More nostalgia today, as Nige makes a pitch for the next building toy-based Hollywood blockbuster…
Following the success of The Lego Movie, the time is surely ripe for Bayko: The Movie.
For those of us who spent a formative portion of our early years assembling red, white and green 30s-style houses from bits of bakelite, Bayko will always occupy a special niche in our memory and affections.
Me, I never seemed to have enough pieces, and was often frustrated by the tendency of those upright rods to curve out of shape – but when Bayko went well, there was nothing like it. The only trouble was that, having once built your little masterpiece, sitting on its green base, there was nothing for it but to break it up and start again, playing whatever variations on the theme you could muster (and there weren’t many when you had as few pieces as me)…
It was the Danish interloper Lego, principally, that put paid to Bayko, which was never the same after the company was sold to Meccano. The colour scheme was changed – grey bases, yellow doors and windows, green roofs. And the roofs, instead of being satisfyingly chunky one-piece items, now had to be slotted together. No wonder Bayko didn’t last much longer.
So here’s the outline: a middle-aged man wakes up one morning to find himself living in a computer-generated Bayko world (original colour scheme) and, er… well… Okay – over to you, Hollywood creatives. Make it happen.
Because the man of the house was a civil engineer, Bayko was passed-over in favour of Meccano. Before it got so up itself, Meccano was a simple system of red and green parts, held together with nice brass nuts and bolts – this was back in the grey 1950’s. Looking back now, it did give me, and other kids in the road, a chance to use their imaginations in a way that is almost impossible today. My grandson plays Minecraft. I’ve watched him play with his dad, but felt no desire to reach for the controller. But what do I know?
As a seeker after ‘I wonder how it works’ I turned mine into a railway junction signal box. This is odd because, at the time, I didn’t have a train set, perhaps I was an early hinter. Toys in the late forties were bespoke, or hand made as they say, this because of Mr Hitler.
The names come flooding back, Keil Kraft (balsa wood, tissue paper and dope,) Frog, Pelham Puppets…
So, there’s this bloke who wakes up one morning and finds a Steiff button stapled to his ear and his torso covered in artificial fur, just as he comes to terms with this how-do-you-do a burd with a posh accent called Campione picks him up and starts blathering on about age and how it affects the price. ‘What price’ he roars (well, after all, he is a bear.) Only, the sound is in his head, who ever heard of a talking Kraut bear….
It’s Steiffling in Here the prequel, the movie, the sequel, ISiH 2, 3, 4….
Mahlerman, has your grandson got the Minecraft Blockopedia book? If not, I could send you the copy given to me by my godmother for Christmas (not sure what she was thinking…) You might even find a use for it yourself?
My stepson’s late grandfather was Frederick Bayco, a twentieth century composer. His most famous piece was Elizabethan Masque. He also wrote a wedding march still used today and some of his music has been used in Spongebob Squarepants in recent times!
I actually preferred the newer colours but had loads of the older ones because we found a toyshop with a trunk full of loose old parts and blew pocket money on extra bits. If your ambitions were limited to designing your dream bungalow it was great but once ambition took over you soon hit the limitations of the system. We were always a bit jealous of cousins with less mean parents who bought tons of LEGO…
What is needed is a new Bayco with identical but scaled up parts to build actual homes in double quick time with standardised dimensions of elements building an extension if kids arrive would be a breeze and save the cost of moving.
Good thinking, Coline – I like the sound of that. They’ll have to do a bit of work on those bendy metal rods though…
I am now hankering after making myself a miniature art-deco villa
I was a Minibrix girl, myself. In a dusty outpost of the empire, my cousin and I composed a letter to the Minibuilders Club in England asking if we could be members. But no-one replied.