Brooks Collectables proprietor Mark Yates takes us on a tour of his magnificent toy store and museum on Blackpool's sea-front in Lancashire
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01:25 - Hello, my name's Mark and welcome to Brooks Collectibles,
01:34 one of Blackpool's oldest family run gift shops
01:36 based on the promenade.
01:38 My job is basically collecting toys for a living.
01:41 It's kind of turning your hobby into a job
01:45 and really extending my midlife crisis as long as I can.
01:48 The part of the shop that we're in in the minute
01:50 is the model shop and it's probably, apart from the museum,
01:55 where I spend most of my time,
01:57 just because there's so many cool things in here.
02:00 I'm a big Star Wars nut, that was my generation
02:04 and my whole childhood is on a shelf over there.
02:07 We have a lot of vintage figures,
02:09 we have a lot of modern stuff.
02:10 We also have a lot of die cast cars
02:13 and I'm always on the hunt for new toys,
02:15 toys that are missing, gaps in my collection.
02:19 Every now and again, a customer will walk in
02:20 and say to me, "You've not got one of these,"
02:22 and then that sends me down another rabbit hole
02:24 of collecting and also you get enthusiastic
02:27 for other people's collections as well.
02:29 So it's great fun, we kind of collect collectors
02:33 and befriend them and it just makes my job great fun.
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02:40 We started out selling Dinky and Corgi
02:45 through the 1950s and '60s and as we were doing that,
02:49 we kept some and this was my uncle and my dad
02:53 and his brothers, that was their kind of thing.
02:55 They would just keep a couple to one side,
02:58 skip forward from 1949 to 2023
03:03 and we need a warehouse to keep them in.
03:06 So that is why the shop has grown and grown and grown.
03:10 As we always used to say, really what we needed
03:12 was rubber walls just to fit everything in
03:15 but it is great fun, it really is.
03:19 It's more a shop now with friends and customers
03:23 'cause we get generations of people that come.
03:26 I think that makes me feel extremely lucky and privileged
03:29 because it is such a community thing.
03:35 It's fantastic.
03:36 - Large size Darth Vader with his lightsaber.
03:38 Princess Leia, champion of the rebel cause
03:42 with her defender Luke Skywalker.
03:44 You can swing him into action on his grappling hook.
03:47 And load Chewbacca's laser crossbow.
03:50 - So over here, behind the robot who greets everyone
03:54 as they come in the shop, is a complete classic set
03:58 of Star Wars figures.
03:59 So that's every figure, 1977 to '85 plus the monsters.
04:04 Like I said, my entire childhood on a shelf.
04:07 I spent maybe three years putting the collection together
04:12 and it has some of the rarest
04:13 and most valuable figures in the set.
04:16 Always with Star Wars, the most valuable
04:18 are the first 12 and the last 17.
04:20 When you're collecting Star Wars figures,
04:26 original weapons, original accessories
04:29 are the key to the value of them.
04:32 This chap here with the longer lightsaber,
04:34 that's actually a reproduction
04:36 of what they call a double telescoping lightsaber.
04:38 Now a Darth Vader with a longer lightsaber
04:41 did 7,600 pounds at auction.
04:43 The two figures that are very similar.
04:51 So the one in front is a complete forgery.
04:55 And that's just to show how good a forgery can be.
04:58 Because the one behind it can set you back
05:01 three, three and a half, 400 pounds now.
05:03 And then you're looking at variants there as well.
05:07 So you've got Lando smiling and not smiling.
05:10 So different factories.
05:11 So he has teeth in the back one
05:14 and no teeth in the front one.
05:16 So he's smiling and not smiling.
05:17 He did Luke with different color hair.
05:19 So it's a mail order figure
05:25 that you can only either get in a cantina set
05:28 or through Sears catalog.
05:30 So it was only ever available in America.
05:32 And that's one of the first figures
05:34 that started to hit over 300 pounds for sale
05:38 for a three and three quarter inch bit of plastic.
05:40 Which when you think about it is madness.
05:42 But if you're a collector like me
05:44 and you're trying to do a full set,
05:45 you then become a completist
05:47 and you become a bit obsessed.
05:50 And I don't know if my eyes are glazing over
05:51 and I'm starting to sound like a nut job.
05:53 But then you have to have these things to complete the set.
05:56 And like I say, this was a three year journey
05:59 of finding the figures, buying other figures,
06:02 swapping, selling, trading out to get the complete set.
06:05 Full size Stormtrooper.
