The toys that fun forgot!
QUESTION What were the worst toys ever made?
I recall the 1970s excitement of being given the airfix Flight Deck. This toy consisted of a cockpit control panel, a scale plastic model aircraft carrier and a matching F4 Phantom jet fighter.
It boasted ‘all the thrills and excitement of landing a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier’. In reality, it was a plastic plane suspended from a bit of fishing line, one end of which was attached to the end of a flight stick, the other clamped to a suitable piece of furniture.
The joystick gave you a modicum of control over its positioning, and when it got to the carrier the plane would catch on a small piece of line stretched across the deck and a flag would pop up to indicate a successful landing. Hooray.
Then you pulled the plane back up the fishing line, let it go and watched as it slid down again . . .
and when it had landed once more, you left it alone and went off to play with something that was more fun. like the empty cardboard box.
The only real entertainment was when Granny tripped over the wire.
Mike Cotton, Liverpool. Is THere a more soul- destroying
afternoon pastime than Monopoly? The rule-heavy game is interminable. The children are only happy when pilfering cash from the bank.
The feeling of slipping inexorably into debt is an experience most of us get enough of in real life.
Danny Powers, Chesterfield, Derbys. soMe people cherish the memory of Bayko, an early precursor to Meccano and lego. I hated it. It was made of Bakelite — the material of the future.
sharp, brittle and unconvincing, the tiny ‘brick’-pattern panels slid on to bendy (and sharp) steel rods that you set into the holes in the base in a rigidly predetermined pattern. The process of building was finger-achingly dull, the threading of tiny bits of plastic on to threatening little steel wires interminable.
The designs were as dull as ditchwater and the end result of hours of frustrating labour was a static model of a despairingly grim 1940s suburban home, useful only for airgun practice.
Jem Walters, West Bromwich, West Mids. We oWN an awful/brilliant U.s. board game from the 1960s called What shall I Be? The exciting Game of career Girls.
Players move around the board collecting school cards, subject cards
and Personality cards; collect the right number of cards and you could achieve one of six top professions, namely: model, airline hostess, ballet dancer, actress, nurse, teacher.
The subject cards guide your play. one, in the shape of a heart, reads ‘ You are overweight: Bad for airline Hostess, Ballet Dancer and Model’; another reads ‘You get too excited: Bad for air Hostess and Nurse’.
other tasteful cards include ‘ Your make-up is too sloppy’ and ‘You are a slow thinker’. It’s an appalling game. However, my daughters love it!
Mrs Cristina Moorehead, Bristol. eTcH a skeTcH was a mechanical drawing toy invented by arthur Granjean
as L’Ecran Magique, or The Magic screen. It was snapped up by the ohio art company, which renamed it, and it flew off the shelves.
I’ve no idea why. I had a good grade at art o- level, yet I found it almost impossible to draw on. The instructions suggested all sorts of possibilities but in reality it was only good for basic geometric shapes such as houses. I usually just left rude messages for my siblings on it.
Gary Oliver, Cromer, Norfolk.
QUESTION Has every nation won an Olympic medal? Which has the fewest?
THe International olympic committee (Ioc) recognises 206 National olympic committees (Noc) in addition to the refugee olympic Team, but more than 70 countries that currently compete in the Games have never succeeded in winning a medal.
africa has the most countries — 28 — without a medal. While many of those are small territories and island nations, there are some major countries without a win, including libya, rwanda, sierra leone and somalia.
asia is home to 13 countries without a medal, followed by oceania with 12. Bangladesh is the largest country by population that has never won a medal; cambodia and Nepal are awaiting their first medal, too.
Guam and Papua New Guinea are among the countries in oceania still awaiting a medal. In europe, albania and Bosnia & Herzegovina are yet to win a medal. Bolivia is the only major south american country still waiting for its first medal.
at Tokyo 2020 two micro-states made headlines. san Marino became the smallest nation to produce an olympic medallist at a summer Games. san Marino has a population of just under 35,000 people, and athletes from the nation won silver and bronze in the mixed trap and women’s trap shooting competitions respectively, as well as a bronze medal in wrestling.
Bermuda became the smallest nation to win gold when Flora Duffy won the women’s triathlon. The island has a population of just 65,000. Prior to that, Duffy’s compatriot clarence Hill won a bronze medal in heavyweight boxing at Montreal 1976.
Georgia Marshall, Stockport, Cheshire.
n IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.