Christmas presents

I was trying to remember some of the presents I loved in my childhood. See if you remember any of them.

'Baco' sets - you got plans and could build small houses with them. They were made from bakelite, there were bases with lots of holes that you placed rods in. The bricks and windows slotted in between the rods. There were ready made roofs of different sizes to finish them off.

'John Bull printing outfit' - There were lots of small rubber letters and numbers which slid into slots in wooden blocks. You made up a few lines of text and pressed it onto an ink pad and then stamped it the text onto paper.

'Meccano set' - I'm sure we all remember those. Various metal shapes, wheels, nuts and bolts for making all sorts of models.

'Triang and Hornby Double O electric train sets' - Every boy's dream. I didn't think my parents could afford one and found a smaller version in a Grattan's catalogue. It was a 'triple O' scale and that's what I thought they would buy for me. They came up trumps and bought me the Triang set. Do you remember the fantastic smell of ozone from the electric sparks of the engines.

'Sweet shop' - I though this was great. It had small tubes of candy/sweets and some weighing scales. The box made up into a shop.

'Chemistry set' - Lots of test tubes and powders. I thought it was really exciting at first but it soon turned boring when I realised you couldn't do anything very interesting with it. No explosions or nasty smells!

'Mechanical penguin' - Simple little toy. Strangely enough it was green and white. Made from pressed metal it had a wind up mechanism and two wheels. The wings flapped up and down and it moved around, changing direction every so often.

'Wigwam tent' - I went downstairs one Christmas to find it standing there. I loved this and had many good times with my mates in it.

'Desk and chair' - One year, both me and my sister got one. Made by triang, they had a little ink well and a lift up lid where you could keep paper and things underneath it and. We played at schools with them (strange since I hated school), wrote stories, drew and painted etc.

'Bagatelle' - A weird toy, it was a board with a curved wall around the edge. Inside were small cupped holes with nails around them. There was a plunger thing that fired glass marbles into the board and you had to try to get them to land in the cups which had various scores.

If I can think of any more I'll add them later.