Exciting new sponsor

We're really excited because, for the next three months, we will be working closely with the retro toy retailer Hawkin's Bazaar to offer all DYR visitors the chance to win some cool retro prizes. Every month in the run up to Christmas, there will be a different competition with different

Hawkin's have some amazing retro toys available such as Big Trak, Space Hoppers and Rubik's Cubes. Please make sure you enter the competition - and have a look at their website. You might get your Christmas shopping done early this year!

Big Trak... it's back!

When Big Trak first emerged in the 1980’s it was a wonderment of technology.

This programmable electric vehicle created by Milton Bradley in
1979 was a marvel, a genuine marvel, to my 7 year old mind.

You could program into it where to go, forward 3 foot, left 5 foot,
back 2 foot, and off it would go following your every command.
AMAZING!!! A robot! At last! Comic books had been talking about them for
decades, and here we suddenly were in the 21st century with working
robots in the home! What was next? Jet packs???

It was quite the phenomenon of course, introduced on “Tomorrow’s
world” and “Blue Peter” it had presenters suddenly talking about this
new thing called “a computer” that “Big Trak” had inside it to tell it
what to do.

It was also a huge toy, especially for a child. But this only made it
more terrific, you forgot the fact that it almost broke your back to pick it up in your awe of it. It bleeped and pinged as it drove along it’s plotted
route, and then also when it stopped. It was quite reminiscent of R2D2 from
Star Wars which of course only made it better. (It was the same colours as R2D2.).

Looking back on it now, with 21st Century eyes, eyes fogged by the
dazzling Iphone and affordable 1000 GB hard drives, it looks
slightly communist in design - of course it wasn’t then, it was bang up-to-date capitalist.

As a child, my parents could never afford such a thing. They were
expensive at the time, so I was reduced to standing shoulder to
shoulder with my fellow poorer classmates, as the richer boys
programmed it mysteriously to move under it‘s own volition, to collect
them a can of coke, or to pull along their action figures.

Of course since that time many things have changed. Now, I CAN afford one! Not
only because I earn more money than my parents, but also because Big Trak
is being re-released and only costs around £30! Astonishing!

You can get them here and at the same time fulfil those young
fantasies. Now, when are they going to get around to jet packs?

Tickle-on-the-Tum!

When people say "ah, you see, you couldn't make a programme like that now-a-days" they might have "tickle-on-the-tum" in mind.

First aired in 1983 (continuing until 1988) it was set in the fictional village of... tickle-on-the-tum. They were 10 minute episodes, and every week a new village resident would enter the local shop and recount a tale from the past week - the tale would then be made into a folksy song! How quaint, and how much of a lost and by-gone world!

Even the title alone "Tickle-on-the-Tum" harks to a time of innocence and non-complicated viewing that in today's cynical and world weary 2010's would be impossible to air. Tickle-on-the-tum?! These days with a fear-mongering media, that title almost seems totally inappropriate for a childs programme.

If you look into the cast of this show you can see how the programme got away with it's folksy ways, it's almost a who's who of 1980's uncle and aunt figures, the type of celebrity that made you go "ahhhhh" and cosy up into the croched doilies on the back of your floral settee. There was Bill Oddie, Penelope Keith, John Wells, Molly Sugden, Nerys Hughes, even the folk singer Ralph McTell.

It makes fascinating viewing, because even though it's dated and old, it really is quite enchanting. You will find yourself enjoying the stories and story telling, the performances and the pace of the series. You might even find your eyes misting over with thoughts of an England past, a nostalgic reverie, when all was happy, the birds tweeted rather than the teenagers, and people spoke rather than facebooked each other.

Though do remember during that reverie that this was also the time of late punk, huge unemployment, the miners strike and massive social upheaval. So it wasn't all ideal.
However, if you want to book your trip to an England past, then you can order this DVD series for the first time from here or pick up more information here

"The Raggy Dolls" out on DVD

Out this week is the series "The Raggy Dolls"

The series was produced by that stalwart of Kids TV, Yorkshire Television, which made "3-2-1", "Follyfoot" and "The Darling Buds of May", among many many others.

Raggy Dolls was a stalwart of my childhood, even just listening to the theme tune transports me back to a time when I didn't have to cook my own food and bedtime was something I disliked rather than loved.

Indeed, whether you watched it avidly in the years it was shown on terrestrial TV (fairly regularly throughout 1986 - 1994) or not, you would most definitely be aware of it's theme tune. You-tube it and see!

The episodes were written and voiced by Neil Innes, who also wrote and sang the theme song. Yes, Neil Innes from Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and Monty Python fame. He worked with Beatles, on Rutland Weekend Television and also composed the music for some Children's TV classics like Puddle Lane, The Raggy Dolls, The Riddlers and Tumbledown Farm.

They had a moral message that most kids TV had those days. A line from the theme tune is: "Just to be whoever you are is no disgrace". The Raggy Dolls were rejects you see, not like everyday dolls, but special. The ethos of course, making it okay to be different. In these days of Heat Magazine, and celebrity diets, and the constant pressure to look and act a certain way, it might be quite the tonic to watch a few episodes of the Raggy Dolls and reset your psychological balance.

The characters had quite underwhelming names - "Sad Sack", "Back to Front" "Raggy Muffin" and "Claude" (yes - from France). Their adventures were characterized by using their unusual traits being put to good use, to help others and to over come the bad guy (Mr Grimes")!

For more information you can go here and see whether after a day you can get that theme tune out of your head!

http://www.revfilms.co.uk/kids-family-dvd.html

Smurf news

The rather exciting news is that as of yesterday, the full season 1 of the Smurfs is available on DVD for the first time!