06:08 Just an iconic first moment
06:14 when you saw one of these on the screen as a kid.
06:16 And basically it's just bits of plastic.
06:19 And laid out on the floor, it looks like nothing
06:22 but you put it on a mannequin and it looks awesome.
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06:28 The bit on the side is from a clocking in machine.
06:34 It's a counter.
06:36 Those bits are off a radar.
06:38 And then the bits that go through the sink holes
06:41 in the gun there are what you draw slide in
06:43 and out of in your kitchen.
06:45 And that's a Stormtrooper gun.
06:46 And these are all found parts, but iconic.
06:54 The fabulous Volvo 1800S from Sweden.
06:57 Now a great new action packed dinky model.
06:59 - Look what it's got.
07:00 - Tipping seats, opening doors, opening bonnet,
07:02 detailed engine, jeweled headlights, lift up boots,
07:04 genuine wire wheels and all round suspension.
07:07 - One of the main things we started out selling
07:10 was dinky and corgi.
07:11 Down that side of the shop are all the original
07:14 corgi cases.
07:15 Now, corgi don't put out that much stuff anymore.
07:19 It's more of a smaller run, limited runs of things.
07:23 But we still have a lot of classic corgi toys
07:26 mixed in with modern TV and film related toys.
07:29 I'm a big fan of a Batmobile.
07:31 And I like, there's a Buck Rogers, there's the Avengers,
07:35 not the Marvel ones, but Emma Peel and John Steed.
07:38 Things like that, old TV shows, the Persuaders,
07:42 we love anything like that.
07:44 Down here we have some incredibly expensive,
07:46 incredibly detailed models that are again,
07:50 another level of nerdy.
07:52 You could disassemble that completely.
07:55 One person builds one model in a lab, it's all laid out.
07:58 Wheels are spoked by hand.
08:00 It has real car paint on it, real fabric on the seats.
08:03 The gears turn.
08:05 It's another level model making.
08:08 But they're so fragile, they have a tendency
08:10 to want to revert to component parts.
08:12 So we try and touch them.
08:14 You know, we try not to touch them really.
08:18 Yeah, but they just look so good on display.
08:22 - Well done, Parker.
08:24 - Thank you, madam.
08:25 Home, milady?
08:27 - Home, Parker.
08:29 - So the thing about Brooks Collectibles,
08:32 it's a little shop that gets a lot bigger on the inside.
08:35 And I'm gonna take you through now
08:38 into the main shop floor, which is the gift shop,
08:40 and show you around a bit.
08:41 So welcome to the main shop floor.
08:48 It consists of Blackpool gifts and souvenirs,
08:51 your normal kind of traditional seaside gift shop,
08:54 which is where we originally started out as.
08:58 Then we have a lot of Gothic gifts, big Harry Potter fans.
09:03 So we have a whole Harry Potter case down here.
09:07 Betty Boop.
09:07 Again, Marvel.
09:10 A lot of horror at the minute.
09:11 People are into a lot of horror dolls,
09:15 Chucky dolls, that kind of thing.
09:17 This is one of our best sellers,
09:19 and it is incredibly expensive.
09:21 It's 495 pounds.
09:23 But it's screen-accurate size.
09:26 Last November, a screen-used one,
09:29 maybe 10 minutes of screen time, sold for 35,000 pounds.
09:33 So there's money, well, I'm gonna say there's money
09:38 in buying the real props,
09:39 but for the fans that can't afford them,
09:42 prop replica's just as good.
09:44 And apart from the train has been faded
09:46 and the hair was a bit shrunk
09:48 and it may have had a bit of heat to it,
09:50 they're identical, which is incredible.
09:53 You know, the detail that these companies
09:55 can get in these models.
09:56 Oh, the puppets.
10:05 So we used to have a retro arcade down here,
10:08 but unfortunately a lot of that stuff got broken
10:12 or just wasn't strong enough for people to play on
10:15 all the time.
10:16 One of the things we do have left is a puppet show.
10:19 Sadly, there's no sound with it,
10:21 but it's original to Blackpool.
10:23 It's from the 1960s,
10:25 and a lot of people instantly recognize it
10:27 when they come in.
10:29 There you go, that's entertainment.
10:33 And the cat getting whacked in the corner by the witch.
10:37 We had two guys come in and they videoed it,
10:41 and one put his phone playing rave music,
10:45 and the other one videoed it and they were crying laughing.
10:47 But it sounded really good, you know.
