Feature: Inside the Toy Box

Before Christmas (2008), I came across an old box of toys that me and my brother had when we were kids. After more than ten years, I had half forgotten what was inside, so expecting to finds all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, I grabbed a camera and got ready to have a good poke around.



Here's the box itself. It's from an an old Sharp microwave that recently expired in a plume of black smoke. I guess 15 years isn't too bad for an electrical appliance. Let's pop this sucker open.

Drum roll, please.



And what did I find inside? A bunch of toy cars of various types and states of decomposition belonging to my auto mobile-obsessed sibling.

Great.

Oh well, I don't know what I was expecting to see anyway. I was far too prone to loosing or breaking any toys I had to still have them in here. Let's press on anyway.



First up is a crappy two-piece present from a mall Santa from about 1993. It's a turntable and a....lift thing (move over, Jeremy Clarkson) for small toy cars. I can't remember what I got from him, but I do remember that we got cardboard reindeer hats though. I guess they got binned.



Ooh, it's something of mine. It's an tattered old pair of gloves that I used to ride my bike with. Not strictly necessary, but I thought they were pretty cool at the time.



Another of my brother's. It's a licensed toy from Gerry Anderson's short-lived 90's show, Space Precinct. I have no idea why he would have wanted this, neither of us were into the show, but he picked this as a Christmas present one year (1995, I think).

By then, Santa had seemingly gotten a bit lazy and decided to forgo the whole letter and workshop thing and let us pick what we wanted ourselves. Apparently he paid for the presents later through some sort arrangement with the shop. I wasn't buying it.



A toy tractor my brother got as a present one year. He was totally thrilled, I mean who wouldn't be? It says "let's get to work!" when you push down the yellow bit on top for crying out loud!



A blue Santa hat that they were giving away with Pepsi around Christmas 1996. If Pepsi got to redesign Santa, he'd wear this and probably have a goatee.

More bad jokes and dodgy camera work after the jump



What have we got here?

There's farm animals from at least two farm sets. The small pig and sheep are especially old. There's also some army men and other paraphernalia from an army set and a wigwam from a cowboys and Indians set - All posed in a semi-amusing fashion.



Soldier: Get knitted, woolly!
Sheep: Baaa!


Animals: ...



Hey General, can we get this flagpole moved? it's kind of in the way.



Chaos on the highway. Amazingly, the bear escapes uninjured.



And here we have an action shot I inadvertently took while scrambling to hide away the camera from an oncoming intruder. An adult (sort of) posing and photographing toys just isn't dignified, you know.



A very dirty old plastic dump truck, missing one vital component.



It's a set of three rubber ducks and two rubber swans. I don't think these ever got much use.I never really saw the appeal of bath toys myself.



Batman: .......... man, I'm wasted!



Here we have some kind of rattling...thing, with two suns/sparks/blobs that rotate around each other.

Underneath them is what I assume is a mould for making star shapes at the beach. I only wish I had figured out that at the time. I remember using it to eat peanuts and stuff out of. It might not have been as dirty then, but it was definitely getting there.



I always fancied myself as a bit of a superhero/spy when I was a kid and sadly, these are all that remain of my shattered dreams of badassery.

I had countless sets of police/spy/cowboy paraphernalia over the years and lots of plastic guns, but they all ended up lost or broken in the end. I remember I had quite a cool toy Uzi for years though. I wonder what happened to that?



A present from my cousin (er,..thanks), its a truck full of soldiers, some without heads.



A toy car sponsored by Budweiser. Nothing like starting them early, eh?.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure this was what I got from the mall Santa that gave the turntable and lift to my brother. I think I definitely came out ahead there.



It's the Batmobile we saw earlier. My brother got it as a birthday present one year. In lieu of a proper batman action figure, it came with an oddly-attired Bruce Wayne. But, pull the spoiler back and...



Holy crap! It's an empty seat where Batman (sold separately) should be. While his alter ego sits in the back? (Batman laughs in the face of logic)



All the carnage of a typical GTA scene in toy form! Toy cars were so much less enjoyable without M rated games to fuel the imagination.

It was around this point in my photo shoot that I was beginning to have a little too much fun playing around with our old toys. I really should have thought of something more manly to do, but I just kept on playing instead.



Salvation is only a click away with this odd religious trinket my Mom picked up.



I feel holier already.



In my haste to create the GTA scene, I forgot about this little guy in the back of the ambulance. That's some nice attention to detail.



Well, that's it folks. I'm off to get this arm seen to and to meet some sexy nurses. JiliK? Nah, he's already buggered off somewhere.

Sponge baths ahoy!