"Holiday memories" Topic

In the distant reaches of 1968 -- 50 years ago this week -- I was attending a boarding school far from home. My parents sent money to my oldest sister who lived nearby to purchase me gifts. When I went to stay with her over vacation, she kindly gave me the money and said I could select my own gifts.

In a small Georgia town, a store had Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps for sale. I had seen some guys in the dorm playing it but had never tried it myself. But having recently seen the movie *Tobruk* and read *Brazen Chariots*, I bought it as my gift. I had those winter vacation days to peruse it till all hours of the night after others in the family had gone to bed.

It was an eye-opener that put a new perspective on my collection of Airfix figures and Minitanks. By the following year as I started college, I had somehow gotten hold of Don Featherstone's *Advanced War Games* and later the prequel *War Games*. I still have those books, autographed by Himself at Historicon. Though I have continued to collect board games (lots of North Africa topics!) my course was set in 1968 for miniature gaming as my favorite hobby.

What's your memory of holidays and other special occasions when your hobby took a big step forward?

Growing up in Iowa in the 50s we did not have toy stores or big department stores -- so Christmas brought the sears catalogue into our home and endless hours of drooling over the photos of Marx toy soldier sets.

Regards.
Russ Dunaway

Losing two whole boxes worth of Airfix 8th Army and Afrika Korps in the sand on a beach in Cornwall…

1961 we had moved from hometown to Charlotte, NC. The Sears "Wish Book" had the Marx Civil War Playset", and it was my fervent wish to get those 54 Union and 63 Confederate soldiers, etc. Receiving it for Christmas began my military history obsession. My ACW 28mm army is much bigger and, of course, no longer Marx.

Christmas brought the sears catalogue into our home and endless hours of drooling over the photos of Marx toy soldier sets.

When I was 7 or 8 years old, we went to the Sears store in Mexico City. I was drooling over a jungle playset with an African village, figures (about 40mm tall, including a European missionary!) and wild animals. My dad noticed, and later it appeared under the Christmas tree.

The huts on stilts had removable pitched roofs. Needless to say, the roofs later served as pup tents when I got military figures.

Losing two whole boxes worth of Airfix 8th Army and Afrika Korps in the sand on a beach in Cornwall…

I hid the leopard from the jungle playset in a big field of grass so the "hunters" could look for it. They (and I) never did find it!

After my father passed away, in 1978, My mother got a nursing job in upper PA(we lived in New Jersey), and my grandmother, who I was very close with, offered to let me live with her. My mother agreed, and it was settled.

I was into D&D, and anything World War Two, and right across the bridge was Hobby Hangout, what carried a great selection of both. I used to walk there on Saturday mornings with any number of friends as we were all into the same things: buying a heep of D&D figures, POLLY-S paints, going home and paintng figures for hours, then playing D&D until sunday morning!

Well, my saintly grandmother would let me write u a list of what I wanted, and the approx. cost, and sortly be for X-Mas, I would be taken to Hobby Hangout by my Great Aunt Francis, and buy my own gifts. It took the "surprise" out of most of the holiday(my nan did get me some gifts that came as a surprise, mostly bought through the Sears catolog), but I was too old(14 lol) for that by then anyway.

I was just talking on the phone with one of my friends from back then, today.

My first real toy soldier gift, was one Christmas when I was led into the dining room to see the table set up with brightly painted Britians Highlanders and Zulu War figures. Long since sold at an MFCA convention. What a sight it was.

When I was 9 or 10 Santa brought me the Airfix WWII gun-emplacement set.

I was king of the world.

I had TWO of those Gun Emplacements and a costal defense gun(the one with 2 barrels) and I loved them.

I remember in the mid 1970's getting Airfix's Pontoon Bridge play set box containing the bridge but also the flexible plastic tanks and boxes of German and British infantry.

A couple of years after that I got the original Waterloo playset with the farmhouse and boxes of Airfix Napoleonics.

Never looked back since.

I grew up in San Antonio, Texas. In the very early '50s my younger brother and I each received a box of Britains Highlanders from Dibble's Toys (still in business, I believe, as a hobby store). We were very young and ignorant and couldn't remember what they were called, so until we learned better we referred to them as "undertakers!"

Get 2 sets of Battleground plastic WW2 soldiers to fight a never ending battle for control of the side of my parents house.