James May: My Sisters' Top Toys

As a boy, I should have been very happy. I loved my toys.

Boyish things - mechanical and constructional stuff demanding spatial logic and ingenuity.

All would have been well, had I been left in peace.

But first, I shared my childhood with an elder sister and then later another one came along!

I was the filling in an unsavoury sister sandwich, and barely a day passed

without the horrors of their namby-pamby toys interfering with my play time.

I'd like to say right from the start that I was a good brother.

And most of the time, my sisters and I played together very happily.

As a very small boy, I indulged my big sister by joining her dolls tea parties.

I think he was a willing participant because there was always food.

James and I would actually eat something

and I'd have to pretend with my dolls that they were eating and I used to put the cakes up to their mouths.

I taught my little sister to respect her elders.

He once pretended to throw my teddy off a boat.

We must have been going on a ferry somewhere.

I think he held it over the side,

and then brought his hand back without it being there,

but put it down somewhere and then came back and went, "Oh, I dropped it!" I went mental.

Like generations of children before us, toys defined our lives.

Especially at Christmas, when toy-driven euphoria reached something like fever pitch.

NEWSREEL: The windows are powerful magnets that lure the kids inside

to get a close up of all the marvellous things on sale

in this enchanted world of Christmas presents.

Some toys delighted all three of us. Lego, for example.

My little sister would suck the bricks, I'd make something like an aeroplane,

and then my big sister would make a hospital.

And how boring is that?

Good for dive bombing though.

James!

As a little boy, I wasn't concerned with the politics of sex.

I probably barely realised there was a difference between girls and boys.

But my sisters' toys reveal that there was.

Their toys actually tell us something about the history of this nation.

And more importantly, its womanhood.

Let's begin at the beginning

when Britain was an industrial superpower.

Men were men and women stayed indoors.

The only evidence that the two sexes had anything to do with each other was the odd baby.

The main problem with babies is one of weight.

They are very heavy to carry. They move about a lot, apparently.

And they leak...down your arm.

So perambulators were invented.

One Yorkshire company cannily named its prams after royal palaces

and an early celebrity brand was born.

Every mother in the land wanted one

and so did all their daughters.

Silver Cross got to work.

And the result was this - a perfectly scaled replica of its popular Balmoral model,

renowned for its springy suspension, its elegant paintwork and its very sturdy chassis.

All this just to push that piece of plastic around! What a waste!

Because for my money, and for that of any self-respecting schoolboy,

there was, is, and only ever will be one good use for a pram.

And it's this - to plunder it for the parts needed to make a go-kart.

So, here's the plan. A boys' school and a girls' school are going to compete against each other

to see who can make the best go-kart out of the toy pram.

In the boys' corner, a boys' grammar school.

And in the girls' corner, a girls' high school.

Here is your pram.

The rules are very simple - you must use as much of this as possible, but especially the wheels.

You must have functioning steering, you must have a working brake.

No engines or motors or anything like that.

-And you have to nominate a team of two - one to drive and one to push off. Any questions?

-No.

-Sure?

-Yep.

Off you go.

Have any of you ever built a go-kart before?

Not a go-kart, but we've designed an electric racing car.

-Have you?

-Yes. In school.

-What, and built it?

-Yeah.

In the olden days, few girls would have dreamt of building a go-kart.

I built one, but my sisters didn't. And I didn't expect them to.

Boys and girls did different things from one another back then.

In school, for instance, boys did woodwork, metalwork and engineering.

Girls did domestic science, housework and cleaning.

It wasn't until the '70s that the old barriers began to tumble and then only slowly.

Presumably you've built go-karts before?

I've built a sledge, which is pretty similar, except without wheels.

-Is that cos you couldn't find any wheels?

-Yeah.

I'm staggered that you can stand there as a man and tell the world you've never built a go-kart!

But we've built one now!

-Which, is essentially...

-Only cos somebody told you to!

Are you confident in your design?

Actually... Yeah, I am. You have to be.

One of the things I was always taught at school was that when you paint,

the brush should never actually leave the surface.

Look at that! You young people - you just don't know anything!

That's beautifully painted now.

You're still lifting the bristles off the surface!

-I'm sorry!

-It's probably...

I don't know, 30, 35 years since I last built a go-kart.

Bet I could still do it, though.

But why bother when there's a factory down the road that can do it?

Silver Cross produce 4,000 of these toy prams a year.

They're hand-built and hand-painted.

So my go-kart should look pretty pukka.

When this model was introduced in the 1920s, it was actually made out of wood.

But then, during the Second World War,

the pram factory was commandeered to make aluminium panels for Spitfires.

And after the war, they thought, well, we like the aluminium.

It's light, and its strong and so - they stuck with it.

And the great thing about this is, if we have another war,

you can simply hand the pram in and they can make it back into a Spitfire!

