Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #326 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-12-07
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 360 minutes

Synopsis
James May goes on a mission to reconnect today's youth with some of Britain's best loved toys of yesteryear. In an effort to get kids to put down their games consoles, the technology-enthusiast introduces the new generation to the pleasures, frustrations and ultimate sense of accomplishment found in Plasticine, Lego, Airfix, Scalextrix, Meccano and model railways. Each toy is explored in a group project on a giant, often surreal scale, designed to unite family members of all ages and reawaken the big kid in all of us.

Customer Reviews

A celebration of that old-fashioned idea: the entertaining tv program
This six-part series has been one of the most enjoyable of 2009. It revolves around the simple idea of using various famous (well, for people aged 40+) childhood toys in a community project. This format avoids straight rose-tinted nostalgia in favour of getting adults and children involved in playing with the toys on a grand scale... a very grand scale. So for the Airfix episode the attempt is made to construct a lifesize Spitfire aircraft. The plasticine episode, rather obliquely, creates a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show. There's a Meccano bridge across a real river, a full size Scalextric racing track, a full size model railway and most famously a house built out of Lego.

Each program presents the entertaining side of the planning, chronicling the problems as much as the triumphs, as well as the amusing reactions of the people involved. It's a delight to see children who have never got their fingers gummed up with Airfix glue before hating doing an activity that doesn't involve sitting in front a tv screen then gradually finding that they enjoy making something that's real. It's just as much fun seeing the adults reliving their youth as well as the enthusiasts who are still devoted to the particular toy and who are inevitably male with loft extensions to house their hobby.

Through it all James May's genuine enthusiasm comes over well. It pleases me that of all the Top Gear presenters he's the one that appears to be getting the most work. He has an appealing and gentle approach that finds good-spirited fun in most situations such as the po-faced reactions of the Flower Show judges or meeting a particularly nerdy enthusiast. My only minor problem is that these days the BBC are incapable of making a tv show without a 'celebrity' appearing and so inevitably some crop up to, as always, add precisely nothing, but thankfully their slots are small. In addition the nostalgia is tainted by the realization that the toys do still exist, except they have often been dumbed down and they are usually being made in some far flung corner of the globe, but I would hope that this series gives the toys a boost.

This is simply the best possible show that could have been made about the toys, and it's the only series I've watched all year in which I've smiled from start to finish.

Original idea
I am watching this on TV at the moment and once you start to watch, you're hooked. Captain Slow is a very natural host, especially with the kids who are probably petrol-heads in the making. This was a different idea, to take the toys of 1950s and 60s and bring them up to date. I will be buying the DVD for a friend, and maybe a Meccano set to go with it in his Christmas stocking!

Sheer feel-good entertainment (with an intelligent twist)
This is a delightful series in which grown-up folk who should know better aim to do ridiculous things with children's toys on a huge scale. The result is entertaining, charming television which has a bit of a secret mission, too.
May is engaging, witty and self-deprecating (well; the latter occasionally) as he organises the building of the world's first full-size house made of Lego, the world's first Plasticine garden, the world's biggest ever model plane, the world's greatest model train set, a world record beating Scalextric track which follows the original Brooklands circuit, and a life-size swing bridge made out of Meccano. It's all totally daffy -- except that at some levels, it's not...
For years, James May was the smartest man writing for 'Car' magazine, and it seemed for a while that his intellect had been swamped by the pressure of mainstream populist TV. However, it's plain that his brain is still alive and well and ticking over in fine form as he neatly re-directs his celebrity status to further the cause of the traditional British toy. Beyond that, this series celebrates the spirit of the engineer, of those pioneers who created our industrial revolution in the first place. But it does so with considerable subtlety.
There's an incognito scheme at work here; May and his ilk do their best to quietly unravel the suffocating embrace of the nanny state and to remind the UK's increasing population of couch potatoes that there is a real world out there. Engaging with it is the first step towards re-defining it. And May goes out of his way to explore the history of each play-thing, reminding us that from tiny acorns once grew a mighty oak.

There is something refreshing and encouraging about this series. I expected to be bored or irritated by it, but it had the opposite effect. At its best this is inspiring programme making which might just encourage a few more young people to engage with hard science and mechanical expertise. And if nothing else it is jolly entertaining.
9/10