I See a Ray Gun and I want to Paint it Black

Kevin has recently reworked his Merit Supersonic Ray Gun, bringing it even closer to its toy original. Besides giving it a lovely coat of gloss black (Nice one Kevin!) he has remodelled the rear end to more closely match the original. I want one!

Chinook on the horizon

Occasionally a Chinook helicopter flies over Moonbase.

Its an impressive sight and the sound of the double rotors always exciting.

I'm not sure of there was ever a Chinook in the worlds of Gerry Anderson but they always look futuristic to me.

I once bought this Marx Chinook at a car boot sale. Bill B kindly repaired the rotors for me.

Have you got Chinooks near you or maybe a toy version?

little big horn plastic figures: who were they made by?

My older Brother had a beautiful board game when I was a kid in the Sixties.

It was called Battle of the Little Big Horn.

It was made by Waddingtons of Leeds in the UK.

Despite the grim subject matter the box was gorgeous and one of my favourites.

The thing I loved the most were the plastic figures of cowboys and indians on horseback.

I though they were fantastic.

Were they made by Waddingtons or were they made by another company like Timpo or Britains? Did Waddingtons have the wherewithal to manufacture plastic figures like this?

Zap! a Scratchbuild of Merit

The ever-busy Kevin Davies has just sent the blog shots of his latest creation, a scaled up scratchbuild of the Merit Supersonic Space Gun! I had one back in the day and with its changing colours and buzzing sounds, it was always a favourite. After picking up a second hand one, Kev was surprised at how small it was to his grown up hand, so recreated it as a 'realistic' prop. Great work Mr D!

vintage torches lit my bedspread

I had to use a torch to take the dog in the Moonbase garden.

It made me think of torches I had access to as kid.

The house torch in my parents house was a huge black rubber light canon which had buttons hidden beneath a membrane. It was ridiculously satisfying to click those buttons on and off.

The other long torch was a chrome monster with multi-coloured buttons. There may even have been a sliding button. All in all it looked like a light-sabre years before Luke lit up. It took at least eleven million AAAAAAAAAA batteries.

In the shed was another torch. Well it was more of a lantern really. I think it was made by PIFCO. Basically the lantern had a metal handle over a large opaque orange plastic light casing at the top of a metal base which contained a huge block battery borrowed from a Magnox reactor. I've no idea what this orange lantern was for.

Talking of orange light has reminded me of another lamp in the shed. It was a hazard light taken from a road-side somewhere. Looking like a a portable HAL it was a yellow U shaped metal container housing a bright red circular lamp. Random street engineering like this often turned up in people's sheds in those days. Plastic cones were popular late night souvenirs as well!

My own kiddie torches were all plastic and completely dedicated to fun.

The first was a small multi-coloured mini-torch, which were everywhere in those days. I can see the lamp collar now, a tapered cone like the caldera of a volcano. I think this one definitely had a metal slide button.

The other torch I had came with a set of plastic faces, which attached onto the bulb end so they lit up. There was a clown and I think a monster too. I've seen another version with a large skull's head as well whilst I've been collecting old toys.

I adored that light-up faces torch. Not only did the faces light up, I think the silhouette could be projected onto a wall but my memory of that is somewhat blurred.

Did you like torches as kids readers?

ministry of silly walks: the winner is a kaiju!

Courtesy of You Tube. Anyone know what this crazy Japanese model monster is?

Finding Nemo

In a job lot of Kinder Egg toys and capsules, I came across this cool little Jules Verne submarine, minus a fin or two, but with enough spare bits in the lot to make a nice looking Nautilus!

It's Life, Jim

I recently watched the latest scifi thriller 'Life', starring Ryan Reynolds. With Reynolds on board, I expected a comedy element, but for once, despite the usual wisecracking, he played it straight. The basic premise is nothing new, an alien lifeform is brought amongst the human crew in a claustrophobic setting, causing mayhem.

