Surfing in Cornwall, a Circus in Surrey and a Marina in Wales.

Luxulyan sounds like it ought to be in some exotic place like Burma or Paraguay but it is actually a Cornish village. The delightful little Austin Mini Countryman has arrived, complete with surf boards but not the slightly scary-looking surfer. Cornwall has some smart surfing spots so it is sort of the right place to go and, although Luxulyan is inland, nowhere in Cornwall is far from the sea.

Tadworth welcomes Chipperfields Circus with Gift Set 19 and the Horse Transporter having plenty of room in the leafy Surrey outskirts of town. These were boxed items from a Derbyshire collector - the models being in super condition but the boxes had suffered a bit over the years. Either that or the elephant and six horses had been tucking into the flaps!

Now, much of Wales is beautiful but this little Wrexham street doesn't show the nation's scenery at its best. The bright lime green metallic paint on the old Marina does, however, brighten up the place a bit! Yes, Corgi did make a Morris Marina. They probably regretted it later, especially with those awful Whizzwheels! I am trying imagine a child in 1971, walking into a toy shop clutching 50p and choosing to walk out with this in a bag rather than a Porsche 911 Targa which was the same price and new on the shelves that year too.

An extra 6p would have got him a Beach Buggy and Sailing Boat Gift Set 26 (which, incidentally, I am still trying to find for myself forty five years later!)

To be honest, there wasn't a great deal of choice in one of the bad years for Corgi. 1971 was the year of ridiculous dragsters, the dreadful Ford Mustang 'Organ Grinder', the appalling Mercedes C111 and thickly orange painted Bond Bug as well as strangely sized models of a Marcos Mantis and the DAF City Car, which might have been management's way of preparing kids for the 1:36 stuff that would appear the following summer. 1971 did see the lovely Citroen SM emerge to rescue the Corgi image a little but it had to compete with Basil Brush's horrid adaptation of the #9031 Renault 12/16.

Writing this I think I might take a look at each Corgi year. That would be a nice way to mark their 60th Anniversary, especially if I stick to the best of each year's releases!