fighting Furies, never owned one.

Great photo.

Rustygun wrote:

I think the guy your referring to is a fighting furies ..capt peg leg figure ...( the bald one)  not dr steel

I was just reading online about Big Jim / Mark Strong. The Fighting Furies were a pirate-themed line based on Jim/Mark! Those must have been cool!

Oh, man, that dossier! Awesome stuff! They put some thought in to toy releases back in the day! Just the thing to capture the imaginations of 7-10 year old boys!

And... dossier! Look at the vocabulary we learned from our toys, way back when! They didn't "dumb things down" for kids!

SCU_HQ wrote:

Awesome stuff! They put some thought in to toy releases back in the day! Just the thing to capture the imaginations of 7-10 year old boys!

Oh Dave how "unwoke" you are !
You must know that such toys are just extensions of the racist white male privileged chauvinistic patriarchy .
Toys now MUST be gender non-specific and certainly not aimed at fostering any expressions of toxic masculine testosterone charged war-like aggression!
(Which probably explains why boys these days are so confused.....?)

SCU_HQ wrote:

And... dossier! Look at the vocabulary we learned from our toys, way back when! They didn't "dumb things down" for kids!

True, and neither did they seek to deny boys being ....well, boys actually.
Now of course gender is a concept parents must await until the child itself decides,  and in the meantime all the while ensuring "it" ...SORRY, "they" are raised it in a gender neutral environment.

LeStryge wrote:

Oh Dave how "unwoke" you are !
You must know that such toys are just extensions of the racist white male privileged chauvinistic patriarchy.

I miss the days when we had "boys' toys" and "girls' toys." There was plenty of overlap among the kids in the neighborhood where I grew up: everybody, boys and girls, played with toy soldiers, played with toy cars, played with toy horses, and played with... shock and horror... toy guns! Barbies... not so much. The irony is that now, approaching my doddering dotage, I play with Barbies a lot more than I ever would have dreamed of doing when I was a kid. So in that regard, I suppose I have become more "woke."


Of course, Barbie is usually showing some skin and packing heat.

Fantastic picture and idea for a thread Dean, I had a lot of those figures too and only recently managed to get most of them back in my collection.

I had been thinking of something very similar recently, a picture of the most influential things from my childhood altogether.

Beatlefan wrote:

Fantastic picture and idea for a thread Dean, I had a lot of those figures too and only recently managed to get most of them back in my collection.

I had been thinking of something very similar recently, a picture of the most influential things from my childhood altogether.

Thanks Richard ...
I’ll look forward to seeing your picture...

Great memories you have there Rustygun...

Rustygun wrote:

My childhood in one photo

Very much like my childhood collection but the same as Dal mine would include 3 3/4" figures too
I have some photos somewhere that my sister found recently of Lone Ranger and fighting furries figures from back in the day , probably Xmas time.
Me and my sister would often take pictures of our toys received for Christmas, I'll see if she's still got them handy and post them up .