But back to OUR war - the day of the girl-boy go-kart battle dawns.

The 300 metre course awaits.

This is the start line.

There is another line down here, marked in black tape, this is the limit of push-off.

Shortly after the starting line is their first obstacle to manoeuvre - the cattle grid.

Closely followed by a bio hazard - two kilos of horse manure.

This is the chicane - it's made out of old tractor tyres.

The point of it is it is a test of braking efficiency and control.

This blue bollard marks the position of egg-gate.

Its two rows of eggs extending from each side of the track,

with a gap in the middle which is just a few inches wider than the kart.

If they hit an egg, it's a two second penalty.

And finally - the finish line.

Beyond which, in case of brake fade, is the hay bale wall of destruction.

The teams will take it in turns to race against the clock.

'They will have three attempts. Best average time wins.'

Your call.

-Heads.

-It's tails. First or second?

-Second.

-It's you.

Come on, girls!

Good call!

The girls' kart is built around the principle of sturdiness and weight

and features an impressively engineered steering system.

A few final preparations, and then the girls position their kart on the start line.

Five...four...three...two...

one...go!

Crikey! They're off to a good start! They are really karting down there!

Coming up now to the first obstacle - the cattle grid.

Whoa! Yes, they are through there!

Past the bio hazard...

Approaching egg-gate now.

Yes! They are clear through there with no breakages.

Now what about the chicane?

Yes, good manoeuvring!

THEY CHEER

After two more runs, the girls record an average of 57.9 seconds.

Not that I'm telling them that.

No, they will have to wait until the boys have raced.

And although their cart is a simpler and lighter affair,

history suggests that genetic engineering will be the key.

Five...four...three...two...

one...go!

Oh dear! The men show a slight lack of commitment at the start.

That looks slightly less wussy.

The cattle grid! Oh yes, that's good.

Hang on - there's something not quite right with that wheel!

Oh, for Pete's sake!

What have you done?

Wrecked the whole thing! We were bossing it then as well!

-So you've completely demolished one wheel?

-Maybe two!

You leaden-footed buffoons!

Listen, you are representing blokes in this and you're...

crap! Well, on the basis that they are useless,

I think it's up to me to defend the male sex in the Silver Cross Bentley.

-Dah-dah!

-Wow!

-What do you think?

-Leather interior!

That's a belt to hold the bonnet on. It has suspension - see?

That handles the brake.

That is the pushing off handle.

-Cool.

-Are you going to fit in that?

-I do fit in that, yes.

-That's some engineering!

It's good, isn't it?

In my lucky crash helmet, I enter the Bentley and muster the courage of a ten-year-old boy.

Five...four...three...two...

one...go!

There's the manure! Oooh!

I lost control! More speed!

Through the eggs - missed!

'Now, I hate racing drivers' excuses, but that was a useless push-off by a traitor to his sex!

'Still, maybe using my head will help propel me a bit further.'

I use the mass of my head as a pendulum.

CHEERING

Well, that didn't go quite as well as I'd expected!

But after another two runs, I consult the race official.

How did I do?

Average time - 59 seconds!

Oh ho ho!

Cos I know your average time - 57.9.

-Yay! Whooo!

-But...

-I think my go-kart looked more stylish than yours.

-No!

-It did.

-No.

-Would you agree, though, that a go-kart is more fun than a pram?

-Yes.

-No.

-Who said no?

-Me!

-You'd rather have the pram?

-Yeah.

-Why?

-Cos it's more girlie!

Ladies and gentlemen - a proper girl.

And back in the '50s and '60s, girls were proper girls.

My elder sister Jane and her friends played with their dolls endlessly.

I never played with them. I was a boy!

We did not do the same things.

There is a long tradition of girls' toys and boys' toys.

Some say it's nurture, some say it's nature.

Right-thinking people like me know it's somewhere between the two.

Feeding, changing nappies - it's horrible! Ask any woman how this could possibly be a game!

Yet every generation of little girls falls for it!

Once children enter the world,

they are treated very differently, depending on whether they are a girl or a boy.

And right away, people start to buy different toys for girls and for boys.

So just imagine, for instance, what happens when a boy picks up a doll.

My little boy, he likes playing with dolls prams, things like that.

But if my husband saw it... no chance.

One approach we've taken is to look at another species - vervet monkeys.

We brought toys into enclosures and what we found was that,

like human children, the male monkeys spent more time with the cars.

And like girls, the female monkeys spent more time with the dolls.

One thing this suggests to me is that these toy preferences,

although they are socially influenced, aren't entirely determined by society.

No amount of social conditioning would ever have made me

even vaguely interested in playing with this - Tiny Tears.

It's the doll that redefined dolls.

And it did that by crying.

I rest my case.

Baby's name is Tiny Tears. And she's....

