I remember those.
Apparently the Yanks gave them to their paratroopers when they landed in Normandy in WW2, as a means of communicating / finding each other without having to call out - the idea being that their voices would give them away, but the clicking wouldn't.
Ain't trivia wonderful?
If you rubbed them at the right angle on the cement driveway you could sharpen their edge enough so that they'd slice through an apple. I'm glad Mum never let on that she knew that.
I'm about 20 years too young to fully appreciate Meccano with clockwork motors.
I do have a clockwork / wind up hopping frog, tinplate, made in China, cheap and cheerful, so I'm doing my bit to keep the clockwork era alive.
@ecar3483 wrote:Dear post office staff, please let me take my camera into the post office.
I want to make a video, probably no more than 10 seconds in length.
Come on, post office guys, you can let me do that.
I just want to video this little wind up robot, the one in the box marked "Tin Toys".
All I want to do is pick it up, and tap against it's body with my fingernail.
That's the important part, for me - the hollow plastic sound it makes when I tap my fingernail against it.
Tin toy? The screws holding it together might qualify as tin, but that's about it...
Lots of sellers take their cameras into the PO to record the fact
that they lodged something over the counter. Proof of posting.
As long as you are not taking pics of the staff -
you don't need permission, ecar
ooh i remember those !!
amazing what simple things gave us kids pleasure back then 
Don't mean to get off topic Tas,
How did that wonderful log you made - go down.????
Go down it did ......
A whole herd of gannets (looking similar to humans) surrounded the log, and with teeth that looked suspiciously like chain saws, felled the lot in one almighty swoop of biblical proportions!
I've never seen anything disappear like that before ... it was all we could do to stop them gobbling down the fake pine cones!!
