At school I was told that we would unlikely invent any thing original so not to bother. Fortunately we never paid much attention so some of us did..
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This is what model building used to mean...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auiP1YdelEo
When I was tiny, I used to collect the tokens on the backs of promotional packs of Frosties, so that I could send them off and get my free Thunderbirds die cast toys. My favourite was Thunderbird 2* but even back then I thought Thunderbird 3 had a certain futuristic elegance. Of course, I wasn't allowed to eat Frosties for every meal, so these tokens took a while for me to amass in sufficient quantities. Inventive young me took a pair of scissors, cut out the illustrations of the toys from the back, and
played with the cardboard thunderbirds cutouts as a temporary substitute for the real thing, which I eventually got to the tune of one every 6-8 weeks. I ended up with two Thunderbird Ones, two Thunderbird Threes, one Thunderbird Two and one Thunderbird Four.
The Tracy Island playset was released that christmas, and it was that year's incredible must-have toy. I wanted one,
oh I wanted one, and my parents tried, but by the time they got to the store to look for them, they'd all sold out. They tried several different stores, all the same story.
Being easily distracted, I got other cool stuff that must have pleased me as I don't remember my christmas suffering from a lack of Tracy Island playset...
Anyway, many years later, one of my friends is selling some of his old junk in a garage sale. What does he have for sale, but a beaten, slightly rough-round-the-edges but still fundamentally
all there Tracy Island playset.
I was about 15 or 16 at the time, but I bought it (for about £4) all the same. I had no intention of playing with it, but I had always wanted to get my hands on one, so I suppose I was fulfilling a very small childhood dream.
I played with it for about long enough to see what all the buttons did, then put it in the attic, mission accomplished.
I think it's still up there, 15+ years later.
True story

.
*Watching it get hit by a missile and crash land in a burning foam-covered mess in that one episode (they fixed it later) was a horrifying and painful experience for young me, I had much the same reaction as folks did watching the Enterprise explode in Star Trek 3, I imagine!
Oh yeah, sorry.
*Hands bonus points and a tube of smarties*.