The people who marketed it wanted a flexible doll,

a 16 inch doll that was more flexible and more lifelike.

So I was asked to look at that and see whether I could come up with any ideas.

Well, that's how Tiny Tears was born, really.

# Tiny Tears, Tiny Tears You're my very own baby... #

I'd seen Tiny Tears in the toy shops and at that time, I didn't have a doll at all.

My brother was a baby and I'd just gone through the experience of having a baby brother in a pram.

So I felt as though I related to Tiny Tears.

And she did things that babies did.

Tiny Tears is crying because she was wet and had to be bathed.

This is a Tiny Tears head

and it has a crying mechanism inside.

This is the reservoir for water

and the tubes carry the water to the eyes.

And the water would come up along the tube into the eye, and it would come out of the face.

The overflow water would go into the body and that would make the doll wet.

She was a lovely doll because she is so like a real baby.

When you lie her down, her little joints allow her

to sort of flop - her little legs flop and her little arms flop.

Just like a real little baby going to sleep.

No study of dolls would be complete without this one - Barbie.

She first appeared in 1959 and her popularity remains undiminished almost half a century later.

In fact, it is now reckoned that the global Barbie population is almost a billion!

With a billion Barbies on the planet,

I calculated that it would take an eight-year old boy

317 years of non-stop work to pull all their heads off.

The success of Barbie lies in that, like Cleopatra,

she has proved to be a woman - or doll - of infinite variety.

The role of women in society, and their burgeoning aspirations,

are mapped out in the way Barbie has reinvented herself.

Doctor makes her feel great!

Now, I've never played with Barbie, but I have studied her quite carefully.

And I can't help noticing that there's something...

not quite right about her.

I reckon if you scaled up Barbie's vital stats,

she would be an impressive 36, 18, 33,

which all points to one thing - she simply wouldn't be able to stand up.

Unless she was wearing Action Man's rucksack.

Aaaah!

Back in the olden days, before plastic was invented,

toys were made of honest materials like wood and wool,

their honeyed tones enlivened only occasionally with a splash of red, yellow or green.

But then, in the 1970s, the whole world of being a girl

was infected with a terrible parasite. It was...

the colour pink.

# Sweets for my sweet... #

If you're a boy and you go into a toy store and a whole part of that department is pink,

you know you do not go there.

But go there I must if I'm ever to understand the formative years of the mind of woman.

I was once given a pink shirt, which I've never worn.

It's not a macho thing, I just really don't like the colour pink.

So I've come here to confront this particular chromatic demon.

# Sweets for my sweet Sugar for my honey... #

I'm sorry, but that is hideous!

And in my England, that would be outlawed.

In Victorian times, pink was for boys.

And even into the 20th century, pink was considered a boys' colour.

The symbols we have for things are purely conventional.

They are learned and handed down. Pink for girls, blue for boys.

If everything you do from your baby clothes through your toys to your teddy bears

is coded that way, it becomes part of your life.

TOY SINGS "MY LITTLE PONY" JINGLE IN BABY VOICE

What is the pink thing? What's it about?

Little girls absolutely love pink, sparkle, flutter, glitter.

I don't know, it could be associated with fairies,

angels, butterflies, anything of that variety sells enormously well.

And does pink sell better than yellow, say?

Absolutely. They definitely go towards the pink spectrum.

Even lilac and white with specks of pink won't sell as well as pink.

-Pure pink is it?

-Is it.

Well then, I'm as confused and nauseated as when I arrived.

I simply don't get it. But here's where the backlash begins.

Fortunately, most girls grow out of pink and baby stuff.

But only to move on to the next phase of female evolution, which is emulating their big sisters

and their mums, putting on make-up and doing their hair.

'60s designer Les Cook went to the New York Toy Fair looking for inspiration for a new kind of doll.

On the way home, he looked in a department store window, where he spotted a mannequin's head.

Eureka! He realised that a whole new doll wasn't necessary at all

- he could make his fortune out of just a head, mounted on a plinth.

He called his creation Girl's World.

It is completely gruesome!

Mummy, look at me!

Les knew that small girls loved playing with people's hair and fooling around with make-up.

Trouble is, willing victims are always very hard to come by.

So here was a severed head that never struggled or complained

and could be abused for hours on end.

Genius!

I did have a Girls' World but I think it must have been my sister's or it was second hand,

cos when they got older, Girls' World...

The make-up didn't use to come off so they were already half done.

And the bit where pushed the button and their hair grew used to get stuck,

so you'd have a lump of hair sticking out.

I think I just got to the stage where I used to draw on it with felt tip.

And the packaging promises that some styles can be easily achieved by anyone over the age of four.

So it should be a real pushover for a group of eight year olds then.

Right, this afternoon we're going to be looking at this toy here.

Possibly your mums might still have one.

This is alien territory for me.

