Gifts of Christmas past

Gifts of Christmas past still haunt Russ Swan - but will he complete his quest for a toy version of the Mars Curiosity Rover? I'm developing something of an obsession with Curiosity. Just about a year ago I happened upon a toy version of the Mars rover, and scooped it up with hardly a second thought. It would make an interesting stocking filler for a teenager, and with any luck I'd be able to have a little go with it in the inevitable post-feast stupor. This casual act was to become the defining moment of my year, although I wouldn’t realise it until much later. It was done innocently, and the consequences were unintended, but have to I admit that I have been weak. I played with Hot Wheels when I was a kid and this, like the other non-digital forms of entertainment that occupied me – Meccano, chemistry set, Airfix – helped nurture my interest in science and engineering. What better appreciation of the effects of conservation of momentum could you get than seeing how far a little toy car will fly after careening from an upstairs window and over an improvised ramp? The teenager in question was thrilled with the little gift, which is where the problems really started. It's too good to play with, she said. It should stay in its blister pack for safekeeping. I did my best not to appear disappointed, while bravely hiding my bafflement at this unfamiliar logic. Another portion of plum duff, anyone? Within a week I found myself back at the toy shop, casually scanning the shelves for another copy of the Curiosity rover. None was to be found, and that should have been the end of it. It should have been, but it wasn’t. A giant supermarket near the office became my next target, but another casual scan revealed a similar lack of Curiositys. Excitement levels rose when, a week or two later, it was apparent that the toys had been restocked. It couldn't do any harm to have another look, just in case. By springtime, several restockings later but still no tiny rover in my possession, attention turned to the internet as a likely source. Here, dear reader, I really fell down the rabbit hole. A popular online auction site could provide me with the toy I sought, but at a bizarrely inflated price. These things are around £1 to £1.50 on the High Street, yet I was astonished to see that in the grey market online they can be offered at more than ten times that price, plus postage. Thinking that, perhaps, a well-known online book shop would prove more fruitful, I discovered a world of Curiosity that had hitherto remained unknown. Why had nobody told me there was a Haynes manual covering the Mars rovers? The other books were expected, but the workshop manual was not. A birthday gift voucher came in very handy and I was only mildly disappointed to find no reference to the correct torque settings for the wheel nuts anywhere in the volume. The retailer also offered overpriced Hot Wheels, alongside bogus certificates for an acre of land on another planet, but the thing that now really set my pulse racing was the Lego Curiosity kit. Nearly 300 little plastic bricks that can be assembled into a rather endearing replica of the real thing, part of the Danish toy company's Japanese-led Cuusoo programme (since boringly renamed Ideas) that invited suggestions for new sets to be submitted by members of the public. Curiosity was the fifth idea adopted, after a research submarine and the Hayabusa space probe. Almost all the kits developed under this scheme are in what we geeks would consider to be our territory. Unhappily, as with the Hot Wheels, the collectors got there first. Lego Curiosity was available for around £30, but it seems that most of the limited production run was snapped up by speculators and it is now hard to find for less than £80. No doubt these will sit in unopened cardboard boxes because they are also too good to play with. The world has gone mad. And I'm afraid it's contagious. In September, having almost abandoned my quest for a rover to drive around the Martian landscape of my desk, I finally found one. My delight was complete when I realised it was even a few pence cheaper than that first one, bought in December 2013, which caused all the trouble. That's one in the eye for the hoarders! I'm almost ashamed to admit what happened next. I'd found the toy, and I'd stopped looking, but the gods of retail hadn’t finished with me yet. Within a couple of weeks, a second copy practically hit me in the eye as I walked through a different shop. Oh, the irony. I should have left it there for some parent to put in a youngster's stocking, but I didn't. I was weak. This is a collector's item, after all.