Glico Space Fleet

Saw these miniature Glico spaceships and cars recently on Yahoo Japan and thought they were very very cool and so I'm sharing them with you. What do you think?

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Ridley Scott's long-awaited ALIEN prequel PROMETHEUS opens tomorrow here in the UK. It's also the Queen's Jubilee long-weekend so expectations are huge and there will be much xenomorphic dribbling....and that's just in the audience! Will you be saying hi to the space jockey in your local hive?

THROW DOWN YOUR SWORD

I've been messing with Powerpoint of late. Alas my 2007 version does not have the 'remove background' function, which it was I really need but it does have 3D rotation. To test it I imagined the pages of the SWORD toy Manual falling like cards. Can't think of any great need for it though, can you?

Small is All

Ive posted Capsela Spacelink before, most notably with reference to the tiny 'Capsenauts' that came with a lot of the vehicles. The majority of the capsela sets that I have found over time have been loose lots, usually from ebay and invariably missing bits and pieces. I was delighted recently to receive a mint pack of the figures themselves, which I hadn't realised were sold separately. Four of the tiny figures sealed onto a card and on the rear of which is a great illustration of the breadth of the Spacelink model series.

Capsela is one of the most enduring toys and has been produced by many different companies over the years. Spacelink as a theme within the series wasn't so lucky and so far hasn't been reissued in any modern variant of the capsela series. The Capsenauts occaisionally turn up in the odd model, but the main series of space themed parts remains absent. Shame.

MOONBASE CAPTION COMP

Moonbase Model Detail 2009

What do you reckon the two spacemen in the foreground saying to each other?

Rings of Power

The UK is gripped by Olympic fever at the mo as the Torch passes through the Land. Alas my shields are firmly up and I remain immune to the lure of the Olympic Games. It wasn't always so! I was hooked by the Mexico Games back in 1968. I remember how everyone was basked in glorious sunshine. Athletes like Kip Keno, Nelly Kim and another young Soviet Gymnast [oh what was her her name?] have stayed with me ever since. I got totally into collecting stickers for a cool sticker book at the time but that might have been the next Games in Munich 1972. Anyone recall it too?

Were or are you full of the Olympic flame?

PS. That sticker book was the 1972 one pictured below. Published by Esso, my Dad got me the stickers when he filled up the Zephyr or Ford Granada. I was 11 when it came out and it remains my quintessential Olympics possession. Amazingly there are a whole bookcase full for sale on Ebay from an old Esso Petrol station!

Moonbase Diary Contact Sheet

A few years back I had great fun making a model of the Moon Base Playset as featured in the SWORD Manual. I came across this contact sheet of the shots I took and posted at the time. All cardboard, glue and white paint. Very low tech! Anyone else made a Moon Base, from scratch or a kit?

Continental Bus for Sale

Reader Amanda has the above vintage Continental Bus toy vehicle for sale. You'll remember that one like it was featured in Anderson's TV shows. Contact Amanda direct should you be interested.

Ticket to Ride

Damn - fight on the bus this morning. Two tickets got punched. Sorry, old joke for an old idea!

Gold Force 3

Blue Moon

Well ive had a productive weekend in the sun, after I received the set of four vac-form moonscapes last week, I set about trying to make them a little more useable. Whoever had them first wad washed them over with black and brown acrylic paint, making them look more like bomb craters. The 1960's Spacex Superset included a small vac-form moonscape and that for me set the standard for toy moon landscapes, a pale blue with subtle shading. Matt Mason and Action Man had similar environments and the Tri-ang Johnny Astro set also came with a small square of blue moon. Consequently, I decided mine should follow a similar theme and took one of the four scapes and gave it an initial wash of pale blue emulsion, lefto ver from decorating the kitchen! As you can see above, the Dekkertoys scape is a good deal larger than the original Spacex one featured on the right. The detail is a little shallower too, although the overall height is greater.

