Alphadrome: Home of the Robots

Tonight I did one of my regular searches of Alphadrome 'Home of the Robots', the robot and space toy database and forum run by the botfather himself, Brian Hayes. Brian was the first online UK website owner to take an interest in my penchant for SWORD and published my original and somewhat clunky checklist many moons ago [the friendly Kelly Lannan of Oz kindly did the same over at TV21 as well].

I first came across Brian at northern toy fairs as he always had a great assortment of space and monster toys nestling side by side on his stall. I still have one of his old business cards and magazine ads somewhere. When the SWORD checklist first appeared around 1999 I had an AOL email address. A few enthusiasts succeeded in contacting me through this I think [Wote, Paul V, Mark M] but it changed fairly quickly after that when I left AOL to join Freeserve. As such it became a dead address, which I forgot to update Brian about. So I was pleasantly surprised tonight when I read the following comment from 2010 by him on his forum:

Alphadrome has been fairly tightly preoccupied with traditional vintage pieces but why not accommodate some other interests? For example did you know there's a very popular Project Sword item on the site that has attracted thousands of visitors despite having had NO links. (I've added one now.)

The link Brian refers to is in the Articles section of Alphadrome, where you'll find some great reference material by other space toy enthusiasts.

Brian's also updated his database, which now includes many SWORD and related craft amongst the hundreds of cool space toys. If you haven't already checkout out Alphadrome what are you waiting for! It's the home of the robots!