Ovoid characters with heavily-weighted nether regions

Sporting that “Billy Bunter as played by Brian Glover in a wig” look to a man (and woman, and child), Airfix Weebles were the egg-sized shellacked cousins of the inflatable “bop-bag”. The classic Cream-era Weeble was a pug-ugly, smug-grinned, pink-faced buffon, and yet was also blessed with one of the all-time most memorable catchphrases ever.

The initial batches of Weebles, however, were simply uniform smooth plastic castings, distinguishable only by a see-through sticker of bodily features attached to the outside. When it became obvious that the stickers were easily shed and wont to unpeel of their own accord, the more familiar moulded plastic, pissholes-for-eyes Weeble was introduced.

Initially only available in regular “family” varieties, the humble Weeble race soon proliferated to incorporate various animals, characters from fiction, and even the cast of “Sesame Street”. Similarly, their multitudinous playsets started out as simple houses and parks (which included a series of Weeble slides, see-saws and roundabouts, providing scope for tremendous fun for those who were vindictive enough to want to see if their claim to wobble but not fall down was in fact supportable by empirical evidence), and progressed to such unlikely settings as a haunted house, featuring a witch, a glow-in-the-dark ghost and, rather disturbingly, two terrified children.

Top dog, though, was Superweeble, a figure that could be transformed into a mild-mannered ice cream man at the flick of a switch, and the Tumblin’ Weebles, who were weighted at both ends to great Mexican jumping bean-like acrobatic effect. The legions of less successful imitators included “Shufflies”, who made their way around tracks with the aid of weighted ball-bearing embedded in their underside, and the “Good Eggs”, essentially Weebles with limbs (and without the wobbling-but-not-falling-down quality).

But best of all, as if anyone was in doubt of their supremacy, Weebles made for excellent gigantic replacements for Subbuteo players, particularly if you wanted to re-enact your favourite moment from It’s A Knockout.