The near future timeline used the International Space Station as the scenario and a damaged mars probe introduces the alien. Without dropping too many spoilers, it is well worth watching, as its hyper realistic sets are reminiscent of 'Gravity' with technical accuracy at the fore. Where it falls down is the usual liberties taken with the laws of physics and common sense, elements which are always first to suffer in scifi and thrillers respectively. For example, the probe is damaged by a micrometeroid shower and arrives in near Earth orbit at a high velocity, but rather than docking gently with the ISS, has to be snatched by a robot arm as it hurtles by. Presumably to alleviate this gaffe, the actual capture isn't directly visible, but indicated by a loud bang and cheers from a free-floating Reynolds, just visible outside the observation dome.

After this suspension of disbelief and blatant ignorance of practicality, the film cuts to examination of the martian soil samples retrieved from the probe. This sequence is handled much better, with lots of interior shots of the ISS and the usual scientific mumbo jumbo going on. The zero-gee activity of the crew moving between modules is very clumsy, compared to the fluid motion demonstrated by the athletic Sandra Bullock in Gravity and the lithe Carrie Ann Moss in Red Planet and I found myself looking for strings on the actors backs!

However, with these slights aside, the film quickly progresses into a very interesting take on the bug hunt kind of film, although it quickly appears that it isn't the humans who are doing the hunting.

Like the eponymous Alien, the creature evolves swiftly throughout the duration of the film, from small beginnings and each incarnation, again like Giger's baleful creation, are distinct and interesting in their own right.

The latter half unfortunately falls foul of silly scriptwriting leaving the supposedly professional and level headed astronauts making silly common sense mistakes and falling foul of dangers along the way, but wraps up nicely to a satisfying denouement.

Well worth watching with a few beers and a tub of popcorn, as the regular shocks and palpable tensions keep the action rolling along at a respectable pace and for once it does have a really good creature too!

flowers for algernon anyone?

Does anyone remember a story called Flowers for Algernon?

I read it when I was a teenager and I recall it really affecting me at the time.

If I remember rightly its about a a mouse called Algernon who is given a brain-enhancing drug. This runs alongside the same happening to a human, Lawnmower Man-style, who befriends Algernon.

The flowers in the title are for the mouse.

Flowers for Algernon was one of those adult novels which morphed into essential reading for geeky sensitive teens like me in the early 1970's along with Plague Dogs, Doctor Rat, The Stonor Eagles and many more. I had quite a collection of these animal fables back then.

Did you read Algernon? It may have even been made into a film too.

Little Lost Robot

As vintage space toys have become harder to find, ive moved on to easier targets, such as action figures and small sweet premium type toys, which can be easier to find and sometimes relatively inexpensive. Heres a small gallery of some recent acquisitions.

rotorway javelin; the ideal spacex and project sword personal copter

I saw this cool vintage personal helicopter ad.

It's called the Rotorway Javelin.

You built it yourself!

How nifty is that!

Would you fly in one readers?

The other thing I noticed was its general similarity to the SpaceX designs like the Tractor T5 

or Cruiser 1

or maybe even Project SWORD's Beetle

aka Thunderbird 7 as released by Imai

kevin d's thunderbird 1 scratchbiult model

Hi,

I haven't really taken many shots of my TB1 scratchbuild landed before because I hadn't made any landing legs for it. Anyway, I knocked up a quick pair this afternoon and took these pictures.

Take care,

Kevin

project sword logo to cut out and keep

In case you need any Project SWORD logos for cards, posters and pictures here are some produced by Bill B years ago for our various bloggiversary projects.

kev's Original Terrahawks Zeroid Prop

Hi,

I have acquired an original Gerry Anderson prop, something I never thought I'd do. It is one of the Zeroid perches from Treehawk in Terrahawks (the port one I think!). Here it is with my replica Zeroid perched on it. I'm very pleased with it.

Take care,

Kevin D

car boot sale bounty

Some of my past Car Boot Sale finds from years gone by. Some sales were bountiful! Some not.