Tri-ang Spacex

Dekkertoys

Dekkertoys and Molab

Dekkertoys

Dekkertoys

Spacex Closeup

After a couple of coats of emulsion, I picked out the shading with a violet acrylic to emphasise the colour. I tried to airbrush the detail on so it matched the Spacex version, but the airbrush nozzle seemed to be damaged and it spattered the paint. So I resorted to dry-brushing more blue emulsion over the acrylic to knock it back a touch and then finished off the highlights with some matt white emulsion. Overall i'm quite pleased with the effect and fetched out my Kelloggs Molab and an orange LP rocket. Like the Tri-ang version, the scale of the craters is a little off for the standard Spacex moon vehicles, but suits the smaller toys much better.

Good Morning

Good Morning everyone. I hope the sun is shining on your part of the Galactic rim. What are you doing today?

RACHAEL' S BOXED MINIATURE APOLLO EXPLORATION SET

Reader Rachael has alerted me to her Ebay listing of a boxed Miniature Apollo Moon Exploration Set. It has the rocket and the playmat. For full details please check Rachael's detailed Ebay listing. Just over two days to go I think. EBAY LISTING

Whitsuntide

Today is Whit Sunday or Whitsun, the festival of Pentecost. I'm not religious nowadays but I was brought up like many of you in a far more religious world, that of the Sixties. Whitsun, or Whitsuntide as my family called it, meant a long weekend, as the Monday was a holiday. My Parents always took us Woodsies out somewhere, maybe for Chicken in a Basket in a country beer garden, paddling in the stream at Brock Bottoms or maybe even a trip to Blackpool or Heysham Head, a taste of glorious things to come in the summer when we headed out to Pwhelli or Minehead for a whole week at Butlins, where I was usually dumped at the camp nursery when I was really little but later I could chase the Pirate into the pool and join in all the other grand antics.

I am, it has to be said, in melancholic mood at the moment and I often turn to poetry at such times [stop that yawning!]. We lost our Gran last week and time seems to have stood still. So in memory of Gran and the simple pleasures of the past I thought I'd share one of my favourite poems, The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin, published in 1964 when Whitsuntide was still very much a part of my childhood world. It's a bit long as he's sat on a train describing what he sees, only as Larkin could. Enjoy. [PS. please share your Whitsun memories if you like].

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:

    Not till about

One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday

Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,

All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense   

Of being in a hurry gone. We ran

Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street

Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence   

The river’s level drifting breadth began,

Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept   

    For miles inland,

A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.   

Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and   

Canals with floatings of industrial froth;   

A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped   

And rose: and now and then a smell of grass   

Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth   

Until the next town, new and nondescript,   

Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise

    The weddings made

Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys   

The interest of what’s happening in the shade,

And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls   

I took for porters larking with the mails,   

And went on reading. Once we started, though,   

We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls   

In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,   

All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event

    Waving goodbye

To something that survived it. Struck, I leant   

More promptly out next time, more curiously,   

And saw it all again in different terms:   

The fathers with broad belts under their suits   

And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;   

An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,   

The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,   

The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.   

    Yes, from cafés

And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed   

Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days   

Were coming to an end. All down the line

Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;

The last confetti and advice were thrown,

And, as we moved, each face seemed to define   

Just what it saw departing: children frowned   

At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;

    The women shared

The secret like a happy funeral;

While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared   

At a religious wounding. Free at last,

And loaded with the sum of all they saw,

We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.   

Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast   

Long shadows over major roads, and for

Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say

    I nearly died,

A dozen marriages got under way.

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side

—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,   

And someone running up to bowl—and none   

Thought of the others they would never meet   

Or how their lives would all contain this hour.   

I thought of London spread out in the sun,   

Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across   

    Bright knots of rail

Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss   

Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail   

Travelling coincidence; and what it held   

Stood ready to be loosed with all the power   

That being changed can give. We slowed again,

And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled

A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower   

Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

Philip Larkin, “The Whitsun Weddings” from Collected Poems. Courtesy of of The Poetry Foundation via the The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Phillip Larkin.

