''James May's Top Toys'' is a BBC documentary in which James May explored and celebrated his favourite toys, including

Etch-A-Sketch Etch A Sketch is a mechanical drawing toy invented by André Cassagnes of France and subsequently manufactured by the Ohio Art Company. It is now owned by Spin Master of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. An Etch A Sketch has a thick, flat gray screen ...

Airfix Airfix is a British brand and former manufacturing company which produced injection-moulded plastic scale model kits. In the U.K., the name 'Airfix' is synonymous with plastic models of this type, often simply referred to as "an airfix kit" even ...

model aeroplanes,

Lego Lego ( , ; stylized as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously colored interlocking ...

Meccano Meccano is a brand of scale model, model construction system created in 1898 by Frank Hornby in Liverpool, England. The system consists of reusable metal strips, plates, Structural steel#Common structural shapes, angle girders, wheels, axles and ...

Top Trumps ''Top Trumps'' is a card game first published in 1978. Each card contains a list of numerical data, and the aim of the game is to compare these values to try to trump and win an opponent's card. A wide variety of different packs of ''Top Tru ...

Scalextric Scalextric is a brand of slot car racing sets which first appeared in the late 1950s. The Scalextric were first invented by engineer B. Fred Francis, when he added an electric motor to the ''Scalex'' tin cars that were produced by Minimodels Lt ...

, model cars, and

Hornby Hornby may refer to: Places In England * Hornby, Lancashire * Hornby, Hambleton, village in North Yorkshire * Hornby, Richmondshire, village in North Yorkshire Elsewhere * Hornby, Ontario, community in the town of Halton Hills, Ontario, Canad ...

model trains. The show included May dropping a parachuted Action Man from a helicopter after an actor named George Huxley dropped it from a window, proving the parachute did not work. Further exploits had May shooting the Action Man figure with an

AR-15 An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on the Colt AR-15 design. The original ArmaLite AR-15 is a scaled-down derivative of Eugene Stoner's ArmaLite AR-10 design. The then Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation d ...

type

semi-automatic rifle A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. For comparison, a bolt-act ...

.22 lr The .22 Long Rifle or simply .22 LR or 22 (metric designation: 5.6×15mmR) is a long-established variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition originating from the United States. It is used in a wide range of rifles, pistols, revolvers, smooth ...

, thereafter referring to the toy as "Killed-in-Action Man". May also constructed an Airfix model of the battleship '' Bismarck''. Upon completion, he took it out on a boating lake and shot at it with an

air rifle An air gun or airgun is a gun that fires projectiles pneumatically with compressed air or other gases that are mechanically pressurized ''without'' involving any chemical reactions, in contrast to a firearm, which pressurizes gases ''chem ...

, while pretending to be a British seaman firing a salvo at the battleship. In the feature of the Etch-A-Sketch,

Rose Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall (born 13 March 1986) is an English singer, songwriter and musician. She was a member of The Pipettes and has performed with Mark Ronson. She also performs and records as a solo artist. Career Dougall joined The Pipettes in 2 ...

The Pipettes The Pipettes were a British indie pop girl group formed in 2003 in Brighton by Robert "Monster Bobby" Barry. The group has released two albums, '' We Are The Pipettes'', and '' Earth vs. The Pipettes'' and released numerous singles to support ...

is one of the students "etching" May on the toy. A spin off of the show, '' James May: My Sisters' Top Toys'', came on 23 December 2007. In October 2009, a series of 6 shows were broadcast, entitled ''

James May's Toy Stories ''James May's Toy Stories'' is a UK documentary television series created and presented by James May, and produced by Plum Pictures for the BBC. The programme focused on bringing some of the most notable toys conceived in the past into the mode ...

''.

External links

* * {{IMDb title, id=0498720, title=James May's Top Toys
Review by Chris Warrell from the South East London Meccano Club
Top Toys BBC television documentaries 2005 television specials