Wotans Bones I

Theres an amazing tale in Alan Moores comic masterpiece, Watchmen. The pivotal superhuman Dr Manhattan takes refuge on Mars and considers his life and the nature of being. During his reverie, he makes reference to the time it takes for the light from the closest stars to reach Earth and says that the image that we see now is a perception of the state of the star at the time of the dinosaurs, because even at the speed of light, the immense cosmic distance means that "all we see of stars are their old photographs".

When myself and Woodsy were being interviewed on Celtica Radio, some of the questions focussed on our childhood and the influences that brought us to today. This in turn spurred memories of the pivotal moments in my past which brought about my enduring obsession with space toys. Here are a few of those 'old photographs' from my past which still mean so much to me today.

Probably the very first space toys I ever owned is 'Robbie'. Robbie is a tin plate Horikawa Gear Fighting Robot and marks a beginning and a departure for me in toys. Firstly, Robbie was bought for me one christmas around 1967. I recall being at once fascinated and a little scared of his whirring gears and flashing raygun. Nowdays Robbie is a little worse for wear, his head and shoulders have been detached in a vain attempt by me to try and fix him during my teenage years, his battery cover and plastic chest plate are gone and the rayguns electrics have been corroded out of existence by old batterys as he lay in the toy cupboard, neglected as other toys drew my attention. The departure comes as he is the only concession I have and will ever make to tin toys, I am and always will be a plastic man. Although I can appreciate the smartly lithoed graphics and the ingenious use of mechanical parts to bring life to a static hunk of metal, the lure of tin eluded me completely. Robbie now has pride of place in the archive, waiting for the moment that replacement parts will be found and he will walk again amongst his plastic peers.