LITMIR.BIZ

      See also Action Man, ROM the Space Knight, Dr Who TARDIS

      This early 70s Strawberry Fayre range–actually Takara Henshin originals imported from Japan by Denys Fisher–beats later incarnations developed around the same theme (including Timanic Cyborgs and Micronauts) by virtue of being constructed to a larger scale. In playability terms, that meant they could be pitched in interspecies war with Action Man, Dr Who and the Bionic pair

Cleverly manufactured in a combination of clear plastic, chromed parts and die-cast metal, they were very cool-looking toys (in two flavours, Muton and Cyborg). There was, naturally, some comic-strip business on the back of the boxes setting up an interplanetary war back-story,¹ but kids just make up their own, don’t they? Chief factors in their appeal: you could see their internal organs and pull them limb from limb (what kid could resist that?).

There was also the slightly scary implication, not exploited by the later brands, that we would all one day become part human, part machine, with plastic or metal replacing what once was flesh. Which, when you were a youngster conversant with the plot of the Six Million Dollar Man (the TV series was based on Martin Caidin’s 1972 book Cyborg), seemed eminently plausible.² Forget the rubber-suited Cybermen or the monotone Borg–here’s a frightening notion: when the Queen Mum had her hip replacement, she technically qualified as a Cyborg. A PR opportunity missed there, we feel.

      As with the later figure collections, there was an abundance of accessories, in this case, weapons sets (various arm-replacements for Cyborg, including the Cybo-Liquidator– a water pistol–and the Cybo-Eliminator), flying discs a la the Green Goblin and the prohibitively expensive CyboInvader spaceship. Muton even had actual outfits to wear, known as ‘subforms’ and comprising Torg (a horned demon thing), X-Akron (a red roboty thing) and Amaluk (a green fishy thing). Third member of the team and Johnny-cum-lately Android, seemed cast in a different manner, being more ‘brittle’ and lacking the rubber head. His chest panel popped open to reveal a four-missile launcher, which could be fired by pressing a button on his back.

      Sadly, the only real-life cyborg we know of is the University Of Reading’s Kevin Warwick, who seems to make a living by implanting microchips in his forearm and telling newspapers that he’s turned into C3P0. This should not reflect too badly on the university’s robotics department as, before this, it was most famous for building Sir Jimmy Saville’s special Fix It chair.

1 Muton was an intergalactic space-parasite-type who’d decided that it was Earth’s turn to be laid to waste. Humanity’s best scientific minds got together to create the ultimate defender of the human race, Cyborg. Android was designed later as an extra ‘hero’ toy to gang up on poor of Muton. A million bullied kids sighed in recognition: two against one.

2 Bloody Hazel O’Connor and her cha Eighth Day misanthropy didn’t help matters much either. This 1980 tune wrapped quasi-religious bunkum in with ‘machine becomes sentient’ lyrics, while the video featured O’Connor herself going mental in a TRON-inspiring neon skeleton suit. Proper worrying.

       Domino Rally

      Chain re-ACTION!

      Yet another thing the Yanks did bigger and better than us. For the Cream-era child, hardly a week would pass without kids’ telly showing yet another colour-saturated videotape of record-breaking domino topplers in a Milwaukee aircraft hangar. Thereon, jaundiced-looking Spielberg-alikes would spend days setting up elaborate domino displays under hot sodium lamps (usually suffering a cataclysmic setback when a stray grasshopper knocked over a 10,000-tile Flags of All Nations set-piece overnight). America, Holland, China…you name it, everyone had a crack at the record books.

      Just not the UK. What hope of government funding for a would-be domino athlete, eh? You’d just about scrape together enough cash for one wooden, slidey-top box of those Bakelite buggers. The carefully positioned mosaics and pixellated patterns (albeit created by teams of Stateside nerds) may have lent the domino an exotic air it never would’ve acquired from years as an old man’s knock-on-the-table game in murky brown pubs. Plus, with only the living room to experiment in, future British domino topplers would be lucky to get together a run of ten, never mind an entire course of dominoes sliding down chutes, setting off rocket launchers and swinging across mini-ravines.

Confidently stepping into this gap in the market came Action GT and its Domino Rally sets (mark 1, mark 2 and, perhaps inevitably, mark 3), featuring masses of brightly coloured tiles¹ plus all kinds of gimmicks, stunts and tricks for them to perform (loop-the-loops, elevators, steps, slides and ‘sunbursts’). Domino Rally also had one extra-special ace up its sleeve: most of the dominoes were fastened along flat, perfectly spaced lengths, so resetting them was a quick flip of the wrist away.

      See also Cascade, Mousetrap, Guess Who?

However, the unique selling point of domino toppling (not much more than ‘set them up, knock them down’ as the box blurb reiterated) started to feel a little like too much effort after a while and, as the young player him/herself tumbled inexorably towards adolescence, the plastic set took up final residence in the loft.² Nowadays, if you hear someone say they fancy dominoes, you’re more than likely expected to get the pizzas in.

1 The technical term is apparently not tiles but ‘stones’, which makes them sound very rock ’n’ roll, doesn’t it? Hence, we suppose, why Eric Clapton chose the pseudonym Derek and the Dominos to record Layla. And, erm…well, there’s

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