Johnny Seven OMA

The Johnny Seven OMA..

One Man Army.

There were a few gifts in the back of my mind as a child have been left there to this day. Christmas was always a wonderful time. It wasn't the fact that the gifts were always in the same league as the other 'richer' kids, but it was the expectation. The expectation that just once, on Christmas morn, that Father Christmas would bring something truly awesome, something so spectacular that in opening the gift and discovering that it was beyond belief would have caused my head to surely explode, and in doing so would have scattered the iron filings from my cracked magnetic 'man with beard' game that I always received from my bewildered Grandma, whose idea of a perfect Christmas was to include the iron filing man in every grandchild's must-have present list.Not that I was ungrateful..I dutifully dragged the iron filings across the bald guys head and face in a myriad display of facial imagination; never had a bald guy been so well facially explored, it was a multitude of chins like never before...well, like the previous Christmas in truth, but you get the idea...Christmas presents were opened in the bleak hope that one day, just one lucky day, I would miraculously receive a Johnny Seven OMA. One Man Army!
This was no ordinary toy. It was immense. A weapon that had not one,nor two, but seven different features. This single acquisition would have taken boyhood warcraft to a whole new level of realism, and with a plastic grenade that was capable of being launched a staggering fifteen plus feet, it was likely that no stale tomato within range would ever be safe again.
Looking back this may seem just a little barbaric, but with open wastelands of completely flattened houses, a war would often be reenacted with much gusto. My weapon of choice would always be the side of an old dining room chair. Old, broken furniture could be found in an unlimited endless supply.The upright was the barrel, and the two feet would be the stock; with boyhood imagination it was a perfect Bren gun, and all that was needed was the sound effect, a high speed burst of dubadubdduddudbdudbdubuddu'...followed by the obligatory ricochet sound of 'peeoewnnn'....small platoons would be chosen from whoever was around at the time, and the war was on. A base of some sort was required,usually an old bin; this had to be defended at all costs, all whilst an all frontal attack was carried out with reckless abandon on the opposing platoon's bin
The ultimate base of course was a den. The den was the capital city of boyhood memory, the epicentre of a secret club where sweet stashes could be stored, and ill-gotten gains from your homes food cupboards could be shared with fellow den members. I remember that one new member, who had missed the point entirely,brought back to the den a tin of sliced carrots., which was as about as much use of a chocolate tea pot.Embarrassing, to say the least.
Alas, the gift never ever materialised. The only kid I knew who ever had one was Gryff Waters, who had practically every new toy going, and all of which were destined to be smashed to pieces within weeks. He got fed up with it within weeks, and found some weird joy in jumping on it until the Johnny Seven was more of a Jonah Nought Point One, a broken piece of useless plastic. The waste was beyond my comprehension, especially when two days later Gryff was found armed with an old chair leg. Perhaps he was jealous.
The Johnny Seven OMA.If I ever found one cheap now I think I may still buy it.
Memories eh?
Peeoewnnnnn............