Bah!
Newfangled tat, the whole collection! Why, some of it is *digital* for Crom's sake!
The Mamod steam tractor is the new Nanny-State version with scald-proof whistle and a reversing lever. Oh the happy days spent getting steam up, setting the thing loose to tear around in ever-widening circles at a scale 300 mph until it crashed into your leg. Oh the happy nights spent in the burn unit of the Coventry and Warwick.
Fischer Teclknik? Damn you sir, I'm too busy with my Phillips Mechanical Engineering kit (the one in the wooden box) to play with such childish nonsense. Why does this clock count 40 seconds to the minute, dammit, and what the hell does "connect the motor bij means of green and grey glex" mean?
And when I get bored I switch to my Phillips EE 20 Electronic Engineer set, of which that Tandy thing is but a pale imitation. Oh the happy hours coaxed out of those AC126s and the stalwart AF118. Oh the happy hours spent hunting the missing connection. Or capacitor.
As for the "new" Meccano steam engine, a friend had one that dated to the early fifties.
But I do miss the old chemistry sets, long gone thanks to the howling masses who demand "safety" in place of knowledge, science and peeling bedroom wallpaper. You knew it was a decent set if it had Logwood Chips in it (used to make an acid/base indicator a caveman would turn his nose up at had he a spiffy book of Litmus Paper from the local toy shop). I have never been able to identify the tree from which Logwood is Chipped. Litmus paper came in three colors: Red, Blue and Mildew.
And wither the Tric-Trak? The Johnny Seven (which *isn't* a selection box of French Ticklers)? The Mighty Mousetrap Game? The Battlespace Turbo Car? Magic Robot? Or indeed any of the products from the factories of Waddingtons and Chad Valley?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
