Traditional Knives and Toys

Just Tom. said:
I have a story about old-school Legos and imagination to relate. It might be a little long, but amusing enough I think, if you will bear with me.

Back when I was in high school and dinosaurs roamed the earth (1982), a friend of mine discovered that the school library had an 8mm film movie camera which they could loan out for projects. We decided to use it to make a stop-action animation film of the Three Little Pigs, and narrate it in French for French class. We used homemade clay pigs and props and followed the classic fairy tale plot closely until the end [here comes the Legos part].

For the brick house we made a huge castle out of all our combined Legos. The wolf, instead of being frustrated by his inability to destroy the castle with purely pneumatic means, decided to construct a Trojan Pig (which we made out of popsicle sticks). After we finished filming the scene where the Trojan Pig rolls across the drawbridge and into the castle, we set the camera up behind a sheet of plexiglass across the creek and at a safe distance from the Lego castle, and blew the castle to smithereens using a bomb we had made out of crushed model rocket engines. We ignited it remotely using a battery pack we had made and connected to the igniter with his father’s electric lawnmower cord.

When we got the film developed we were delighted to see that the explosion was beautiful on film - a flash of light followed by a cloud of smoke and Legos flying in all directions.

We showed the film in class and I think we got a B or B-minus because we spelled some French words wrong in the title cards. Nowadays they would have called the FBI and the ATF…
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Fantastic! Before all this streaming infotainment, we had to make our own fun.
 
Switching out the blaster for something a wee bit bigger.

thqgbUL.jpg
 
ISKRA said:
Switching out the blaster for something a wee bit bigger.

thqgbUL.jpg
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bigfish64 said:
Dug around for a few minutes and found these two, Percy and Skarloey. At one time we probably had nearly all of them. My kids and I spent hours and hours playing with these trains building track after track. Great memories! Knife content had to be a Lambsfoot. 😉👍View attachment 1632235
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Very pleasing photos, guys! :thumbsup::cool::cool::thumbsup:

Many, many years ago, my wife tried to make some money selling Discovery Toys (kind of a Tupperware business model adapted to kids' toys). She never made much, if any, money and it was a nightmare for me when it came to doing taxes, but we did have a lot of fantastic toys around the house as our daughter grew up! 🤓 This was one of my personal favorites whose name I don't remember, but the idea is to place one of these rings with aerodynamically-shaped blades on the shaft of the "launcher", then pull the red handle attached to the launcher's cord (basically like a lawn mower starter rope). That spins the shaft fast enough that Bernoulli's Principle kicks in and the ring lifts off the shaft. If the launcher is held vertically, a ring will easily go up at least 30', and then wind, deviation from vertical, and obstacles will determine where the ring ends up. I don't use it very often in our yard because we have too many trees and I have to climb up on fence rails with a long pole in hand to try to rescue errant landings. (The cord is about 34.5" long, the shaft is approximately 1 1/8" in circumference, and I can pull the cord completely in about .5 seconds, so I think the "helicopter" is spinning at about 3700 RPM at lift-off - I rarely rev our 2005 Honda Civic that high!)
helicopter.ring.jpg

- GT
 
5K Qs said:
Very pleasing photos, guys! :thumbsup::cool::cool::thumbsup:

Many, many years ago, my wife tried to make some money selling Discovery Toys (kind of a Tupperware business model adapted to kids' toys). She never made much, if any, money and it was a nightmare for me when it came to doing taxes, but we did have a lot of fantastic toys around the house as our daughter grew up! 🤓 This was one of my personal favorites whose name I don't remember, but the idea is to place one of these rings with aerodynamically-shaped blades on the shaft of the "launcher", then pull the red handle attached to the launcher's cord (basically like a lawn mower starter rope). That spins the shaft fast enough that Bernoulli's Principle kicks in and the ring lifts off the shaft. If the launcher is held vertically, a ring will easily go up at least 30', and then wind, deviation from vertical, and obstacles will determine where the ring ends up. I don't use it very often in our yard because we have too many trees and I have to climb up on fence rails with a long pole in hand to try to rescue errant landings. (The cord is about 34.5" long, the shaft is approximately 1 1/8" in circumference, and I can pull the cord completely in about .5 seconds, so I think the "helicopter" is spinning at about 3700 RPM at lift-off - I rarely rev our 2005 Honda Civic that high!)
View attachment 1632837

- GT
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I remember those. Brought back some old memories.
 

5K Qs said:
:):)Those are some nice old knives and toy soldiers, Mark! :thumbsup::cool::cool::thumbsup:
Did you need to paint the soldiers yourself, or did they come pre-painted?

- GT
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When I was a lad in the 70's GT my Grandad told me that if I didn't start looking after the soldiers that he'd bought me he would confiscate them. I didn't and he did. Forty years later, after my Grandad's passing, my dad told me to go to my Grandad's house and look in the top cupboard in the bedroom. To my amazement and delight there were my soldiers all packed away and untouched. My Grandad had saved them for me so I'd have something nice to remember him by. In answer to your question..they came painted.

Untitled by Mark Saunders, on Flickr
 
Blake the Blade said:
When I was a lad in the 70's GT my Grandad told me that if I didn't start looking after the soldiers that he'd bought me he would confiscate them. I didn't and he did. Forty years later, after my Grandad's passing, my dad told me to go to my Grandad's house and look in the top cupboard in the bedroom. To my amazement and delight there were my soldiers all packed away and untouched. My Grandad had saved them for me so I'd have something nice to remember him by. In answer to your question..they came painted.

Untitled by Mark Saunders, on Flickr
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Thanks for the additional info, Mark; great story about "family heirlooms"! :thumbsup::cool:🤓

- GT
 
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