Dear Woodsy,
Re. your enquiry to the readership about Xmas presents, thought this might be suitable for the Blog.
This 1950s Adventure Annual was an unexpected and delightful present (under the category of "so bad it's good"). Its main interest is the cover and a space story illustrated by Denis McLaughlin. I knew he used toys as models, but didn't know how far this went. As I am sure others recognise, all the spaceships are Pyro toys -in some illustations even the wheels are included. The space suits are copied from spacemen marketed in the UK and US (Alphadrome website identifies these as Tudor Rose spacemen). Even more extraordinary, the robot is from a "Magic Robot" game!
If anyone wants to see the whole story (it's terrible!) I'll scan it for the blog.
Seasonal greetings,
Andy B.
10 comments:
Loved the Adventure Annual and it's brother The Spaceways Comic Annual. The Swift Morgan space covers were the hook (I was never that bothered about getting the ones with the cowboy covers - no space stories!)
Being too young to have got them when they originally came out I remember finding them at jumble sales in the sixties. At the time I thought they were just all American reprints, even though one story featuring the detective, Roy Carson took place in Blackpool!
Being a bit of an adventure comic buff, in later years I picked up an original Swift Morgan comic - Swift Morgan in Atlantis. It still looked American but by then I knew of Denis Mcloughlin.
A Lancashire lad, born in Bolton, Denis was quite obviously influenced by American pulp stuff.
He was quite prolific throughout his 84 years, illustrating right up to his untimely and tragic death in 2002 when he took his own life using an old army revolver he had used as a reference prop.
I love those old annuals too but like you Mike I was too young first time round. I love all the pyro plastic rockets used as illustrations [which came first?]. I saw a brand new Magio Robot game in a discount book shop in Wetherby last week. A whole new generation gets too answer those questions [or not as the case maybe]. Someone loves that game if they've re-issued it in 2011! As for the strip Andy, I for one would love to see it!
Yes please, Andy. Do scan it.
By the way, that's a super pressie!
Two requests is more than I can ignore.
Dreadful strip scans on their way.
Thank you, Andy. Looking forward to the dreadfulness.
That robot is from a set of spacemen and women put out by an American company called Archer. There were a number of spacemen, who turned up, in a slightly smaller size, piloting a "Flying Platform", a propellor-shaped flying saucer type toy with a spring-loaded lancher, and in a carded set, as "Space Cadets" with a ship that resembled the smallest of the Pyro ships, with "Space Flyer" on its wings. The robot must have been licenced by Merit for that "Magic Robot" game, which, by the way, is now available again from "Past Times".
Grif
I'd seen some of those Archer space figures before, but had no idea the robot was part of the set. So thank you for pointing that out, Grif.
The female figures are nice. One even seems to be holding a baby. Aaaaahh. I'd like one of those. (The Archer figure, I mean, NOT a baby).
And how interesting that the Robot game is being made again. It was some kind of quiz game, wasn't it?
Yes, it was, sort of! There were no scoring rules, but you got various subjects on oveverlays for the inside of the box which had questions on various subjects on one side, and answers on the other - you put the robot in a hole on the "questions" side and turned him so that his pointer pointed to the question that you wanted answering, then put him on the mirror in the centre of the "answers" side - he spun round to point to the answer! The game proudly boasted "Answers vouched for by Arthur Mee's Childrens Encyclopaedia"!
Grif
Thank you for the explanation, Grif. I've got a much better idea of it now. Sounds like a kind of Trivial Pursuit but without cheeses or scoring.
Time for some internet surfing on this, I think.
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