Bring back... the chopper

Back in the days before toy shops were "Early Learning Centres", manufacturers saw fit to flog playthings whose presence today would provoke concern from local social workers. Kids waged make-believe war with their cap guns, cuddled their golliwogs and played Red Indians with bows and arrows - encouraging, respectively, aggressive tendencies (v. bad), racial stereotyping (v.v. bad) and aggressive tendencies with racial stereotyping (v.v.v. bad).

The advancing tide of political correctness has swept these aberrances away from the playground. Nevertheless, one artefact resides in the memory untainted by a collective retrospective sense of guilt - the chopper. And its unalloyed remembrance is all the more delicious for the fact that this facsimile of the gas-guzzling motorbike of the same name appeared in the 1970s, the decade the West was brought to its knees by numerous crippling energy crises. From its high-backed seat to its cod automotive gear lever, the chopper bestowed Easy Rider cool on even the spottiest 14-year-old. Better still, the chopper was prone to tip backwards, we were told, if ridden incorrectly. Today, the few remaining choppers in existence are the property of Seventies obsessives, but the chopper ought to have a more lasting legacy than that. Bring back the chopper - the toy that escaped demonisation.