Tuppence Ha'penny to Neverwas Avin' U

Came across this snippet today in Retail Newsagent, Bookseller and Stationer, dated November 2nd 1968:

SWORD Toys Campaign

A PROMOTIONAL and advertising campaign to boost the SWORD range of space-age toys from Century 21 Toys Ltd. is being launched throughout the country during November.

The campaign will embrace trade, provincial Press and children's comic advertising, advertising on millions of bus tickets and competitions for both retailers and consumers.

It starts in Birmingham, Cardiff and Glasgow in November when millions of bus tickets in these three key cities will carry advertisements for SWORD toys.

Early in December the 280, 000 circulation comic TV 21 will carry a "Design a new SWORD toy" competition with a first prize of a hovercraft trip to France.

Advertising is planned for TV 21, Eagle, Valiant and Buster, and Century 21 Toys are holding a national window display contest with separate classes for retailers and special display staff.

I asked in the comments, "Why those cities?" Shaqui had this to say: "Birmingham was the heart of 'ATV Land' which, according to some who worked on 'TV21' gave the higher percentage of reader feedback, probably owing to the Anderson series receiving a greater profile in its native region. Can't speak for the other two locations though."

Triang in the Netherlands

Good Morning Woodsie,

On the Moonbase Central page I saw that you bought last year in Denmark a Tri-ang 1933-1934 catalogue. I'm a Tri-ang collector, especially catalogues. I have a website dedicated to Tri-ang. 

Would you consider to sell your catalogue?

Kind regards from the Netherlands, Joop Vendrik
www.triang.nl

Dear Joop

Thanks for writing to me. Alas, I don't have that or any Triang catalogues I'm afraid. Sometimes I post things I've seen on Ebay but do not own. However, I love your website and will post your email and site link on my blog if that's ok. Moonbase readers will certainly be interested in your obvious enthusiasm for Tri-ang toys, particularly as my blog is partly dedicated to Tri-ang SPACEX plastic space toys.

Keep up the great work, Paul aka Woodsiein England

Ridiculous to Sublime

Andy B has reconciled himself by sending us some classic vintage sci fi posters!

Or has he - what do you think ?

Moonscapism

A tenuous connection to the Apollo Moon Exploring articles we posted earlier, this 1980's Lunar Landscape set is made by Dekker Toys of London. The connection being, that contemporary with this release was a space set with a pvc playmat and remoulds of some of the more common APEX toys such as the atlas rocket and gantry, bubble car and gemini capsule. Presumably, this playset must have been from the same range and offered four large vac-formed moonscapes (each different) and would have originally come with pots of paint and a brush. As you can see, the paints have been used, rather enthusiastically on the plastic moonscapes, but all four and the box have survived rather well to this day. I picked these up on ebay this last week, hoping they may have contained the same design of moonscape as appeared in the big Spacex Superset, but all four are simple smoothly cratered landscapes.

If the date was ever in doubt, the box art clearly puts the set at about 1979/80 due to the inclusion of the Mego Buck Rogers and Black Hole figures, Airfix Hawk model (incorrectly built!) and a small Hasegawa Egg Shuttle, which I also bought at the time. So now all I need to do is get the paints out and put a more realistic finish on the 'scapes!

Tractor Beam On!

These fabulous Explorer Cars have been seen several times on the blog before, most notably for their usage of the Lone Star rocket launcher and Minitanks Panzer chassis. Its interesting to note that on the card art, the painter had obviously positioned the rocket launcher upside down when he was drawing it!

There are times when Ebay is like a virtual Aladdins Lamp, rub it, make a wish and stuff appears! So it  seemed recently after the blog coverage of Apollo Moon Exploring toys showed some of these cool little tractors in amongst the contents of the boxed set. I had come across them earlier in individual boxes such as the version shown here from Will Osbornes personal collection, but it had been many years since I had seen them packed individually. The photo below shows the remnants of my original collection in various states of disrepair.

