Run for Your Lives!

I'm getting excited by the new Autumn sci-fi blockbuster, Skyline, out in the UK next week. It looks like a cross bewteen War of the Worlds and Independence Day. The trailer includes a very Childhood Endsian shot of alien craft hovering over cities a la the start of ID4. There's nothing like a good movie-made armageddon to cheer us up during a recession! I think the title's a bit weak but I'll watch the flick before I say any more. Mentioning War of the Worlds reminded me of Mike's TV21 report: that no toys emerged from the Mike Trim-designed tripods bestraddling Jeff Waynes 1978 martian opus. War of the Worlds is a very British sci-fi story [from 1898!] with HG Wells setting the tripedal carnage in the quiet lanes of the English home counties. Like a slice of Sponge Cream Cake with an alien cake topper devouring it! 'Doverfield' years before it's time. I loved the sublety of the 1950's B-movie's re-imagining of the machines as manta ray-like gliders with those iconic tri-colour snake-heads, which I'm convinced were made by PIFCO!

Sometimes a modern re-make does what it says on the tin and the Tom Cruise effort did it for me. The early scenes of the martian tripods erupting from American streets were everything you hope for with modern special effects [were there any toys?]. I was fascinated to see that some fellow TV21 'conners' actually took their Jeff Wayne War of the Worlds LP's to Bristol for the very patient Mike Trim to sign! I'd even considered it as my daughter bought me the double album a few years back, but I'd decided to take the Sword Cape Kennedy Set box top for guests to sign so Jeff Wayne stayed in the attic. I did see Mr. Trim doodling a fabulous pencil Waynian Tripod in between his signings. Wonder what happened to that little Trim original?

All this talk of alien invasions made me browsw for some old toys and I was chuffed to see one wholly new to me, HG Toys Alien Attack from the 1970's, featured over at the superlative style site Plaid Stallions. There's a brilliant Godzilla set too, which I've never seen before. Check them in full here. The Alien Attack set below contains four cool miniatuire space ships, which rang a bell with me.

Close up the HG [HG! Hee hee! All they need is WELLS!] space ships shown below left are the same as the space vehicle on the right issued by Imperial Toy Corporation in 1976 as part of the Spacexized Apollo Moon Exploring range amongst others [Blue Box etc]. I wonder how big the HG space ships are? They do look small scale. Anybody remember or still got this cool set?

Further googling reveals a fabulous 1953 War of the Worlds toy set by US maker Archer currently gracing Ebay US. What is clearly a scarce toy, this set interestingly opted for artwork of George Pal's manta-ray spaceships fom his War of the Worlds movie running that year. An early example of a movie tie-in.

But there is a much older War of the Worlds toy playset, the daddy you might say, which adhered far more closely to the tripodal steampunk machines of Wells' original. It's like a large boxed diorama with towering tentacled martian machines, trees, biuldings and fleeing miniature people. It was issued in the 1940's I think but for the life of me I can't remember the name of the maker or find anything online. Help!