I don't go anymore.

Do you go to boot sales and fleamarkets?

saturday tea time TV in the Sixties

I remember all the Saturday morning cartoons back in the Sixties and early Seventies - you know, Danger Island, Spider-Man, Shazzan, Marine Boy, Space Kidettes and so on. There were so many!

But what about Saturday tea time? I really can't recall anything except my old Dad watching the Football Pools and ticking off his Littlewoods sheet.

Was there anything on for kids Saturday tea time in your neck of the woods?

cocktail of memories

Mats were everywhere when I was a kid. Besides the major Matt Mason camping out in my bedroom there were other mats all over the place.

The ones that stick in my mind the most are place mats particularly some star shaped ones.They were made of something hard like wood and multi-coloured. The colours alternated so one star arm was red and the other blue. They were held together by thick cotton I think so they were actually quite floppy. In fact they sound like a jelly flip flip when you threw them onto a table!

I also recall coasters being scattered around my parent's home. Plastic ones for glasses and cups but mostly glasses. There was a lot of drinking going on when I look back and I mean of the alcoholic sort. I don't know if this was universal in the Sixties but my parents, who both fought in WW2, loved a tipple. In fact my Dad had his own bar made and installed in what was known as the telly room. He would often stand behind his bar and serve me a canada dry ginger ale, which was stacked in bottles to mix with his beloved Bells whisky. 

On that bar were a plastic ice bucket, a viking figure bottle opener set, decorative Bells bottles and a stack of coasters. These were small round plastic white saucers with a picture of a cocktail in the middle where the glass stood; the famous cocktails of the day like Harvey Warbanger, Manhattan, Screwdriver and so on.

I still can't decide about all the drinking, whether it was normal or not or whether having a bar in the TV room was. I decided to decide years ago that that it was a feature of the decade, of a generation who fought in a huge war and came out the other side and had a few drinks.

Sadly my folks are no longer with us. Ironically they survived serving in World War Two only to die young three decades later of heart related illnesses. I can't help thinking that booze, as they themselves called it, was a contributing factor.

Its odd when you start writing. I set out to talk about place mats and coasters in my Parent's house but inevitably my Parents turn up as well. The paraphernalia of drink and indeed of smoking were littered around our home. It seemed perfectly normal at the time especially to me, a small kid like you obsessed with my own stuff like Thunderbirds, dinosaurs and monsters.

The question is whether all that drinking and smoking was normal?

skydiver working model in pond with swans

This You Tube film is amazing.

By Studio2 Models its a huge working replica of the Skydiver whizzing around a pond!

The swans and ducks are looking a bit worried!

Studio2 Models make fabulous UFO remote-controlled vehicles and test them out in the open air. Check out their uber SHADO mobile too.

mystery thunderbirds mole toy

I've seen a lot of Japanese miniature Glico type Mogura or Thunderbirds Moles over the the years but this is a new one on me.

Assuming that it is a Mole - green plastic lower left - then what is the grey puffer for at the rear?

Did it contain sherbert which was puffed into the mouth?

Any ideas readers?

is gup 1 a shado 2?

Ever heard of GUP 1?

I hadn't.

Its this blue vehicle from the kids TV show Octonauts.

I couldn't help thinking GUP 1, the top especially, looks like a SHADO 1 from UFO.

Yopu can see this better on the toy version of GUP 1.

Here's a blue SHADO 2  on Ebay for comparison

What do you think?

Anyone collect Octonauts?

vintage car coasters

Vintage cars were everywhere when I was a kid in the Sixties.

When I say vintage cars I mean antique old timers.

They were pictured on lots of household items.

I remember round plastic coasters in our house which had an image of a vintage car in the middle. they were like little white plastic saucers which could be stacked. There may have been raised spikelets like a small bed of nails where a glass would stand.