I was surprised to find a trio of the vehicles turn up on for sale recently in small bags with header cards in glorious lithoed colour. The tractors are clearly marked with an LP trademark, showing the monster figure clutching the letter LP in front of a sunrise. LP trademarks appear on many similar space toys, especially the 2 inch astronaut figures and lots of other Hong Kong toys, but what does LP actually stand for ? There are six in the full set, the crane and tipper versions as above and a bulldozer version of the streamlined crawler. These three bagged sets are currently available on ebay UK, grab a set while you can!

Atrocity Exhibition

Andy B has thrown down the spacesuit gauntlet with what is possibly the worst space film poster ever! Unless of course, you know better... or this ?

and worst (?)(!) Sci Fi Paperback too! Thanks again andy!

Driven to Distraction

I've just discovered the vehicle designer who worked on Tron Legacy has a site publicising his book 'Cosmic Motors'. I've only leafed through the book, which is on my hit list, but the site shows some utterly beautiful rendered artwork for futuristic race cars, personal flight vehicles and bikes. I love futurist vehicle design and Daniel Simon captures a slick Hot Wheels vibe together with a realism in the designs and illustrations that makes them look utterly believable. He's married the sophistication of the design with sexy suit-clad ladies for an F1 feel to the race shots too.

The personal race pods defy conventional means of propulsion, with a star wars style gravity negating drive. The detail extends down to the tiny scratches and decals and instruction panels on the vehicles too.

Cold Days in Hell

The Thing is, well more accurately the Things are - a series of films based on a novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. originally under the pen name Don A. Stuart, published August 1938 in Astounding Stories. For its time, the story is pretty graphic and quite ahead of its time in terms of theme. The idea of a creature able to mimic other life forms precisely on a genetic level was new and predated Watson and Cricks discovery of DNA in 1953 by quite a margin. Although Campbell doesn't refer to the DNA in the story, the concept is clearly evident.

The first outing based on the story was Howard Hawks 1957 film 'Thing from Another World'. This took the basic plot elements of an antarctic team of scientists discovering a ship and its sole pilot entombed in the permafrost. I first came on this film by accident, one evening in the late sixties when I came home from a family outing to see the pivotal moment when the team outline the circumference of the buried ship in the ice after finding a strangely aerodynamic fin protruding from the ice. Its interesting to see the scientists all wandering about the sub-zero climate in good stout overcoats and sensible shoes.

 It seemed a promising start and indeed the claustrophobic base and further discoveries mirrored the story quite well, until the actual 'Thing' appeared (actor James Arness in shabby prosthesis) shambling about the corridors, looking every inch like Karloffs Frankenstein monster. This was further confused by the premise that the Thing was half plant and half man, having sharp thorns on his hands and a small garden of bloodthirsty plantlets. For its time, the film has a great classic horror vibe, overacted and trying desperately to catch the fifties zeitgeist of 'flying saucer terror'.

Campbells original story described the alien when it was dug out of the ice and speculates that the tryclopian, blue skinned body may have been the beings original form, the creature reverting to its natural state as it slipped into hibernation. Wayne Douglas Barlowes book on extraterrestrials in sci-fi illustrates the creature well and was my first introduction to the original story. You can just make it out at the top centre of this scan, next to the demonic Overlord.

John Carpenter picked up the story in 1982 with his gutsy remake, a box office flop, but one of my favourite ever alien films. This followed the original story more accurately and some of the alien designs and special effects were outstanding. Carpenters Thing stressed the alien and the metamorphic nature of the beast, as it called upon its genetic memory of all the alien creatures it had encountered, developing a sinister arsenal of claws, spines, tentacles and teeth in its desperate race to propogate itself. Some of the scenes were rich with black humour as well as gore, the film isn't for the weak disposition, but makes up for it with some hilarious one-liners and amazing creations. Probably one of the best scenes is after the Thing has attacked several station members and one of the more portly staff suffers a heart attack. Until this point, its difficult to discern who may have been exposed to the Thing and attention is clevery diverted elsewhere until the the guy is on the operating table about to be defibrillated and his chest opens into an alien maw lined with razor teeth, neatly chomping off the doctors arms! After the Thing is quickly torched by Kurt Russell, the sheer tenacity and drive of the Thing to survive is demonstrated as the head of the unfortunate on the table detaches amid the flames and drags itself across the floor with a whip like tongue. Hiding under a desk, it quickly extrudes six spider legs and a pair of crab-like eyestalks and makes a dash for the door.

