Fabulous art (perhaps by BORIS) - comics were growing up.

A classic case of why adverts were more fun in the old days. Dishonest to the point of fantasy, but who cares. We bought these little guys and had a load of fun. These days people would sue.

Space was a big theme in 1969. The Sparky annual from that year would have been read cover to cover by myself in front of the fire.

Like Cosmic man. These guys must have had a heady diet of piss poor Sci-Fi books to make the crummy predictions they do in this record...

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find (find what exactly?)

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, or say
Is in the pill you took today (unless you lie about taking it?)

In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to do
Nobody's gonna look at you (you always need teeth!)

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you (you're at the Gym)

In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long black tube (how? you have no arms or legs)

In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say
Guess it's time for the Judgement day (why is he so late?)

In the year 8510
God's gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again (I'd do something else)

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man's gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing (he put lots of Co2 into the atmosphere)

Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday (solid cheese this part)

Stingray. A classic underwater puppet-based show by Gerry Anderson.

Given that the characters were named things like; Troy Tempest, Atlanta Shore and Titan you can see they didn't look very far beyond the classics for inspiration.
Originally shown in 1964, it was the first British television series to be filmed in colour.

Great stuff. Hours of fun with the Hot Wheels car set. Basically a poor boys Scalectrix (as gravity rather than an electric track made them go) but in some ways the equal as the little cars had suspension and the wheels spun very freely enabling quite an impressive sense of speed albeit on a small scale.

I only had a single hoop set up - but you could (if you were patient) leave a gap between the track and the car would fly across here like Evil Knievel.

God bless MATTEL.

My wife still watches the re-runs of this series. I was never a huge fan even as a child. Their names were just too silly for words (Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin). Their boss was scary looking - we called him "Monkey face", which isn't very nice, but that's kids for you. Kids can be cruel.

In real life his name was Leo G. Carroll and he appeared in a few B movies including a quite famous one that involves him being exposed to radiation (it was always radiation wot done it in these films - that or fire but that was if you wanted a particularly naff ending to your film - radiation is usually introduced at the start, but i digress...) getting even uglier (!) along with a road-straddling behemoth of a Tarantula.

Now were getting somewhere. Quality illustration of a skull with a fierce looking rat squatting atop. Artwork like this inspired me to get drawing although I never quite reached this standard. I often wonder if it was a good idea to immerse myself in the world of horror at such a young age? Too late now anyway - now where did I put my axe...

A Christmas perenial this along with the Sparky etc. My sister would get the Judy or Diana - which eventually I would end up reading (the girls stories were so much better than the boys stuff - or was that just me?)

My Dad used to draw pictures for us from this book - one of the better Disney offerings.

Roy Wood from Wizzard and Ayshea who had her own pop based TV series for a while (with a toy owl I think) . This show was probably my first taste of pop on TV besides Top of the Pops, but that had Jimmy Saville on it and he used scare the life out of me.

My first crush I'd say. Elizabeth Montgomery in the American TV series Bewitched. She was so perfect and had magic powers to boot! A classic series that still gets airtime - despite Elizabeth passing away a few years ago. Now that's the magic of TV.

Mmm. Standard 'hero' type cover from the Victor annual. It just looks plain wrong to me. I mean if you want to be portrayed as a real hero you put the injured man over your shoulder in a firemans carry. You don't humiliate him by bundling him into a wheelbarrow like a sack of manure and parade him about. Unless of course he's utterly bladdered in which case this is absolutely the right thing to do.

Yes please. After the success of the movie "Jaws" some bright sparks decided to put out a comic with a little more 'bite'...the first 5 issues are quite explicit in showing limbs being bitten off and people in general not having a very good time in the maw of a monsterous great white called hook jaw.

The powers that be (boo) decided this was not appropriate for children and pulled the mag until the content was toned down. Spoilsports.

Magazine cover from quite recent i think, but dwelling in the glories of the past. Quite a good job i think.

Another top Xmas gift - the viewmaster. Somehow let you view images of your favourite cartoon characters in 3D powered by only daylight. Well ahead of it's time as no batteries required. Got a bit boring after about 30 seconds...

The ultimate Xmas gift - a wig, fake beard and glasses set.

ROBOT SAM - THE ANSWER MAN

Except he wasn't a man was he?

He was clearly a Robot and not a very good one at that.

Ooh - scary thing this. We used to hide it in a drawer so we couldn't see it. To be really mean I used to hide it under the covers of my siblings bed and wait nearby for the screams (well whimpers)...it's an image that still kinda freaks me out today...

The classic "Aurora" Monster kits - you were no-one until you had glued and painted at least one of these models. I had the werewolf one, but it's head, hands and feet were made of pale green Glo-in-the-dark material so it looked rubbish in the day and just weird at night.

We used to hang towels over the garage windows to black out the light, then set up the models along with the Horror mags and Pan book covers (lit with torches) then charge the smaller kids 10p a time to walk though the 'Haunted House".

An added bonus would be to hide under blankets in a corner then jump out screaming at an opportune moment - I think several pairs of pants were ruined this way, not to mention the emotional scarring.

This advert was usually found inside the Superman comics I used to buy. The message is loud and clear; leopard skin pants will never be in fashion, but assaulting a bully will make you the "Hero of the beach".

I always reckoned that they missed out the final frame - the one where the bully comes back and blows the guys head off with a .45 magnum.

