So did you remember to buy enough batteries before Christmas Day for your children’s toys? Did you remember to charge the others? Is your house now a cacophony of tiny electric motors, repetitive music and flashing lights? Of course, it all depends on the age of your kids, but that’s what Christmas was like for us back in OiNK’s days. What were we playing with back then? What did Santa bring us?
For the third part of this series the topic is toys and games, and the pages from OiNK we’d shove in front of our parents’ faces before writing the details on a piece of paper and firing it up the chimney. We kick things off in the very first edition, the OiNK Preview Issue and it’s promoting a smörgåsbord of delights that could have been part of our previous selection of food and drink adverts.
Forget the bags, hats and pens, I can remember my first BMX bike and portable TV, both of which I very gratefully received from Santa Claus. Although I’m sure any younger readers will probably be wondering what’s so “portable” about a very heavy CRT television with a 12” screen. Well, it was so portable we could move it all the way from one corner of the bedroom to the other any time we wanted!
This is of course a competition set by Barratt of Sherbert Dip fame but it showcases some of the hottest tickets in town as far as those chimney lists were concerned. I’m not so sure the next range from Britains would’ve had me as excitedly entering their competition though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there was a market for them but these adverts make toy cars and trucks seem rather old fashioned even by 1986 standards.
They weren’t the only company that would try to tailor their adverts to the comics medium by introducing panels, captions and speech balloons to make them feel less out of place. Perhaps it was an attempt to get us kids reading their adverts before realising they were ads, or perhaps it was just for a bit of fun. I like to think it was the latter. However, finishing your comic strip would be nice.
I’m not sure whether to laugh at the idea behind this advert or laugh at the audacity! I get the idea obviously; we’re meant to go and buy the toys and finish the story for ourselves and it does get that point across in an original way. Still, you’ve got to hand it to them, it’s a rather cheeky way to cut back on the effort (and cost) to produce it.
In the early issues a series of adverts appeared that actually told a story in three parts. They were for TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, something a handful of my friends at school were into. I never understood the appeal at the time of playing a game completely in their imaginations, nor did I have the patience to learn. In later years I’ve met friends in my adult life who have D&D nights and the way they’ve explained it does make it sound like fun.
I think as a kid I was used to games that had pieces and a board and rules etc. I couldn’t wrap my head around how D&D worked and always figured it would be too easy to cheat and just make stuff up as you went along. I know better nowadays, of course. I worked beside a guy in an office for over a year who was the Dungeon Master of his group of friends and I’m now very aware of how much preparation goes into a good session.
In 1986 Hasbro’s Transformers toys showed no signs of slowing down but that didn’t stop them from wanting to replace the original line up with a fresh batch of Autobots and Decepticons. What better way could there be of getting that point across than replacing the iconic Optimus Prime and Megatron with new leaders? And what better way to introduce them to the world than through a movie at the cinema?
While Ultra Magnus was leader was five minutes, Galvatron would be rather more successful. My old school friend Roger (who I know reads the blog, so hi Roger) had both of these toys and as a young child they felt massive my tiny hands. They really were incredible, and just in case Magnus turned out to be a naff leader he had a hidden Optimus Prime inside. That’s right, isn’t it? Of course. It certainly wasn’t a way to cut costs and recycle part of a previous toy, no.
There are moments in your life when you realise you’re a lot older than you care to admit. I remember playing with water pistols and threatening to soak the adults around us, never fully understanding why they didn’t want to play such games in the middle of winter. As my best friend Vicki now has two kids of her own and her eldest, Ollie, is approaching six-years-of-age I’ve been on the receiving end of many such “threats”… and of many Nerf bullets! Yep, I’ve become one of those adults.
Given the fact this advert is 38-years-old that’s a pretty damned good water pistol/cannon that fires over 30 feet. Saying that, I’ve no idea how far today’s top-of-the-line toys squirt water and I’m hoping I won’t find out any time soon. At least not until the summer please, Ollie!
That’s us at the end of our Christmas look back at the toys and games advertised within the pages of OiNK between 1986 and 1988. We’re halfway through this occasional series now and I’ve lined up the next two instalments for next year, beginning with one close to all our hearts: comics and books. Watch out for that during 2025, which is on the cusp of greeting us as I type.
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