ZERO-X CUSTOM CAPTAIN SCARLET BOX BY FERRYMAN

Well June is shaping up to be as good as January! Must be the J. Here's a fabulous bloglet from Ferryman with the story behind his amazing Zero-X custom box and toy currently for sale on Ebay!

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Hi Paul,

I've attached 10 pictures for you to use on the blog as you see fit.There are shots of all sides of the box, of the SWORD version and my new JR21 Captain Scarlet version and a range shot of the JR21 Scarlet toys. There is also a scan of the Imai Zero-X kit box lid.

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After years of anticipation, when I finally saw my first S.W.O.R.D. Zero-X toy, I couldn't help being disappointed in the box graphics. It's not so much that it is a poor design, but more importantly, it doesn't create the aspirations of ownership that such a flagship toy should. like a lot of PS collectors, I was expecting a glorious piece of 'Swordesk' packaging.

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I am a great fan of the original JR21 Captain Scarlet toys, but have always been disappointed that the range was limited to just three models. I've often wiled away the time talking to like minded fans about how the range could have been extended.The nostalgic appeal of the vintage 1960's packaging designs appeal to me every bit as much as the toys and as a professional graphic designer the attraction of creating a new range extension of custom boxes for toys that ‘could have been’ was to great to resist. So when I picked up an un-boxed S.W.O.R.D. Zero-X six months ago, I had my guinea pig!

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Creating the box artwork has been a fairly painstaking undertaking which has provided a few hurdles to overcome. Firstly, where was I going to get a suitable Zero-X illustration from? After a fair bit of searching around, I finally settled upon the old Imai kit box image as it is by far the most dramatic angle on Zero-X that I have seen. This had to be extensively retouched and extended to make it fit the area on the front of the custom box. A TB2 and its vapor trails were painstakingly removed from the sky, along with all of the Imai box graphics.

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The next problem was matching the main font used on the original boxes. This was fundamental to creating the correct illusion, if I had failed in this the results would be far less convincing. Finding a good font match was a lot harder than expected and involved a fair bit of research. Once I had a good font match I then had to draft some suitable text to use on the different box faces.

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Another key element to the design was getting the Spectrum colours right. This involved analyzing the vintage boxes and making a judgment as to the percentage ink breakdowns used to create each of the colour bands.Upon close inspection, the original JR21 Captain Scarlet box graphics are some what inconsistent with each other.

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With this in mind I set about combining what I considered to be the most harmonious elements of the designs. The result is a box which continues to bring a smile to my face and generates the nostalgia worthy of such a great toy. I exhibited the finished box on a friend's table at the Sandown Park collectors fair on Saturday and it attracted lot of interest and initially fooled a good many collectors.

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Watch this space for further additions to the range!

Hope this is of interest,
Ferryman

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Absolutely! I can well imagine it attracted a lot of attention. It looks stunning and looks completely the part amongst the other Captain Scarlet toys! Hope the auction goes well. Woodsy