James May's Top Toys
- Genre
- documentary film
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Elsewhere
- IMDb

The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
James May counts down his favorite childhood toys and shows them off with experiments. He drops an Action Man from a helicopter and shoots other toys with guns. He also builds a model battleship and attacks it on a lake.
playfulnostalgicwrydestructivewhimsicalobservationallightheartedchildlike
What happens
James May's Top Toys is a BBC documentary in which James May explored and celebrated his favourite toys, including Etch-A-Sketch, Airfix model aeroplanes, Lego, Meccano, Top Trumps, Scalextric, model cars, and Hornby model trains. The show included May dropping a parachuted Action Man from a helicopter after an actor named George Huxley dropped it from a window, proving the parachute did not work. Further exploits had May shooting the Action Man figure with an AR-15 type semi-automatic rifle in .22 lr, thereafter referring to the toy as "Killed-in-Action Man". May also constructed an Airfix model of the battleship Bismarck. Upon completion, he took it out on a boating lake and shot at it with an air rifle, while pretending to be a British seaman firing a salvo at the battleship. In the feature of the Etch-A-Sketch, Rose Pipette of The Pipettes is one of the students "etching" May on the toy. A spin off of the show, James May: My Sisters' Top Toys, came on 23 December 2007. In October 2009, a series of 6 shows were broadcast, entitled James May's Toy Stories. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
James May's Toy Stories (2009)
James May's Man Lab (2010)
James May's Big Ideas (2008)
James May's 20th Century (2007)
James May's Things You Need To Know (2011)
James May: The Reassembler (2016)
James May's Cars of the People (2014)
They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.