10:49 There's a little Zoltar in the corner there
11:12 from the film "Big," which is rather cool.
11:16 Okey-dokey.
11:18 So next stop on the shop tour, we've done the model shop.
11:22 This is the main shop floor.
11:23 Let's go and have a look around the museum,
11:25 and I'm gonna show you all the stuff that we've kept.
11:27 The idea came about in about 2007.
11:33 We're approaching the 65th anniversary of the shop,
11:36 and all these cabinets down here are original
11:39 to the shop from downstairs.
11:40 So those were the old sales cabinets,
11:42 and they were hand-built in Blackpool in the '50s.
11:45 What we wanted to do is put on a little display
11:48 of all the old stuff, 'cause at the time,
11:49 people didn't really wanna buy it,
11:51 but they wanted to see it.
11:53 Now they wanna buy it.
11:54 We've added and extended, and it's grown
12:08 over the last, you know, 15 years or so
12:11 into, you know, what we have now.
12:15 And like I say, I am always on the hunt for the gaps.
12:19 One of my Christmas memories was unwrapping a bike,
12:25 and it was a Raleigh Burner,
12:26 and that distinctive blue and yellow.
12:29 Mine never had the mag wheels.
12:31 Mine had chrome wheels, and I always wanted the mag wheels.
12:34 And I remember that to get them changed over in 1986,
12:41 would have cost me 21 pounds.
12:44 Of course, when you look at it,
12:45 it just makes it look so cool.
12:46 It's an icon.
12:47 And this is a reissue of the bike.
12:50 Raleigh reissued this,
12:51 and the guys who did the promotional work,
12:54 who've written a book, which is there,
12:55 called "We Were Rad," which is like a documentation
12:58 of BMX culture.
13:01 But a key point, you know, in my childhood,
13:04 that first bit of freedom, being able to go, you know,
13:08 beyond the end of the street on your bike.
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13:11 - Down in the jungle, he drops from the skies,
13:15 and rises from the depths.
13:19 - Massive feature in the shop over many, many years
13:23 is transport buses, because we get tourists from Scotland,
13:27 from Ireland, down south, from all over the world.
13:32 We sell a lot of buses.
13:33 And these are buses from the '70s and late '80s,
13:38 and they all have BGS, Brooks Gift Stores Limited,
13:41 on the front.
13:43 And occasionally, I think, Corgi, what they did
13:46 was they just used these stickers on any random buses.
13:49 So they did a limited production run for us,
13:52 and then just used the stickers up.
13:53 So every now and again, I'll find a bus in a charity shop
13:57 that has Brooks Gift Stores Limited on,
13:59 that no one would ever know it was us, yeah.
14:02 But we had those commissioned and made.
14:05 There's a nice little open top one,
14:07 with all the people going up and down the prom
14:11 in the torrential sunshine,
14:13 like we've had the last couple of days.
14:16 But those are just some nice pieces.
14:17 These rebel buses, these Hong Kong buses,
14:20 the St. Anne's, Blackpool, a lot of transport buses.
14:23 So one of the most famous toy manufacturers,
14:30 the first one, the amazing Frank Hornby,
14:33 who created this, you know, Meccano, Hornby trains,
14:36 and Dinky Toys.
14:38 One of the oldest Dinky Toys we have,
14:40 it's actually donated by a customer.
14:42 And that's one thing I love about this,
14:44 the people who support us are incredible.
14:47 But it's from 1947, sorry, 1945, rather.
14:51 And it's possibly one of the oldest,
14:54 one of two of the oldest toys we have up here.
14:57 It's incredibly naive, it's very simple.
15:00 But it has that sort of 1930s streamlined cool look
15:05 that a lot of the old Blackpool trams have,
15:09 'cause they were designed at a similar time.
15:11 And I just think it's really cool.
15:13 Could get a massive impact on Dinky's share
15:16 of the marketplace by simply putting glass,
15:19 or a piece of plastic in to simulate glass in the cars,
15:23 and making opening doors.
15:25 So then all these manufacturers started getting more complex
15:29 and trying to hinge doors, bonnets,
15:32 trying to make things more interesting,
15:33 more, you know, added more play, playability to them.
15:37 - Your Dinky Toy Shop has this great Volvo model now.
15:40 There's always something new from Dinky.
15:43 - So, I mean, these are a lot of Dinky cars,
15:45 but a lot of Dinky's business was military,
15:48 because those were the vehicles post-war
15:51 that people recognized.