And to understand this toy, I somehow have to get into the head of an eight year-old girl.

This is Year Four of a primary school,

and I'm hoping they can give me an insight into what it is about this ghoulish toy that is so appealing.

Now, I'll be honest with you.

I wear make-up - it's all part of being a media ponce

- but I've never put make-up on anyone else, and I've never styled any hair...obviously.

However, there are some instructions so I'll have a go.

"Push a strand of hair between the bends in the applicator.

"Slide the beads..."

'While I attempt to do this by the book,

'my other classmates tap into some kind of intuition which means

'they seem to know exactly what to do and how to do it straight away.

'I'm usually fairly dextrous,

'I can build fantastic Scalextric circuits,

'but this thing has utterly defeated me.

'I've failed the practical and I'm struggling with the concept.'

Do you think this looks like a real face?

-No.

-It doesn't, does it? But why doesn't it?

It has green eyebrows.

Well, we'll soon sort that out cos I can make them red.

'The doll's appeal clearly has nothing to do with realism, so why do girls like it?'

I like messing with their hair.

-So it's the hair bit that you like best?

-Yeah. Messing with it.

How many marks would you give this out of ten as a toy,

compared with all the other toys you've played with?

-Nine out of ten.

-Nine? What about everybody else?

-Nine.

-Nine out of ten.

-Eight out of ten.

-Ten out of ten.

-Ten out of ten.

So you really like it? You really do like it.

Cos I think it's really boring.

That's because you're doing it rubbishly.

Is that what it is? 'So? I never wanted to be a hairdresser anyway.

'But I wonder - could these ghastly heads be a useful vocational tool?'

Right, I'm going to give you 30 minutes to turn Girl's World into Miss Girl's World 1975.

Do anything you like. Go!

Did you ever have one of these when you were small?

-Yeah.

-If you hadn't had one of these,

do you think you'd have still worked in hair and beauty?

I think it did help. Cos if I didn't have the doll,

then I wouldn't really know about the hair industry.

So when I got older, I started looking into hair more.

So it really is an inspiration to some girls.

But then I have an egalitarian moment

and realised that the manufacturer has made a glaring marketing blunder.

-So you're a bloke.

-Yeah.

-And you're a hairdresser.

-Did you ever have Girl's World when you were a kid?

-No, never.

-So you are at a disadvantage.

-Yeah, slightly.

Be honest, did you ever practise on the dog, your brother...

When it was raining and we couldn't go out, maybe on the dog.

Great. So the boys have got dogs and the girls have got dolls.

Now, how have our stylists got on with their plastic heads?

'Variations on the beehive.

'And a bob?'

Well, I think we've arrived at a handy career hint

for all young and aspiring hairdressers and beauticians.

If you want to get ahead...

..get a head.

I had a traditional style doll's house with little cloth people that went inside it.

My grandparents bought it. I played games and enjoyed putting them to bed.

Doll's houses. They've been with us for over 500 years.

And they were never invented for girls to play with at all.

Originally they were replicas of real houses commissioned by wealthy property owners

as a way of showing off their posh pads.

Today, a grandiose one could set you back £2,000,

which is quite steep for a glorified box.

After World War One, the Royal Family pushed the boundaries of doll's house technology.

It was given to Queen Mary in 1923 by a group of friends and artists,

a gesture of national goodwill following the abomination of the '14-'18 war.

It took 1,500 craftsmen four years to build and furnish.

When it was displayed at the British Empire Exhibition in 1924,

over 1.5 million visitors queued up to see it.

The doll's houses most parents can afford are of course much more modest.

But even in miniature, their development

reflects the values and aspirations of tomorrow's owner occupiers.

This British example is from 1963

and has come to be seen as something of a design classic.

Its designer came up with it in response to a social problem.

At the time, childcare was unheard of,

so mothers set up their own nurseries in church halls and community centres.

The open-sided design meant that two or more children could play with it at the same time.

There was plenty of room for hands and little elbows.

Everything had to be packed away at the end of the day,

but this could be dismantled and put into a box no bigger than a large book.

I really like this. It's very tasteful and minimalist and cool in that Scandinavian sort of way.

And more to the point, it looks remarkably like a toy garage I had when I was a boy.

For today's little girls, the doll's house experience is something altogether more plastic.

Take this one. It's the Sylvanian Families rather magnificent gaff.

These animals in human mufti arrived from Japan in 1987.

It was Toy of the Year three years running.

The original name for this mass-produced community was the Calico Critters,

which is terribly misleading because what we have here is idealised English country life.

Look at the afternoon tea on the table. And the grand piano.

It's bizarre!

But obviously, the most important component in a doll's house is not the house itself or the furnishings

or the little people who inhabit it.

It's what's going on in the imagination of the child playing with it.

This is what worries me. Because what on earth is going on in the mind of someone who plays with this?