The main theme of the 1982 film revolves around the discovery of the Thing and its ship, but by a separate team of Norwegian scientists. By the time the Thing is rediscovered by the american team, the norwegians are all dead and the base in ruins with corpses littering the area. Many questions are raised as to what had happened, some of which are answered by a brief section of video tape showing the scene where the team outlines the buried vessel, but the full story remained a mystery. This is where the recent remake of the Thing comes in, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and written by Eric Heisserer. The film is in effect a direct prequel to Carpenters film and takes advantage of current FX technology to render the Thing in all its glory once more. As it is a prequel, it would make sense to watch the 2011 version first, but as a lot of people will have already seen the 1982 film and because the way it sets the scene, asking 'why did this happen ?' I think its better to watch them in chronological order, with Carpenters first.  But the important thing to note is that the 2011 Thing is far and away the best of the three, the attention to detail relative to Carpenters story is minute and the effects are excellent and its not even remotely funny!


When Carpenters Thing first appeared on the cinema, I recall the audience laughing out loud at the opening titles, when the word 'Thing' burned through the dark on screen. I didn't find it at all funny at the time and enjoyed the film tremndously, I loved Ennio Morricones score too and bought it on LP. What I didn't know at the time, though was there were actually Thing-based toys! In the course of writing this article, I came across a website which shows the marketing blunders attending the release such as a Mattel Thing action figure and a Sno-Cone Maker!


For anyone who wants to go back to the original story for a truly excellent read, the novella and some background information to the films is available here.

SpaceX is Go!

AT 3:44am Florida time on May 22nd the Dragon spacecraft breathed fire at last, blasting off from Cape Canaveral atop a Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX, its maker, meanwhile, breathed a sigh of relief, along with NASA, America's space agency, whose cargo the capsule is ferrying to astronauts on the International Space Station. The successful launch follows months of delays caused by technical glitches, including an attempt aborted with half a second to go on the countdown clock, after one of the Falcon's nine engines showed unexpectedly high pressure. If all goes to plan, on May 25th the Dragon, which settled in orbit 12 minutes after ignition, will become the first private craft to dock with the ISS, heralding a new era of space trucking.

A Pizza the Action

Look what they've Gorn and done now. For the Trekkie who has almost everything. I still Klingon to the idea that classic Trek was the best, but is this trash or treasure ? So should we Horta dismiss it as space junk ? Amok Time for a pizza now and then ? Beam me up Scotty! Maybe Mudd pie for afters ?

The Alien Quarter

Way back in the day, when I was helping Woodstock get the blog rolling, my very first post was about one of my favourite rubber aliens. This rotund little character first appeared to me in a counter top box in Woolworths, next to the standard rubber monsters. He then appeared to my surprise and delight in a boxed set of Apollo Moon Exploring toys along with his friends, the usual gray space rock and assorted other models. Since his blog debut, hes popped up many times and in many different forms, but always without the rest of his team. I thought it was about time I gave the other five aliens a shot a the limelight, so here they are! Again, these are exactly the same figures that crop up in Apollo sets, usually as grey or chrome plastic, but the same team can also be found on keyrings and other small toys. Each of these rubber versions is trademarked and has made in hong kong on the sucker at the base. The logo is hard to make out and has defied identification... anyone care to try ?

Slightly later than intended, heres a pack shot courtesy of Mike Speth Aka Astronit. Check out his utterly awesome Flickr site here.