Catacombs Reference LibraryUK Press
Doomwatch Alert Over Toy
Catacombs Reference LibraryGlasgow Herald, Thursday 27 September 1979
A child's toy sparked off a doomwatch scare which shut down a city police station.
Firemen with special suits were called in after an 11-year-old girl found two cylinders in her garden marked with the words: "Danger, waste material."
But when scientists studied the cylinders at a Government radiation centre they discovered they were part of a children's outer-space toy.
The firm which makes the toy yesterday said it would change the design of all future stock. The words on the cylinders would be taken off, said Meccano.
The scare began when Marianne Fleckeny found the small cylinders which were marked with the red and black triangular symbol for radioactivity in the garden of her home in Langley Crescent, St Albans, Hertfordshire.
Her father, Mr Ray Fleckeny, took them to the local police station and started a full scale alert.
Officers who had come in contact with them were isolated and the police checked to make sure the girl was showing no signs of contamination.
Firemen in anti-contamination suits scanned the garden with Geiger counters. It was only after the cylinders had been taken to the radio chemical centre in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, that the truth was discovered.
The cylinders were part of a toy modelled on a space craft from the TV programme Space 1999.
Mr Fleckeny said: "Marianne brought in what looked like a vitamin tablet cylinder which she had found in the garden.
"When the fire brigade arrived they checked the garden and Marianne with a Geiger counter, but the tests proved negative.
"I think whoever put the cylinders there did it deliberately. It is a cruel hoax."
A police spokesman said: Mr Fleckeny did the right thing by bringing them to us, and any action we took was in the public interest.
Mr Bryan Farrar, marketing manager of Meccano, said that half a million of the toys had been sold and that he had never received any complaints.
The Daily Express covered the same story:
Firemen in anti-contamination suits were called in after an 1l-year-old girl found, a consignment of cylinders in her back garden marked with the words: "Danger, waste material." But, when scientists studied the cylinders at a Government radiation centre in Amersham, Bucks., they discovered they were part of a children's space toy.
The firm which makes the toy said yesterday they would be changing the design of all future stock. The words on the cylinders would be taken off, said Meccano, the Liverpool based parent firm of Dinky.
The scare began when Marianne Fleckeny found the small cylinders, also marked with the red and black triangular symbol for radioactivity, in the garden of her home in Langley Crescent, St Albans, Herts. The cylinders were part of a toy modelled on a space craft from the T V programme "Space 1999."
The Sunday Mirror covered the story on 30 September 1979, but their facts are different. In their version, it is a prop from the series found at a council dump in Slough, whereas in the others it was merely a widely available toy in a domestic garden in St Albans. It seems too much of a coincidence that both things happened within a few days in September 1979; we suspect the toy story is correct.
It was like a scene from a science fiction movie.
Police and firemen sealed off a council dump. Scientists gathered around a suspicious looking canister marked "dangerous, radioactive!"
The canister was taken from the tip at Slough, Berkshire to the Atomic Research Station at Harwell for closer examination. The expects came up with the answer: the canister WAS something out of a space film.
It had been used as a prop in the TV series Space 1999, filmed at nearby Pinewood Studios, then thrown out.