Someone like my little sister, Sarah.

When I was about five years old, I was given a tree house which was a massive green, plastic monstrosity.

I absolutely loved it. My brother hated it.

He thought it was the most disgusting, ugly, hilariously bad toy in the world

and laughed at me constantly for playing with it.

The feature that differentiates this doll's house from any other,

apart from that it's a tree, is this handle on the top.

I can never quite see the point of that.

I have a bit of an issue with the inside of it as well.

You see, the child is the same size as the parents

and the parents are the same size as the dog.

As an illustration of bad scaling, it's fantastic.

I think if James had to see one of those green plastic tree houses again,

he would probably smash it to pieces. He absolutely loathed it.

This handle is actually the key to understanding the tree house's appeal to girls

because it makes it a glorified handbag.

Still, that also makes it a lot easier to take it to a place it's never been to before.

I'm a bit nervous about this in case it's really, really rubbish, and I used to love it so much.

SHE GASPS

Oh, it's fantastic though!

I wonder if it still works.

SHE GASPS AND GIGGLES

Little sister, look away.

WICKED LAUGHTER ECHOES

Unlike the tree house, there are one or two toys that I remember only very dimly.

Fuzzy-Felt is one of them.

I think I had a couple of goes when I was a small boy,

but my little sister on the other hand was very much into it.

And, once again, it relies on the ability to fill in the gaps between the rather crude shapes.

This, for example,

is technically two triangles separated by a rhombus.

Or is it a space rocket?

It's ironic that such a touchy-feely toy owes its very existence to World War Two.

Whilst our boys were fighting overseas, the women supported the war effort on the home front.

It was in the garden of this Buckinghamshire house

that a team of mothers, led by its owner, Lois Allan, made parts for tanks.

It was while Lois Allan was hard at work making felt tank gaskets like this one that she noticed something.

The offcuts were very slightly sticky.

This gave her a brilliant idea.

When she cut up pieces of felt into shapes

and put them on the back of a table mat, they stuck there.

And the children could have fun making shapes and they take them off and make another picture and so on.

After the war, Lois launched her invention as Fuzzy-Felt.

It was an instant hit.

The most successful time for Fuzzy-Felt was in the late '70s.

We employed 70 odd people and we were producing about 1 million boxes per year.

Fuzzy-Felt was known to be a girl's toy.

And I know it's a very thin line. You could say, "Oh, there's an art, there's a creativity to Meccano,"

or something like that. But compared with nicely coloured pieces of felt, boys didn't like it.

It wasn't somehow chunky enough.

But also, when you are a boy, there is always another boy,

real or imaginary, looking over your shoulder saying, "Girls' toy, girls' toy." So you don't do it.

I suppose it does have a sort of 1950s innocent charm about it, Fuzzy-Felt,

but I don't know if it can really survive in the modern, sophisticated playroom.

I wonder what the fuzzy logic of today's eight year-olds would make of it?

Here's how to find out. Take a box of Fuzzy-Felt to a class of children

learning animation and give them a picture of me for inspiration.

So he disappears in his car and he lands on a volcano.

He gets caught by an octopus.

A three-headed octopus with 16 legs.

We could have the zombie octopus like this.

Then he goes back in time to the dinosaurs,

smashes into a tree as he comes down.

He meets an alien and the Devil and he goes back to home.

Well, with storylines like that, I'm expecting a blockbuster.

Space.

At least I think it is.

And that must be me arriving in my intergalactic pick-up truck.

With my dog, obviously.

Oo-er, you're not from the Clangers, are you? Or you.

I think it might be wise to fuzz off. Rocket? Thank you.

That was a close one!

A new planet, a new tractor. Oh, no!

This one's populated by felt aliens as well.

I'd better escape when I can through this lightning storm.

In fact, I hide in this hollow mountain.

Oh, no, I won't. Better traverse the space-time continuum through my handy time portal.

Whoa!

Ah, now, this is much better.

I think I'll go and have a snooze under this yucca tree.

Oh, my word!

-Oh, what...!

-MUFFLED SPEECH

Thanks, kids(!)

Well, there you go.

People often say to me, "War - what is it good for?"

There's your answer. Fuzzy-Felt.

One toy combined my sister's love of arty stuff with my obsession with technical things. And it was...

Spirograph.

It was invented by Yorkshireman Denys Fisher in 1962.

Fisher earned a living designing improvements in bomb detonation equipment for Nato.

His spiral graphic product was intended as a drawing tool for industrial companies,

but he couldn't find any takers.

So he did what any profit hungry bomb-maker would do.

He turned it into a toy.

Now I should have loved this.

It used epicyclic gears like a Sturmey Archer bicycle hub and it looked impressive.

The box is very promising.

It says, "a simple and fascinating way to make a million marvellous patterns".