I also recall large plastic pictures which hung on the wall. There was an outline of a vintage car in the middle coloured in gold. I also remember these with racehorses on too I think.

We also had a pen holder with what I'm sure was a Matchbox Model of Yesteryear stuck onto the resin base.

Did you have any vintage cars pictured in your house?

did you have a roladex?

Continuing the toy-like theme of vintage office equipment, does anyone recall the Roladex?

I never had one myself but the ones I saw looked so nifty, straight out of an episode of Marlowe or Department S. I remember it basically being a huge circular stack of cards impaled onto a carousel stand creating a sort of O-shaped mouse treadmill look. Presumably you could easily see the letter of the alphabet for that card but I never had chance to have a go worst luck. I just wasn't cool enough for a Roladex. Why gravity didn't just let all the cards fall to the bottom of the circle I don't know! Like Blackpool's Big Wheel they just kept on turnin'! I like to imagine some Roladex's having contacts like Elvis Presley, Jimmy Dean and Mamie Van Doren in them and finding one at a car boot sale!

What I did have in several of my many 'positions' since starting office work when I was 17 in 1978 was a boring old pack of index cards in a box on my desk. These were alphabetical and not a million miles away from the spring-loaded cassette full of contact cards my parents had had next to the telephone in the Sixties and early Seventies. Every conceivable contact I had with a particular initial was scribbled onto a blank index card including both postal address and phone numbers. With the dawn of email in the 1990's I may have even wrote email addresses out by hand on index cards! Old habits die hard!

Index cards were also popular with birdwatchers and naturalists for archiving sightings of specific birds, plants and animals. Names, dates, locations were all added to a card for that species and gradually building up a picture of it over time [my nephew Steve published a bird book of these very things!] I have several of these boxed index sets in the attic from my naturalist days and even considered it as a way of collating info on vintage toys back in the Nineties. It would have been ideal really: name of toy, year of manufacture, where last seen, cross- references etc. A Roladex would have been even snazzier but the heyday of the index card sadly came and went with the onset of the home computer and the unfathomable storage power of the floppy disk.

Did you have index cards or the cooler Roladex?

the fax of life

I used to love fax machines. My old career in charity management relied on it. I faxed everyday.

I was always impressed with the simplicity of the idea, sending pictures through a telephone, which I suppose is a forerunner of the internet.

The whole world of faxing was fascinating. It had its own telephone number on letterheads so it must have been important. If you rang a fax number you would hear that crazy screeching noise like a bad day at NASA.

You could send handwritten notes and sketches by fax, which was always fun to do and receive. I only sent black and white stuff though. No idea if colour was possible.

I used to use my fax as a lazy copier too. It would easily photocopy a couple of sheets and never seemed to have the catastrophic melt-downs the xerox had.

Some companies had Telex when I first started work. Like Fax, the Telex number was printed on a letterhead. To this day I'm still unsure what Telex was or whether Fax grew out of it. I only actually found out years later when I saw the phrase Facsimile Machines on a bridge billboard that Fax was short for facsimile, which is obvious really!

I bet in its heyday the Fax even came in toy form for young 'uns. I had a toy Casdon cash till and plastic telephone set when I was a kid so why not.

I wonder just how far real fax machines came before email booted them out of the nest? Did they have video screens for instance where you could see who was faxing you? Could you talk to your faxer at the same time? Just how big could a fax be? A0? I used to wonder if eventually we would fax things like moving images like video footage or even physical objects, a nod towards Star Trek beaming-up and 3D printing perhaps?

Yep, I miss my fax. Do you?

Barry norman and bill paxton: both sadly missed

Reading Martin Landau's obituary I couldn't help noticing other notices of deaths among actors and TV personalities this year.

I was saddened to see that Barry Norman has also passed away this month as well. Like the old cinema magazine Film Review, for me Barry is synonymous with  the cinema and especially his TV show Film ... I always loved his film show and watched it religiously for years and years, hanging on his every word and taking his advice about what to see seriously. 

