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Flight Deck

“All the thrills and excitement of landing a jet fighter on an aircraft carrier”

Flight Deck by AirfixSome toys are born great, some toys achieve greatness, and some toys have greatness thrust upon them. Some toys are just so damn great that they have acquired a near-mythical status over the years simply by word of mouth. These are the toys that no one ever saw in real life, nor owned (even though they definitely knew a kid up the street who said his cousin had one), least of all actually played with.

High up on the list of such toys, and once possibly glimpsed pretty high on the shelves of Smiths too, was Flight Deck (re-christened a few years later, after a couple of small modifications, as Super Flight Deck in implicit acknowledgement – we reckon – of just how legendary this toy had become)1.

Note the following checklist of factors in its favour. Parents required to knock through a ground floor wall just to create a space big enough to set it up? Check. Degree in light engineering necessary to understand the combined complexity of the various cables, pulleys, levers and counterweights? Check. Fully realised cockpit and joystick as close to a real life jet any youngster could hope to get? Check.

However, despite all this, Flight Deck still stumbles on one point. Why go to all the effort of inspiring kids to turn their living room into a reasonable replica of the Ark Royal, only to manufacture the little fighter itself (an F4 Phantom at 1/72 scale, fact fans) in dull grey or – worse still – yellow (when any fule kno that the Red Arrows, flying Hawk 100s, were the definitive popular aeronauts of the era)? Attention to detail. It’s not much to ask, is it?

1As if we needed any further convincing, one chap’s Internet diary details his obsession with getting hold of one as an adult. Proof enough of the thrall it kept us in.



Posted on January 13, 2006 by Registered CommenterSteve in | Comments17 Comments | References1 Reference

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  • Response
    Response: Teletext Flights
    at Teletext Flights on May 23, 2008
    If you? re like me, your family doesn? t live in the same town, or even same state as yourself. Maybe you? re about to travel for the upcoming holidays. Or maybe they do all live in the same town. If you find yourself travelling with a small child, I hope ...

Reader Comments (17)

Actually, I did have one of these or I should probably say, I purloined one. Having come back with the folks from our lengthy summer sojourn on the coast we discovered that my Aunt Cathy had left all my cousin Stephen's toys in our shed, since he had left home and was all grown up and in the charts as a member of Orange Juice and that, she probably understandably decided he wouldn't want them anymore.
My brother and I gave it a throw in the back garden a couple of times, found it endlessly frustrating then chucked it back into the shed. It was just too difficult.
Now, Cousin Stephen's Up Periscope!, *that* was class!
Jan 14, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterChris Diamond
I too had a Flight Deck. Unfortunately, the only way I could get enough space for the thing was to set it up on the stairs. This resulted in landings akin to the opening credits of the Six Million Dollar Man.
I fear it was one of those toys that looked far more exciting on the adverts than in the brown reality of a 70s semi-detached.
Jan 17, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterNige
Yup, I got one of these for christmas one year. How I screamed with joy as I opened the box. How I bawled with despair as I realised it was too big to use in any room in the house. Tried it in the garden, the cardboard bits got damp and fell apart; cue several days of sulking and never picking it up again except, bizarrely, to use the joystick thing to *pretend* I was bringing a plane in to land and probably enjoying it a lot more than I would have done with the whole insane system of wires and pulleys in place.
Jan 17, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterSimon Crubellier
No kidding - it used to take BLOODY AGES to set up, only for the plane to jam at the top of it's landing 'run' (my brother and I had the standard, landing-only version). I managed to destroy an entire shelf of family hierlooms by yanking the control column too hard - needless to say that was the last we saw of Flightdeck (until my bro found one on Ebay!)
Jan 19, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterAdz
I never had one, always wanted one. And so one day my slightly mad Uncle (who has since been done for phoning in bomb threats to shopping malls, but that's another story) decided to "improvise" and build me one using some wool, my brother's recently completed Airfix Sunderland Flying Boat and the bedroom window latch...

My brother was somewhat upset when he returned home to find his latest kit in pieces all over the garden path...
Jan 26, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterKev
We also improvised a Flight Deck using fishing twine and a Matchbox 1/72 twin-engine Cesna. The joystick was half a broom handle with an old bicycle handlebar grip half-way down. This was attched to an old shelf by two U-nails one inside the other. It worked a treat (better then the real one). Having written all that I feel compelled to build one for my own kids!!
Jan 31, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterGlenn
Had both versions as a child and have since managed to re acquire good verisons of both as an adult. This was and still is an awesome part of my childhood and I remember playing with them a lot. It was possible to land the phantom on both sets.

This toy is the reason my own website, www.stuffwelove.co.uk is in existance. Probably the only site on the web that honours both of these toys (and others) in some detail.
Feb 10, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterPhil Hubbard
Hey Phil

There's a link to your site in the footnotes of the entry above. Any chance you could donate a photo to the project?
Feb 10, 2006 | Registered CommenterSteve
"(when any fule kno that the Red Arrows, flying Hawk 100s, were the definitive popular aeronauts of the era)"

Have to also disagree with this. At the time both versions of Flight Deck were available the Red Arrows were still smoking about in Foland Gnats. Not Hawk 100's
Feb 10, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterPhil Hubbard
I was exactly the same as Simon. Looked forward to it for ages. Grandad managed to set it up and it amounted to minutes of fun. It was never played with after christmas day. Rubbish!!
Feb 11, 2006 | Unregistered Commenterwellsy
Always wanted,but want NEVER gets.Snooty neighbour showed his off to the street,all envyed until Chris"nice bloke" got "Drop-chute"?,revolving turntable ,look thrua sight and press alever to drop little parachutes into "SOS" crater things?!
Feb 21, 2006 | Unregistered Commentermarkie p
You mean "Chutes away"... its in the list :)
May 23, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterSard
My mum's friends' sons had Super Flight Deck and the one and only time I ever played with it was early 1978 when we visited them in Newcastle post-Xmas. They had it set up down the length of their hall and tied off the top pulley thing to a bannister about half-way up the stairs to give increased velocity! About half the aircraft launched stuck on the turn and had to be freed up. The landings were aways cool though.
Jun 6, 2006 | Unregistered Commentercloggydog
My brother had this, and the Up Periscope! as mentioned above. I still have his Super Flight Deck in the loft, hasn't seen the light of day of years but I may get it out. We played with it a few times and everything above is exactly how I recall it..hours of setting up, not much time to play with it.
Jul 9, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterRobin Lovell
I remember it being set up in our lounge with the wire attached to the door handle. The main problems were: people tripping over near-invisible wire and opening the door at inappropriate moments!! Utter crap
Mar 3, 2007 | Unregistered CommenterJon N ICHOLLS
Yep, I could also not aspire to the real thing so made one of my own along with my brother. It consisted of a plank of wood, some fishing line and an Aifix plane with an open safety pin glued to the underside of the fuselage (note highly tech savy use of the correct Airfix lingo here). It was however a two-person operation as the non-pilot had to push the plane back to the end of the line after each landing and let go at the required moment.
Apr 2, 2007 | Unregistered CommenterRoland Marshall
Sorry but you do make reference to attention to detail as well as knowledge that any fool might possess. In the early 70s, the RAF and the Red Arrows took delivery to T Mk. 1 and T Mk. 1A Hawk Aircraft. The 100 series Hawk Aircraft only materialised in the 1990s. The RAF have only recently ordered this type. Had Flight Deck - too frustrating for me to set up and parked under bed for years.
May 29, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterAircraft

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