REVIEW: The Holy Grail of James Bond toys has finally roared into my proverbial garage — decades after I first saw it.
Why it’s taken me this long I can’t rightly say, but I finally have a Corgi Goldfinger Aston Martin DB5 — the greatest of all Bond toys.
Some kid brought one into school when I was a kid and showed it off — ejector seat and all. I wanted it as much as Auric Goldfinger wanted all those shiny bricks in Fort Knox.
Alas, I was not a boy of means and so I had to live without. As much as I love Bond, it’s not an everyday thing with me, so as years went by, there was always something ahead of that Aston Martin. But whenever I happened upon a version of it, my heart would soar like Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus.
Then I recently saw that Corgi was re-releasing a 50th anniversary version of the toy, evidently an exact replica of the first ones off the line in 1965. Perfect timing. It only seemed right that I should pick one up just as the company was celebrating the toy’s golden jubilee.
The real deal
The box mimics the original Corgi packaging, complete with retro-styled imagery and lettering. There’s an old-school looking set of instructions and the box slides open to reveal a display platform and an kinda-sorta ID card.
Clever, Mr. Bond.
The vehicle is the appropriate silver color — there’s also a gold special edition — and it’s tricked out with said ejector seat (works like a charm) machine-gun turrets, changeable license plates and a pop-up metal screen to protect the rear window from excitable gunmen and grannies.
I do have to point out it’s smaller than the one I’m accustomed to seeing and doesn’t have those tire extensions designed to tear up the car next to you. So I was disappointed when I realized I’d plopped down almost $50 for it.
But I live with it because I do love a good replica of a favorite pop culture artifact, especially when you consider the mimicked packaging.
Besides, this just means I can continue to search for one just like that kid brought to school that day.
August 4, 2015
The one with the tyre extensions was the second version Corgi released, with other “improvements”, including the silver colour (the original version only came in gold, who knows why!) and pop-our front grille machine guns.