But one word in that statement is a bit of a fib to be honest.

And that word is "simple".

With a very steady hand, you have to turn the little cogs

and all the different shapes around it very, very carefully.

I think James always had more of an eye for detail than me.

But just when I thought I'd cracked it, a cog would slip and ruin the whole thing.

I do find it faintly perverse that something intended as a design tool

should turn out to be so flawed in terms of its own design.

I never created a single brilliant thing with this.

But maybe, just maybe, some students can in a place like this.

'I'm taking Spirograph to a class of art and design students to see if they can conquer its shortcomings.'

I'd like you to have a go because I don't actually believe that it works.

'Since they're arty, you would expect this lot to be pretty adept at anything involving a pen.

'But even they can't do it.'

-Oh!

-Ah!

What is it that makes it difficult?

It's really easy to slip. You are kind of looking at the image you want to draw,

but you also have to think about going round in circles.

'Which, oddly enough, is how I feel about the instruction manual.

"Don't be put off if the patterns and the instructions

"that follow look too difficult for you. They aren't."

Well, I'm sorry, but they are.

Look at that.

No wonder there were so many mass murderers in the '70s.

'Spirograph went on to become Toy of the Year 1967

'and, so far, I've no idea why.'

-How are you doing?

-It's not good.

-Hang on a minute.

This may be a television first.

No, it's definitely...

No, I can see you did slip there, didn't you?

You have to half watch the wheel,

half watch the spiral and half watch yourself.

'They're as bad as it as I am. But there are artists who do know how to make Spirograph work.'

Lesley Halliwell, who incidentally was born in the year that Spirograph was invented,

uses it to create huge artworks.

It is, she admits, a bit of an obsession.

There we go - one Spirograph.

Congratulations.

I think that may be the first flawless piece of Spirograph in history.

Right, here we go.

That's it. Slowly, slowly.

Steady, slow and steady. You're getting stuck in one place there.

That's terrible. What happens when you are doing one of those...

One of your massive ones that we looked at earlier has got 20,000 of these in it.

What happens if you get near the end and you make a mistake?

That happens, that's part of the work.

And if you look closely, you may be able to spot some of those flaws,

but I think that's part of the human element of the work.

That means you have, in effect, embraced the fundamental flaw of Spirograph,

which is that it doesn't really work,

-and put a positive spin on it.

-Yeah.

A positive twirl. To be honest, I've always thought of Spirograph as a girls' toy

and boys can't do it, as I've proved.

It's an interesting thing about the Spirograph, even the language of Spirographs.

You've got the gears, the wheels, all those different elements.

-It's the language really of boys, isn't it?

-It's techie.

Yeah. Then on the other side of that,

you have the pattern that you make is quite floral and possibly girly.

I was a bit conflicted about it.

I think children do find...

Oh, look at that.

Fantastic!

I think that is pretty much spot on.

That's fantastic.

Now, purists such as Lesley would never interfere with the integrity of the original art tool.

However, those cunning art and design students reckon

they've come up with the next big thing in the Spirograph art canon...

whatever that means.

'And they've done it by cheating, frankly.

'That is using a computer.'

-What have you got there then?

-It's an interactive Spirograph piece.

It has the camera so it can put your face on to the Spirograph.

-Eh?

-Do you want to have a look?

That's my nostril.

-And that is my mouth?

-Yes.

-Is it changing when I speak?

Yes, it's sound sensitive.

That's... That's brilliant.

Has a piece of plastic Spirograph been anywhere near that or have you just done it with a software thing?

No, we have used a Spirograph, but onto a graphics tablet so it gets drawn straight onto the computer.

Well, I do have to say this has overcome the elemental flaw of Spirograph,

which is that it doesn't work. And that does.

So now it's time to unveil the world's first computer generated,

voice interactive Spirograph art mural.

-Whoo!

-CHEERING

Very good.

Fantastic.

So you see, Denys Fisher's idea was very good,

it's just that he left a few things out of the Spirograph set

- the laptop computer, the art students, the camera, the projector

and the 1950s preserved historic building. Other than that...spot-on.

Back in my day, we were happy with a good book.

In fact, reading was one of the few activities we did together in peace.

When I was five, my mum took me up to town to join the big library.

It was there that I discovered the greatest writing in the English language

- the complete works of Ladybird.

Ladybird books were a phenomenon.

By 1973, 20 million copies a year were coming off the printing press in Loughborough.

We all read Ladybird books. Anybody who read at all

was probably taught to read on Ladybird books,

and you branched out from the Peter and Janes,

which were in the reading scheme, out into the more interesting ones.

The book's success was the result of a winning formula.

Each book was the same size, a small format to keep costs low.

Ladybird books were very recognisable.

I think when you see them all lined up on a shelf,

you knew what you were getting.

Each one had 56 pages and 24 illustrations.

