Well it's been a long time coming, but here we are about to open and cautiously peer inside another Charity Shop Tat Bag. Before we inhale for the second time that heady aroma of damp and piss, however, I should probably tell you about a slight change to the format of this feature.

You see it has become apparent of late that my first Tat Bag was a fluke of near supernatural levels. Somehow on my very first shopping spree I bagged the greatest collection of Charity Shop items the world has ever seen.

Subsequent visits to other shops have been infinitely less successful, and so I was briefly torn between sticking to the same format and writing about shitty bits of porcelain and Max Bygraves vinyls, or tweaking the feature slightly in the hope of making it entertaining to read. In the end I opted for the latter.

Not that it's changed that dramatically or owt. Only change is that instead of hitting one charity shop and blowing my whole £2.50 budget in it, I am spreading the wealth around a variety of shops in the hope of netting some quality items. It puts the kibosh on my planned League Table of Tat, but at times like this sacrifices have to be made.

Without further ado then, I give you the second Charity Shop Tat Bag...

Item 1: Klean Klay Modelling Set
Purchased: Save the Children, Fort William
Cost: 50p

It's not often you encounter plasticine from the 1950's, much less Canadian plasticine from the 1950's, but that's exactly what I found when I visited Save the Children in Fort William recently. Though the box was firmly taped shut, the satisfying weight of the contents combined with the promise of "Bright Assorted Colors" and "Deep Drawn Plastic Moulds" was enough to convince me to part with fifty pence.

I could write an entire article on just the box itself, but I won't. Instead I'll draw your attention to two things - 1) the words "Non-Drying", and 2) The fucking enormous biceps of the cherub faced child. That kid could crack a badger's skull between the crook of his arm. No wonder he's smiling. Saying that, if I had that hair I'd make sure I was a right hardy bastard too.

As you can imagine I was keen to get inside the box, so I hurried home, carefully peeled off the tape and this is what I found...

Where to start? The box contains much more than it promised, and yet in many ways much less. Let's start with the positives.

First of all, along with the "Non-Drying Modeling Clay" and "Deep Drawn Plastic Moulds" we find three paintbrushes, five paints, three tubes of glitter, one tube of glue, and a crumpled piece of tinfoil. That's a pretty big bonus haul right there, and already 50p was starting to seem like a small price to pay. I'm not sure if these things were supposed to be in the box originally, or if somewhere along the way some kid just converted the plasticine box into an all purpose art supplies storage box, but they were a welcome sight all the same, rivalled only by the time I saw TV's Dennis Norden get fucking drenched when a London Cab splashed him with a puddle.

Second on the list of plus points, there was a lot of plasticine in there - all but one piece of which appeared to be completely untouched by human hands. They even had their little ridges and everything. I had in my possession several near mint condition pieces of five decade old plasticine, and the world was my oyster!

Or it would have been had the plasticine not solidified into a substance of diamond like hardness at some point during the last half century. You could knock out a fucking rhino with the stuff.

And sadly that's the big let down with this set - everything has dried up. The paint is dry. The glue is dry. Even the paintbrushes have gone completely rigid with age. I suppose I had no right to expect anything else from fifty year old plasticine, but I was understandably disappointed at not being allowed to mould modelling clay elephants in the same recklessly cavalier fashion as the goliath on the box.

For the record the animal moulds were still in mint condition and comprised an elephant, a pig and a turkey. I now intend using them to make novelty ice cubes for parties, despite the fact I can only make one of each at a time. If even one person present describes me in the future as "that guy with the turkey ice cubes" the effort will have been worth it.

Item 2: Thundercats Video
Purchased: Oxfam, Inverness
Cost: 50p

To some they're a poor man's Masters of the Universe. To others they are the greatest characters in the history of fiction. To me they're somewhere in between, though I admit I'll always hold a special place in my heart for the Thundercats.

Not in the same league of absurdity as He-Man and company, the Thundercats are still a pretty messed up bunch. For those of you unfamiliar with their story (and if this is you, why are you even reading this site?) here's it helpfully explained by the video box back cover:

"The Thundercats™ have fled from their home planet of Thundera and must rely on their superpowers to outwit the forces of darkness.

The Thundercats™ are brave, strong and united in their ambition to thwart the evil of Mumm-Ra. Half human, half feline and totally powerful, they are the Thundercats™."

Okay, let's look at this description in a little more depth. They must "rely on their superpowers to outwit the forces of darkness"? Surely they must rely on their intellect to outwit the forces of darkness? Rely on your superpowers to beat the forces of darkness violently about the head and upper body, certainly, but not to outwit them. The Thundercats can't "outwit" a villain using their special abilities any more than I could "outwit" a pedestrian by reversing over them with my car.

As for them being brave and strong then you'll get no arguments from me there. I often wondered though, what has Mumm-Ra done that's so wrong? I mean it's his planet that the Thundercats crash-landed on, so by rights whatever he's doing is none of their fucking business. Okay, so Mumm-Ra may have been mistreating a few of the locals, but you don't just crash on a planet and start messing with the politics, even if you are, like, totally powerful.

Interestingly, if you trim much of the second paragraph of the description it basically boils down to "The Thundercats™ are the Thundercats™" which is profound on so many levels.

I won't go into episode detail at the moment, partly because I want to review them all in turn, but mainly because I haven't watched any of them yet.

With just one pound of my budget gone I was struggling to find much else to fill the rest of this article, until I walked into the Fort William PDSA and it felt like all my Christmases had come at once...

 

Item 3: Knight Rider Impossibles Stunt Set
Purchased: PDSA, Fort William
Cost: £1.50

I'll give you a minute just to look at it and appreciate. Take your time. Soak up the picture. Revel in it. Bathe in the soothing glow of Hasselhoff. It took some careful negotiation to get the woman behind the counter to knock a quid off and bring the price down to within my budget, but for a measly one and a half quid I managed to get my hands on the Tat Bag equivalent of the Holy Grail.

The Knight Rider Impossibles Stunt Set is a toy I have absolutely no recollection of, but which I apparently owned when I was around eight. Essentially it's a long flat piece of flimsy plastic with a kind of rail in the middle onto which you clip everyone's favourite homosexual automobile. As KITT is attached to the plastic, you can position the track anywhere you like and he won't fall off.

As the box so proudly boasts, you can "Make the Knight 2000 car do incredible stunts - SIDEWAYS, UPSIDE DOWN, EVEN UP A WALL!". This, however, is a bare faced lie. Under no circumstances can you make the car go sideways without snapping it in half. Anyway, I don't think going sideways classes as an "incredible stunt". If it did crabs would be on TV 24 hours a day thrilling us all with their sideways-based antics.

Handily the box lists everything which should be included within, which is a useful reference for anyone buying second hand TV tie-in toys twenty years after they were first produced. What should have been - and incredibly enough actually was - in the box was:

• Knight Industries Headquarters
• 1 Motorized Knight 2000 Car
• 12 feet of flexible roadway
• 2 entry/exit ramps
• 1 stunt platform
• connectors and joiners