15:53 And so they did produce a lot of really cool,
15:56 interesting, and unusual things,
15:58 like, let's say, one of the oldest.
16:01 Oh yeah, well, yeah, one of the oldest things,
16:03 a little tank down there was first released in 1937.
16:06 And it's got, you know, a hand chain linked,
16:09 chain around the tires.
16:13 Really cool, incredibly difficult to do,
16:15 not valuable, not rare, but just old and interesting.
16:19 And then in here are some of my favorite pieces.
16:21 These are, you know, where toys started becoming
16:24 brilliantly, brilliantly dangerous,
16:27 you know, with rocket firing toys,
16:28 and that kind of thing.
16:29 So, the Green Hornet car,
16:33 which on its own, pre-Batman, starred Bruce Lee.
16:38 It was his first TV screen appearance.
16:42 Bit of a flop, they only ever made one season of it.
16:45 And the car was just an ordinary car,
16:48 but Cordy decided it was gonna have a rocket
16:50 that fired out the front,
16:51 and a thing that fired out the back
16:53 that would probably take your eye out,
16:54 and you'd choke on the other missile.
16:58 In fact, there's a book about Cordy toys,
17:00 and there's a bit in it where it says,
17:02 with the Batman missile,
17:04 easily designed to pass through a child's digestive system.
17:08 They just reckoned if he swallowed it, it would be fine,
17:10 but they never even tested it.
17:11 So, I mean, that's the thing about these toys.
17:15 My generation were licking the lead paint off them,
17:18 cutting the fingers on the sharp edges,
17:20 testing them to destruction.
17:22 So, not only were we making them valuable,
17:24 but we were doing the product service
17:26 and making toys safer for future generations.
17:28 And that's what I like to convince myself
17:30 is my commitment to the toy industry.
17:32 - Ingenious.
17:34 And should you find yourself trapped,
17:36 you merely whistle for help.
17:39 Then by placing ammunition in that spot.
17:42 Careful, Bond!
17:43 - So, another one of my obsessions is James Bond cars,
17:46 especially the Aston Martin DB5.
17:49 First produced in 1965, that's the original one there.
17:53 And it wasn't actually a DB5,
17:55 it's a DB4.
17:57 And it's the little yellow car in front.
17:59 Now, Corgi had maybe eight months to produce the car.
18:03 They didn't have any casting, so they broke an old model.
18:06 That's a model from 1965, 1960 rather.
18:10 So, they'd been in production for five years.
18:13 They broke the casting to make and fit
18:15 all that incredible ejector seat,
18:18 miniature engineering, the rocket,
18:20 the overriders that pop out the front,
18:23 the boot that releases the bullet guard.
18:26 All the things that you saw in the film,
18:28 Corgi put into the model in miniature.
18:31 Which is an absolute, I mean,
18:34 I don't know how they did it.
18:35 They hand made them all in brass originally as a prototype,
18:39 then did the tooling from that.
18:41 So, the original James Bond DB5 was actually a DB4.
18:45 And they produced, I think, nearly three million of them.
18:50 And it's a car that's still in production today,
18:53 55 years later.
18:55 And I would reckon that's the best selling
18:57 toy and film related car ever.
19:00 It's been so long, I mean, millions of them.
19:03 They made so many of that one
19:04 that they had to retool it to make that one.
19:07 And then they had to retool it again
19:09 to make that one in the 80s.
19:12 And it's just sold and sold and sold,
19:14 and it's an absolute icon.
19:15 But then you've got other models in between.
19:17 You've got the Toyota 2000 GT.
19:20 You've got the underwater Lotus.
19:22 I still remember ripping the packaging open on mine.
19:25 I know.
19:26 - You wouldn't do that now, would you?
19:27 - I wouldn't do that now, no.
19:28 Absolutely not.
19:29 - Scramble van to start the show.
19:33 And revving up for action, here's our star.
19:35 What a jump!
19:37 Evil's riding the amazing Star Cycle.
19:38 That gyro power sends him over 100 feet at top speed.
19:41 Lifty loop, and he's not through yet.
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21:15 - Since the lockdowns, a lot of people have had the time
21:20 and the inclination to kind of revisit these things,
21:24 'cause these are all points in time to different people.
21:28 Moments of joy and happiness
21:30 that transport you back to a little piece of your childhood.
21:34 And they can see these things
21:35 and understand that they do have a,
21:37 not necessarily a huge financial value,
21:39 which some of these do, but a lot of them don't.
21:42 And the value is in the memory, really.
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