The price remained the same for 29 years - 2/6.

The price was good, the subject matter was easy to see,

there were levels you could take your child through

and you also knew it was a very safe world.

Over the years, Ladybird books have sold hundreds of millions of copies,

and they've been translated into over 60 languages.

But for most young readers, my sisters and me included,

the main attraction was the illustrations.

HE GASPS

Oh!

I might get slightly emotional looking at that.

That has just made me five again.

The thing that amazes me, I think this is why I got my first Ladybird book, which was this one,

The Story of Henry "V", as I thought it was.

It was the picture on the front and then the pictures inside

that made me say to my mum, "Oh, I want this book." They are staggeringly good illustrations.

They are true artworks.

They are not dashed off, they are things of beauty.

They certainly are, and that's because they were done

by top dollar commercial artists of the time.

Many of them did Ladybird as a sideline while working

for big clients in the Midlands car industry.

Others illustrated popular boy comics, such as The Eagle.

We should make an effort to talk about a girls' Ladybird book.

-Maybe, yes.

-I think this was my sister's favourite, Cinderella.

I may have even read it to her when she was very small.

Do you have the pictures from this?

A lovely picture from the front.

Well, it is very... It's very, very familiar but it doesn't move me in quite the same way

that the story of flight does, to be brutally honest.

I can understand that.

A lot of people find this one incredibly evocative of their youth.

I think she was modelled on Brigitte Bardot.

I really loved Ladybird books, particularly the Cinderella, cos I think it was so exciting.

They were so colourful and vibrant.

She starts off in rags and then she goes to three different balls

in the Ladybird book and there are three dresses.

Every time you turned a page, there was a big pink dress and a sparkly dress.

It was fantastic.

And the third dress, the wedding dress.

That really just made people swoon.

They wanted dresses like that. Yeah, we have girls here...

What, more than the picture of the hot air balloon?

-I think it's quite possible.

-Tosh!

What's your favourite Ladybird book?

Magnets, Bolts and Batteries, actually.

-Really?

-It shows you how to do dangerous experiments.

-Did it?

-It certainly did.

I love a particular illustration - here it is.

Where you're instructed to cut apart a battery

and then you have to lick some kind of battery device.

You use your tongue as a conductor.

And I just don't think you'd be able to do this nowadays!

I always liked the How It Works series. So did the MoD.

They had hundreds of copies of the Ladybird Book of the Computer

printed with plain brown covers so their employees could read it without feeling embarrassed.

The interesting thing is, even when you're an adult,

and you think you're well-informed and technically minded,

a Ladybird book is still the best place to start.

Oh yeah. They wanted to have a book for every subject.

And I think they pretty much did it.

The thing I always admired about the Ladybird books was that there were great social levellers.

They were for the people. Here is a very old one - Things To Make.

And it says, "Children can be kept happily and rewardingly occupied for many hours

"using simple, inexpensive and readily available materials."

So even if you were poor, you could be happy.

In fact, if you could rustle up one onion, a pen and some writing paper, your life was complete!

So let's have a go at making invisible ink for secret messages!

Cut the onion in half and squeeze the juice into a bowl.

Urgh!

It does say in the introduction to the book that these are activities

that will keep children occupied for hours and hours!

And I can see why, really.

"Using this juice as ink, write a message on the paper.

"Allow it to dry slowly by itself.

"Now you can astonish your friends by holding the paper close to the heat from a lamp,

"and your message will appear."

It's still quite secret, this secret message.

Maybe you can only read it if you're wearing a tank-top!

So let's have a go at making a pair of stilts!

"You will need two syrup tins, a nail for punching holes..."

Here's one that my dad bought earlier on.

"Two long pieces of string." Down there.

First of course, because these are new tins, we have to empty out the syrup.

Crikey, this could take a while!

There. People born during the war needn't worry,

because I'm going to use all of that later to make some delicious flapjacks.

"First, punch some holes in the side of the tin near the top.

"Remember to ask a grown-up to help you with this

"or use round-ended safety nails."

Of course, when I was a lad, there wasn't any health and safety.

We used to collect shells on the beach - unexploded ones.

"Next, thread a piece of string through both holes

"of one tin and tie the ends together so that the knot is inside the tin."

And because I've read the Ladybird Book of the Boy Scout,

I'm going to tie the two ends together in a reef knot.

There. There is a modification they don't actually suggest in the Ladybird book,

but that I'm going to make, as I now weigh nearly 13 and a half stone,

which is to put the lid back on, just to ensure the tins are as rigid as possible.

There you are.

Each tin is now effectively, in engineering terms, a monocoque.

So, all that remains is to road test this syrup-tin-base stilt solution.

Ruddy kids these days don't know what they're missing!

With their YouFace and MyTube and video games...

All you need are some tins and string, bit of coal to eat...

