Snob Toys of My Youth

As a vaguely Anglophilic and pretentious child, I was drawn to the upscale imported toys I'd see behind the glass case of the toy store in the town where I grew up. Here are some of the ones I found appealing:

Corgi cars. These were a natural, since they licensed retro sixties favorites James Bond, Batman, and the Saint (among others that I didn't have). The Bond and Batman stuff is still around, and very well-known, but I also had (and later lost) these:

The Saint's (aka Roger Moore's) Volvo P1800:

On the show, he doesn't have his famous logo painted on the hood

A Land Rover from Daktari, a show I never saw:

Note 'Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion'

There were also various other non-licensed things, like a London taxi, etc.

More later!

Dead Technology

I stumbled across a couple of boxes of these:

at work this morning (I just scanned this one). I had a brief, unconscious sensation of making a great find--in the mid-eighties to mid-nineties, having a 'brick' of high-quality cassettes felt like a real treat to me. However, I sidewalked my dual-cassette deck years ago, and now I don't even burn as many CDs as I used to in the mid-2000s. Most records I bring to work travel via a 4GB memory stick, and music I play at home originates from my PC and gets sent through the air to my stereo.

However, this is not a nostalgia post! I like getting and listening to music now more than ever*, thanks to the ease of downloading interesting old out-of-print vinyl from creative bloggers. I'm not one of those people who's 'killing the music industry' by getting the new [insert name of popular artist here] album for free. I've just bypassed the commercial aspect of obtaining music by getting the kind of music I like (which other people don't) from other people who like it even more than me.

*This is not to say that I don't miss 'record stores' from the time when they were viable, especially in the pre-internet commerce era. I do! But as my tastes got more obscure and stores dwindled and reduced their depth of stock, I stopped getting much out of them.

Furnishing Time

As usual, most of our new furniture (in the new apartment) will be coming from Ikea, But maybe we should check out this place...

Two Albums; One Dance Party

Dig it!