For a whole generation of children, these little blue hobbits (who stood, 3 apples-tall - fact) along with one of the catchiest theme tunes ever written, were iconic trendsetters and have played a part in the collective psyche of millions of us all.

The cartoons were shown all over Europe, so if you're ever with a foreigner of your own age, but don't speak their language - just mention "the smurfs" and you can break the ice, bond and reminisce in broken "Smurf" language.

So, while you could never forget the Smurfs, as the 1980's was teeming with these little blue guys (for they were mostly guys,) you can now finally dust off those memories and bring them back to the forefront of your mind to see what all the fuss was about.

To tool your adult mind up with some new smurf-facts, the DVD box set even features a 17 minute documentary so you can find out a bit more about this shared cultural phenomenon.

BTW - This is a pre-emptive release before the £100 million production of the Smurf movie (you head me right, smurf movie!) scheduled for release in June 2011.

To find out what the 5 year old you was so mad about all those years ago - you can buy it here and take a trip back into what you were filling your formative brain with!

Personally I think it was all good. If you look closely at their daily lives they all seem to be little blue eco-warrior humanists!

James Taylor and Carole King - Live at the Troubadour

If you were growing up in the 1970's you would surely have been humming along to one James Taylor or Carole King's tunes. Undoubtedly. The amount of hits they've had is extra-ordinary. Taylor achieved his first hit in 1970 with the single "Fire and Rain" and had his first #1 hit the following year with "You've Got a Friend", His 1976 Greatest Hits album sold 12 million copies.

Carole King meanwhile has been steadily writing hits for other artists (some for herself) for the best part of 50 years. In 2000 Billboard Magazine named her the most successful female songwriter of 1955-99 because she wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100.

Not only this but they have both worked with almost every iconic musician of that decade. From Paul McCartney, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Taylor even married one - in Carly Simon.
Then there is the tens of classic bands that King wrote for over the decade or the 1970 concert that they played at that launched Greenpeace.

No wonder they both have a garden sheds full of Grammy awards and are now iconic performers themselves. This new album is a distillation of their classics, performed at the height of their fame in the 1970's. If, like me, their names are familiar but have never been on your Ipod shuffle, or even in your CD tower, taking a dip into their music hasn't been easier than with this album. You might just discover a hidden gem that's been right under your nose for years!

Have a look see. And decide, once you've listened to Carole King whether you will "still love her tomorrow"?*

*yes, that's one of her famous long titles I got into that last line there. I thank you.

PacMan found in outer space

80's computer Icon discovered consuming Saturn's Moon!

PacMan was massive in the 80's. But he disappeared. Many people wondered where he went. Now it seems the answer has come to light. New images picked up by the Cassini spacecraft on orbit around Saturn found this image in the moon of Mimas.

Mimas is about 400km (250 miles) across. It has a distinctive scar called Herschel Crater which has led many to draw comparisons with the "Death Star" from the Star Wars movies. Perhaps after watching star wars, Pak man valiantly went out on a mission to save the human race from this perceived threat?

His disappearance from our computer screens in the 90's was certainly a good thing for some people who said that hours and hours playing PacMan would effect the behaviour of a whole generation of children - which proved to be nonsense. I mean would an entire generation of teenagers and 20 somethings really spend hours and hours in a darkened room, listening to repetitive music, while eating pills? Err.... Anyway.

Scientists are trying to explain away the image saying they are unsure why Mimas should display such thermal variations, but say it is probably related to the diversity of textures in the surface materials. Some textures may retain heat better than others, they explain. Still, I prefer the PacMan explanation.

Cassini is a joint venture between the US space agency (Nasa), the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Perhaps it is only a matter of time before they stumble across donkey Kong junior on Pluto, a galaxy-wide game of asteroids or even discover some real-life space invaders?

Rubik's Birthday!

The Rubics Cube was invented 30 years ago! The Rubics cube, or "The colourful cube of frustration" as it was dubbed in our playgrounds, had vast swathes of the child population in it's thrall when it was first released.

In the early 1980's it seemed that every man and boy had one, and was trying to solve it, like some national enigma machine - it was whispered that if you solved it you were taken away to work for the space program.

For those of us that were there, back in the 1980's, they'll know that the achievement of completing the rubiks cube (hey, even one side of it!) held more cache than GCSE's or Yo-yo-ing ever did. I sat for hours trying to work that thing out, finally being reduced to painstakingly peeling off the stickers and putting them back on in order.

There was always one child you knew who had worked out (or who's father had worked out) some kind of special move that resulted in all colours going in the right places - and would amaze specially invited groups of children to swamp round him and watch the magic moves in action.

Apparently there's been more than 350 million Rubiks cubes sold worldwide since it was invented in 1980 by Hungarian university lecturer Erno Rubik. I thought most of these would have been sold in the 1980's but not so, there are now a whole new generation of 'Cubers', there are national and international competitions, 'Speedcubers' compete to solve the puzzle in the quickest possible time. At the first World Championship in 1982, the fastest average solve was 22.9 seconds. In 2008, the 'single solve' record was set at an incredible 7.08 seconds.

So there's progress for you.

Although who's to say continuing Rubic's cubes championships are progress?

According to people in white coats (people who did their maths at school) there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations on a Rubiks cube. These are millions of man hours we must be talking about! We could have gotten to Mars by now if it wasn't for that darned Rubik's cube!

But it's all in the name of fun. Frustration and fun.

BTW - what ever happens to all the solved rubics cubes? 350 million sold, and until yesterday I'd not seen one in years! Do they self-destruct when you complete them? They could and I really wouldn't know...