Now we're talking! To a 10 year old this was gold. The Famous Monsters of Filmland were to spark a life-long love of classic horror films. There was a series called Don't watch alone on STV on friday nights at midnight, I made a deal with my parents; I'll go to bed and sleep at 8.00 if you promise to come wake me up for this show. I had to call a stop to this when i was 22 (and might have had a girl in the room with me), but it was a good arrangement while it lasted.

Although still endearing, I find most of the old movies now to be tedious in the extreme (it's OK, Boris, not you), although the original House on Haunted Hill can still frighten the bejesus out of me if I do watch alone.

This image is from an illustrated book of Hiawatha that somehow made it's way across the Atlantic from my relatives. As usual it was a gift to my sister that I later "aquired" from her when she discovered that 2p would get her a tipped single and a match instead of the bus ride to school. (Sometimes my Bus fare was taken from me as well so that her friend could also have a smoke, but thats another story).

This beautiful illustration in particular stayed in my memory. The environmental message in the book is completely relevant today. They should have put this on the curriculum

As one of the UK's most successful pop icons there were no Flys on the wonderful (if petite) Marc Bolan, however on early pressings of his classic Electric Warrior album there was a very large fly indeed.

My sister owned this record and it was full of very suggestive lyrics "lying on the beach, I wanna tickle your peach, it's a rip off"..."Rockin in the nude, I'm feeling such a dude, it's a rip off"...

I remember thinking to myself this is rude! This is what rude means! I was so happy I played the album 'till the grooves wore flat.

I can clearly remember my parents (unable to contain their excitement) rounding us all up - very early in the morning - to watch a "historic moment" on the TV. "Man is going to set foot on the MOON!". I had visions of Thunderball XL5 rockets and martians in mind. The footage was (of course) decidedly underwhelming. To an 8 year old it looked like an ashtray being dropped into a bag of cement.

They put Man on the Moon but showed it to the world in grainy black and white, thrilling as a test card.

This is what passed for Television entertainment during much of the 60's and early 70's. It's called a test card and the notion was that when they had run out of programmes to show, you used it to set up the picture on your TV (contrast, brightness etc. but not colour). Colour had yet to be introduced to TV - hard to believe - even the local Cinema which was a total dump had colour.

Accompanying this dull graphic was an annoying tone that lets you know what it's like to suffer from tinnitus (a useful warning for when you get older and go to MBV concerts).

This is Andy Pandy. Andy was a popular puppet character in a show called 'watch with mother' - which was a silly title, as your mum could actually get on with the important things in the house while you were watching 'watch with mother' on your own. Even as a child I could see the strings holding Andy up and knew that he wasn't real. That kind of spoilt the whole show for me and put me off Thunderbirds and captain Scarlett etc.

I always hated Z Cars. None of them had a sense of humour and the plot was always rubbish (or grittily realistic as it was known back then). The hero of the show was the car which (i think) was a Ford Zephyr, and for the 60's looked pretty cool.

The show spawned a raft of mostly rubbish "character" actors over it's 667 episodes, many who have since blighted my TV enjoyment by appearing as cameos that you kinda recognise but just can't name...then you remember; Oh yeah, he used to be in Z Cars. And that then undermines completely the credibility of the show you were enjoying.

I loved the original Rupert animations that were shown at home during lunchtime on schooldays. Some of the characters gave me my first nightmares - especially the little one that looked like it was made out of sticks with a turnip for a head - talk about giving bullies ammunition - the whole notion was evil.

The annuals too, were great as most of them had "Magic Painting" pages that burst into colour when you painted plain water on them - I later found out that the process involved a toxic radio-active powder (long before the Chinese thought of this you realise) so the concept was shelved in later editions.

For a lazy child, the books had the main story abbreviated into little poems which was a great relief to me, as only swotty children would bother reading it all - they were ultimately too wordy, but I'd expect this from a Daily Express character.

Later on Paul McCartney ruined Rupert for me (at least) with the toe-curling Frog Chorus song. It didn't do his standing as a top song writer any favours either. What was he thinking? Perhaps as a child he spent a little too much time with the "Magic Painting" pages...

Annuals like this were probably designed to sew the seeds of military adventure in the minds of naive children.

They had the opposite effect on me although I did take up ice climbing for a while in my adult life (but sensibly opted to leave the rifle and Chancellors satchel at home...)

ZOO TIME

I remember getting this book for xmas as I was big Johnny Morris fan. Odd to think that (even) for a short time in my life I actually believed the animals were talking. What I was always slightly suspicious about was why they all sounded so alike, later I figured that it must have been Johhny who taught them to speak and that sorta explained it.

Pan Horror Stories

Essential reading as a youth as the true horrors of life had yet to intrude. There were loads of these books in the series and if you were lucky you would find them in jumble sales for a few pennies. To the infantile mind you even got a bonus laugh at seeing Herberts' last name in print - not that it's funny now we're grown up.

This particular cover didn't really scare me - I mean it's a spider crawling over a discarded doll. I saw that every day in the back garden. The cover with the severed human head in the hatbox was something I wasn't going to see everyday, if you catch my drift.

A handful of Sings

I remember this pair from School lunchtime telly - pretty awful stuff mostly...although useful for introducing you (even at an early age) to be wary of the 'smarmy TV smile' that would later blight so much of your TV viewing pleasure by experts in the field such as Noel Edmunds and Esther Rantzen.