If
you saw my Christmas photograph from a few days back, you know that the TARDIS came to visit Joel’s
holiday this year...filled with Doctor Who toys, including a bump-and-go-cybermat and a lego-like Cyber-conversion chamber.
Specifically
that holiday TARDIS is the Dekker Toys “Tardis” playhouse from 1982, an officially
licensed product from the BBC.
This
TARDIS stands four feet high -- just a
little taller than Joel at this point -- but is not alas, bigger on the
inside than it is on the outside. We’re
still working on the issue of dimensional transcendentalism.
As
you can detect from the images of the Tardis playhouse above, it was produced and
marketed in the era of the fifth Doctor, played by Peter Davison. Joel hasn’t seen any episodes of that age,
yet. We started our Whovian survey with
Patrick Troughton (“The Tomb of the Cybermen,” “The Mind Robber” and “The
Krotons”) but have also now watched “The Sontaran Experiment” and “Revenge of the
Cybermen” from the Tom Baker Era. I'm debating whether I think he'll be freaked out by the giant Wirrn in "The Ark in Space."
The
Tardis playhouse is actually something of a tent, one held up by narrow PVC poles at the corners. And inside there is even a control room and view screen…a feature which
Joel loves.
When
I was a kid, I would have traveled to the ends of the Earth (or Zeti Reticuli,
in Whovian terms…) to get my hands on a TARDIS playhouse like this one. I understand that a full-sized, inflatable
TARDIS is also being released soon for further Time Lord adventures. I think it would look great in our garage when Joel outgrows the playhouse.
John, Happy New Year, this TARDIS playhouse is cool for both Joel and you to have adventures in. I definitely think the full-size inflatable TARDIS will be a must too. My TARDIS as a boy in the '70s in the Tom Baker era was a large cardboard box painted blue. I never worked out the issue of dimensional transcendentalism either.
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