Watch: Toys with Magic Grandad
Toys with Magic Grandad is a unit of the BBC schools TV series Watch from the 2000s, covering Social History for primary school pupils.
Magic Grandad is now a fully-fledged time traveller who regularly journeys around history and then, whenever he finds something "brill-a-brill", drops in on some of his grandchildren and invites them along. Grandad seems to be well known to the people in each era he visits (unless he is the sort of man who just naturally doesn't mind unknown children shouting "grandad!" at him in the street) but there are some restrictions to his magic: he often needs to return to the present before "the magic runs out" at half past four or risk being trapped in the past forever, and he often arrives with a violent crash landing.
As well as looking at the different toys in each period they visit, all of the trips are to specific dates which have some significance in the grander scheme of history. At the end of each adventure the children imagine what it would be like to show their modern toys and computers to the children from the past, and Grandad asks the viewers to think about how they would like to have lived in the historical period.
Grandad is played by Tim Healy and his name is Mr Thompson.
Episodes
Quick episode list
| # | Title | Broadcast |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | in 1969 | 17 Mar 2003 |
| 2. | in 1953 | 24 Mar 2003 |
| 3. | in 1870 | 31 Mar 2003 |
| Num | Title | 1st Broadcast |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | in 1969 | 17 Mar 2003 |
 Matthew and Leah have been sent outside to play with real toys instead of the TV & computer, and find some modern Star Wars merchandise. Grandad arrives and transports them back to 21st July 1969, the day man first walked on the moon, when people were space mad. They meet a West Indian family living in a tower block and try out their huge array of toys including space hoppers, pogo sticks and remote-conrolled cars. The older girl Selena is taken out to a "space party" by a boy, while everybody else settles down to watch a very scary black and white episode of Doctor Who (which the modern children have never heard of).  The children are sent to bed, where there are lava lamps and even more space-related toys. They sneak out for a midnight feast of sweets, chocolate and cake and fall asleep. Later they are woken to watch the moon landing on TV.
| ||
| 2. | in 1953 | 24 Mar 2003 |
 Tom and Melissa are fighting over turns on their Game Boy Advance when a loud crash announces the arrival of Grandad. He shows then his go-kart, which is made of a cardboard box and a dustbin lid, and explains that you had to use your imagination to play when he was their age. They go for a ride back to 4th February 1953 and meet children called James and Katie who are playing Cowboys and Indians. They all join in the game, including Grandad, and ambush another boy called Paul who is playing the Cowboy.  Paul summons them all to the sweet shop where they discover that rationing of sweets has just ended and they can buy as many as they like. The children go off to build a go-kart out of whatever they can find, while Grandad goes for a doze on a bench. As they complete the go-kart James and Katie's Uncle Tom suddenly arrives back from America. He surprises Katie with a new plastic doll that grows real hair, and James with a brand new pedal car made of metal. They set out for a race between the pedal car and the home-made go-kart, and Grandad wakes up just in time.
| ||
| 3. | in 1870 | 31 Mar 2003 |
 Harry and Maddy dash home from school and start to play on the PlayStation. Grandad arrives with a loud yell, he has been to visit the time over 100 years ago when his great grandad was young, and shows the children some of the wood & metal toys they had then. They all go back to 8th September 1870, but the children find that rather than taking them to play Grandad is sending them to school. This is the first year of mass education and all of the working class children are being educated in a barn.  The children are given slates on which to copy letters from the blackboard. Harry is caught playing with a yoyo and told to stand in the corner with a dunce's cap. Grandad comes into the school to demonstrate a new object to the children - a zoetrope. At playtime they see a variety of playground games and a servant girl sneaks them into the big house where they creep into young master Albert's bedroom. He has a rocking horse and a music box as well as many mechanical toys, but he is having his hair cut ready to be sent away to boarding school. Harry and Maddy return to modern times and decide that they would have liked to live in the big house with lots of toys, but would not have liked to be sent off to a strict boarding school.
| ||
Update 15th August 2009: Lots of clips from these programmes were available online in the Learning Zone Broadband section of the BBC website, for teachers to embed into their whiteboard presentations and build into lesson plans. Unfortunately they were all removed without warning in late July 2009 and are not currently accessible.
Credits
| Starring |
Tim Healy as Magic Grandad |
| in 1969 with |
Leah-Verity White as Leah |
| in 1953 with |
Melissa Suffield as Melissa |
| in 1870 with |
Scarlett Gee as Maddy |
| Written by | Emma Collins |
| First assistant director | Richard Lindsay (episode 2), Nic Jeune (episode 3) |
| Second assistant director | Helen Benbow |
| Location manager | Richard Lindsay (all), Nick Eastwood (episodes 2 & 3) |
| Director of photography | David Meadows |
| Designer | Petra Cox |
| Production manager | Sue Grant |
| Production co-ordinator | Mimma Paone |
| Researcher | Neil Garfath-Cox |
| Toy consultant | Robert Opie |
| Toy advisor | Gill Burns (episode 3) |
| Education consultant | John Stringer |
| Executive producer Glasshead | Hazel Graham |
| Executive producer BBC | Karen Johnson |
| Director | Christos Georgiou |
| Producer | Lambros Atteshlis |
| Glasshead production for the BBC |
More
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- ↑ The 'original publicity' for the Toys episodes is the descriptions in BBC (2003) and BBC (2004), which continued to be reprinted when the episodes were repeated even though they were wrong.
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