With Christmas just around the corner, it’d be nice to sell a few more copies of the book, so here are some proper, genuine, reader reviews that might help you choose what to buy for your retro-obsessed friends this Yuletide.

From Waterstones.com

“I’ve found that it’s a book that benefits going through with a few friends, as it stirs memories and is a good conversation starter. I personally filled a few lunch hours at work going over which toys we had and what became of them.”

From Play.com

“Unlike similiar books, this one strongly focuses on toys that were available in the UK, so you should know most of the items here.”

From Librarything.com

“If you have any sense of nostalgia for the toys that were great when we were kids in the 80’s this is a treasure.”

From UsingEnglish.com

“By the time you’ve finished laughing out loud, you’ve cross-referenced one toy against another and you’ve gazed wistfully at the toy photos, wishing you were 8 years old again, this book will have kept you interested for many hours.”

And there’s a video review over at Ninety Second Review plus some nice mentions of the book on people’s blogs, including my old mate GiaGia (who one day I hope to work with again), Fustar, Box Vox, Out On Blue Six, Retro To Go, Me And My Big Mouth, the Liverpool Daily Post, and Mirror.co.uk. Thank you all.

You can’t have helped but notice all the stories in the papers lately about retro toys making a comeback.  But isn’t it just the usual suspects?  Rubik’s Cube, Space Hopper, etc. etc.

What toy do you think is long overdue a return?  It could be one off this site or one only you remember.  I might pick a few for a front page poll.  

So, which toy do you think they should bring back for Xmas 2008?  Would kids still be interested?  Post your comments below. 

Amazon is currently selling TV Cream Toys at the bargain basement price of £3.89.  http://www.amazon.co.uk/ is the link you want

I’ve noticed quite a lot of traffic to the blog page about The Friday Project, which I can only assume is either a) journalists from the trade press looking to see whether or not we’ve got the inside skinny on the fate of TV Cream Toys’ publishing company du jour or, b) other authors whose books have not yet been released wondering why the TV Cream titles are still available. 

The truth is, aside from what’s in the reports already out there, I know little else: speculation suggests that someone is buying up the company (or at least some of its backlist), and that some of the outstanding authors’ contracts will be honoured, some may not.  Whether this is true or not (and for whom) is only partially confirmed. However, having sat with TV Cream Toys in purgatory for about 12 months (it was released almost two years after the original pitch), I can at least empathise with those who now wonder if their book will ever make it to the shops. 

On the thorny issue of reprints, I don’t know if that will ever happen either (although I’d like to see paperback versions of TV Cream Toys and TV Cream’s Anatomy Of Cinema), so perhaps buy up the unsold stock while you still can, eh? 

I’ve added a link in the site navigation to the TV Cream Toys Quiz (which originally appeared on the front page of TV Cream over Christmas 2007), just in case anyone wants to download it and have a crack.  It’s one of those Excel jobbies, weighing in at around 980Kb (so shouldn’t take too long over your modern-day, new-fangled, fat broadband pipe), where you have to guess the 100 different toys from screencaps of the adverts they appeared in.  Some are easy, some are deceptively difficult.  And no, not all the answers are in the book, so it’s just for fun, not really to try and get you to go out and buy yet another copy!