When girls get to the age of about 11, something weird happens.

The pink detritus of innocent childhood is cast aside and instead of spending hours

dressing up dolls, they suddenly spend hours dressing up themselves.

In fact, they do something that boys avoid at all costs - they grow up!

When I was secondary school age, I started getting interested in how I looked.

And then your first kiss with the boy,

that was what we all used to concentrate on in the playground. It was such a fascination for us!

You start to see the signs just before Christmas.

Girls stop asking for dolls and start asking for things you don't understand.

Then they start whispering and being secretive about completely irrelevant stuff.

Boys are suddenly left behind by girls, oblivious to what's going on.

Girls suddenly need to talk all the time.

And it sounds like they're saying the same thing over and over again.

At the same age, a boy might still be happy making Airfix Concorde,

you know, the big 77 scale one with the complicated instructions...

The doll's house becomes nothing more than somewhere

for girls to dump their clothes when getting ready.

'For some reason, girls suddenly want to go out.

'And that's when boys who have become dads get nervous.'

Where are they off to?

And it's that growing up thing, the thing that girls do so much faster than boys,

that finally and cruelly shuts the lid on the pleasures of their toy boxes.

Generation after generation of boys will continue to play with their toys until well into their dotage.

But girls - and that includes my two sisters - they miss out on all that.

I think it's a real shame.

I've saved my little sister's toppest top toy until last,

because it's the one that had the greatest impact on my life.

Of all Sarah's toys, it's the one I loathed and despised the most.

Not because it was girly, not because it was sissy,

but because it was crap.

It provided an uninterrupted soundtrack to my childhood that I simply couldn't turn off.

And here it is.

Major Morgan, the electronic organ.

-What a piece of...

-BEEP!

It was given to my sister one terrible Christmas.

I must have been about six years old when I got Major Morgan the electronic organ.

I didn't really understand what it was at first, but basically, it plays nursery rhymes.

When you press different letters, it plays the note.

So you can play Three Blind Mice really simply.

Major Morgan had little cards that you slotted into one end

and these helped you to destroy dependable, centuries-old tunes.

So when you are quite young, it's a really easy way to play a tune.

It was so exciting! I played with it every day.

My brother used to steal it from me and hold it out of my reach.

I think it was because it was really annoying when I used to play Three Blind Mice all the time!

I hated it because back then I was learning music and I knew this wasn't a proper musical instrument.

It has no soul, it has no capacity for expression.

And you can't play proper tunes on it.

It failed as a toy, it failed as a musical instrument and it was fit for no purpose whatsoever.

Except perhaps target practise.

But before we consign the cheap, nasty, tone-deaf plastic major

to the great charity box of toy history, I'm going to give him one chance to redeem himself...

with a special one-off performance.

And to help me, I'm going to have the backing of an enthusiastic school orchestra.

BEEPING

It's out of tune.

-Is it a musical instrument?

-Oh no, absolutely not.

-It's just a toy?

It looks like a toy to me.

-What about tonally?

-BEEP-BEEP!

It's not a particularly beautiful noise, is it?

It's not very expressive?

-No. One sound.

-Are we agreed it's rubbish?

I think so.

The hour of the performance approaches

and what could be the Major's last stand.

This is the first time I've performed with any sort of orchestra

for over 20 years and I'm playing a very unfamiliar instrument, so I'm actually rather nervous about it,

especially as these people have practised very hard and their orchestra is rather good.

Right, Major, this is your last chance to prove yourself.

So stand up straight, be tonally accurate and don't let these people down.

HE PLAYS "ODE TO JOY"

For 30 years, he was a plastic novelty discarded at the back of a cupboard.

And now it transpires, he's an orchestral soloist.

And I'm absolutely staggered!

David, you're the arranger - d'you think Major Morgan did that little Beethoven ditty...

I was quite impressed. I was pleasantly surprised.

I wasn't expecting it to be in tune and it was in tune. So yeah.

Thank you very much for allowing me to play with your orchestra.

-I'm still... To be honest, it made me slightly emotional.

-Aw!

I got a slight lump in my throat when tune started

and I thought, "Not only is that one of the best known tunes in the world,

"it's coming out of one of the worst musical instruments in history!

"And it still sounds brilliant!"

That astonishing vindication of Major Morgan, the electronic organ,

brings to an end this rummage through my sisters' toy box.

I have weighed up their merits, I've weighed up their faults

and in conclusion, I feel forced to say that my toys were much better.

But of course, I would say that, because I'm a boy.

And more importantly, I'm a brother.

Happy Christmas, everybody.

Right, are you ready for this, Jane?

-I think so.

-Okay. One...two...three...four...

THEY PLAY OUT OF TUNE VERSION OF "LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLING DOWN"

That's terrible!

ORCHESTRA PLAYS "SLEIGH RIDE"

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]