amidst the boats and carts sat a blue cricket

I stumbled across this bundle of joy online. Its an old Ebay photo of a long-since ended auction.

What first caught my eye was the Apollo Moon Exploring red and white rocket among the tractors and trains, together with what looks like the red space glider from the same series by Imperial.

But then I noticed the BLUE Cricket P-1 [minus its canon] to the left. What the? 

Aren't they usually purple?

dyna soar delivers...

a bit of fun using Paint on this dark damp night!

anyone else remember raving bonkers robots?

RIP ARNOLD PALMER: HE GAVE US TOY GOLF TOO

Golf legend Arnold Palmer sadly passed away today at the grand old age of 87. An icon of the game of golf his influence was even felt on my childhood in remotest Lancashire during the Sixties, when one Christmas I received a huge golf toy.

It wasn't any old thing either. It was the Arnold Palmer Pro Shot golf set by Marx. An amazing toy, it has a miniature Arnold at the end of a golf club contraption. By turning the handle you could get mini Arnold to play shots for you! It was a stroke of genius.

You can get an idea of what it was like to use on this You Tube clip.

Did you have this set readers?

Arnold Palmer RIP.

i wanna be ejected: the space 1999 para toy by helm toys

I do love coming across toys new to me.

This is just such a one. Now I'm not a Space 1999 fan. Alas, the TV series completely passed me by. But I'm aware of many of the toys - but this one is definitely new to me:

the Space 1999 Eagle Para Toy by Helm Toys of the USA released in 1976!

This is an old photo from an Ebay auction. 

I just love those garish bright colours. At first I couldn't fathom what it did but on googling further I found a carded example on the fabulous Catacombs Space 1999 site here.

Its a parachute toy and Commander Koenig himself gets ejected into sky, whereupon he floats down to the ground on his red and white plastic chute.

How neat is that!

Anyone got one of these beauties?

The Fastest Guy Alive

Well it took a while to find it, but here's my response to The Stars for a Shilling - me at Southport fair in the mid sixties, grudgingly riding a 'super-thunder-sting-car' on a carousel time ride with hydraulic arms. Having been terrified by the Caterpillar ride some years earlier, when a racing coaster unexpectedly folded over a green canvas cover across the cars to make a caterpillar shape, leaving me howling in terror in the dark, I was never keen on rides after that.

Still, this was a nice green Nuclear Freighter shaped ship, so I gritted my teeth and thoughtof Spacex!