Incomplete Gamer

The Incomplete Gamer is feeling inspired.  We’ve just finished watching James May’s Toy Stories.  The cynic inside us struggling to get out might have suspected this BBC series was just one long advertisement for Hornby – the British toymaker that now owns the iconic brands Scalextric, Airfix and Hornby Trains – three of the six toys featured in the show.  Certainly the toys and companies featured must surely have seen a bump in their quarterly sales figures as a result of the show – the premise of which was to showcase a world of toys and entertainment long ago left behind in the dust by the current generation of children and adults too busy pressing buttons on game controllers, to be bothered actually getting their hands dirty and their minds engaged constructing fiddly plastic models.

In Toy Stories, James May doesn’t just get the toys out of the cupboard and give then a bit of a dust.  It’s going to take more than that to reel in the youngsters.  His hook is to ‘supersize’ the toys with projects which include building a full scale Lego house and a full size replica of the old Brooklands racetrack, constructed on the actual site out of Scalextric track.

To transform the ambitious dreams into the large scale reality, James enlists the help of project managers, architects, engineers, Scalextric geeks, and model railway nerds, school kids (many who seem to have never even heard of the toys in question) and the local community.

In as much as we, here at the Incomplete Gamer have been inspired to bring our own toys out of storage, and replicate James May’s series (albeit on a much smaller scale) we’re calling the show a ‘great success’.   But the real test is to see whether 12 year old Incomplete Gamer Junior can be inspired to put down the controller and follow May’s lead.  Sure, he loved watching the show, but will Incomplete Gamer Junior be inspired to tackle the mini ‘Toy Stories’ inspired projects we’ve lined up for him.

Project One Meccano: Radio controlled Roadster

Three years ago I was given a pretty cool Meccano car for Christmas  – pretty cool until Dad and I opened the box and discovered that we would have to build it ourselves.  We gave it a go but only managed to build half the boot of the car before giving in.  Pretty pathetic I know.

Fast forward to earlier this week and I rescued the Meccano set from the darkness of my bedroom cupboard.  The good news is my fine motor skills are even more developed.  The bad news is Dad’s sausage fingers are getting even bigger.  Is that even possible?

The Meccano set of doom actually took us only two days to complete which sounds like a long time, but was actually  only four, one-hour sessions.

Meccano building is most difficult when it’s not immediately obvious what part of the car you are building.  The other tricky bit is that they give you crazy tiny tools to work with – a tiny spanner and tiny hex key, but you still have to hold them with giant human sized paws.

This particular kit had the option to make three different models – a coupe, a sedan and a convertible. I built the convertible.  Let me tell you now, as fun as it was, I’m not going to dismantle and rebuild it.

So is Meccano for me?  Meccano isn’t going to replace the time I spend enjoying video games.

Having said that, the car is now taking pride of place on my bookshelf.

If you haven’t seen James May’s Toy Stories I highly recommend you watch it.  And if you’d like to build the Meccano car I struggled with you can find a link to that below as well.

This is Incomplete Gamer JuniorR signing off!

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