Naturally being a horror and sci-fi fan I was always the most interested in these and what Barry had to say. I can also add Kung Fu films as he began the show with Film 1972 just as the martial arts craze was kicking its way onto our screens. He may have even told me about Enter the Dragon that year, one of my favourite flicks of all time.

RIP Barry. Hope you got the best seat.

I was also saddened ... and shocked ... to read of the death of Bill Paxton in February. He was just 61, barely five years older than me. I thought Bill was great and I shall forever associate him with playing Hudson in ALIENS, a role he truly made his own and brought welcome humour and humanity to the unfolding carnage. 

I also loved Bill's role as the new recruit in Danny Glover's precinct from hell in Predator 2. Bill's comic feel was perfect in bringing light relief to the grim proceedings and made him the ideal foil for Glover's highly-strung Harrigan and Gary Busey's menacing Government man.

RIP Bill Paxton. Hope you fly home.

golden astronaut cake toppers

I love the idea of space cakes.

Don't think I ever got one!

It was obviously popular in the Sixties and Seventies judging by the number of space cake toppers there were.

Above is a catalogue page for space toppers I saw online including a neat Gemini spacecraft.

Also online was this packet of LP/ SpaceX style golden astronauts with cake skewers that I've not seen before. The little yellow alien looks familiar but can't think why! You?

Anyone got any space cake decorations?

MARTIN LANDAU R.I.P.

A sad time for British TV Sci-fi fans over the weekend, no I don't mean the controversial choice for who was chosen to play the 13th Doctor (Good luck to Josie Whittaker, by the way, I think she'll need it ), I'm talking about the sad passing of actor, Martin Landau, our very own Comr. John Koenig from Space 1999.

Our sincere condolences to his family.

kevin d's Deodorant engine

Here is the back end of my Project SWORD Probe Force 2. The engine was missing so I replaced it with part of a roll on deodorant lid. The small tubes were pieces of cotton bud stalk. Kevin.

astro sniks rocket anyone?

I thought this was unusual.

I saw it on Etsy.

Its a Snik Rakete.

Described as a Astro Sniks rocket, it was made in 1983 by Bully.

I'm assuming its from Germany as Rakete means Rocket in German.

The Astro Sniks are pictured on the rear. They remind me of Schlumpfies  or Smurfs by Schleich. My daughter had some Smurfs and some very similar space figures from Ferraro chocolate from the 90's, little guys with helmets on. They could still be breathing attic air upstairs!

Anyone know about Astro Sniks?

do you need a replacement space bubble for your major matt mason?

There are countless mouse balls and guinea pig spheres out there. You know what I mean, those plastic modules and treadmills for pet rodents. I saw some today in Pets At Home.

I've got to wondering if any of these spheres would be a perfect fit for the hollow plastic ball that's attached to the Major Matt Mason Space Bubble?

Of course the biggest problem would be finding a spare sphere that's joined along the centre so Matt's deck chair could be installed.

Another possible ersatz bubble might be the plastic orb that comes filled with loads of Ferraro Roche chocolates. I'm pretty sure it splits in half and I may even have one somewhere - minus the choccies of course!

Naturally all of this is only relevant if your Matt Mason Space Bubble has gone for a Burton and you're desperate for a cheap replacement that isn't original. I can see it now, the Major Matt Mason Space Pet Treadmill!

Can you think of any other household replacement parts for vintage toys readers? Serious, humorous, all good!

american gods: they walk among us

Having taken up Amazon on a trial period of their Prime service I am currently watching their series American Gods.

Last night I watched 5 straight episodes. I was hooked. I say was because my initial thrill is wearing off, which always happens to me during long series like this. The same happened with the Flash and Luke Cage. I stopped watching as the long conversations, modern characterisations and basic soapiness just got on my wick

Anyways, American Gods. I love Neil Gaiman's idea. Gods and magical creatures existing alongside us puny humans. Its a concept that has fascinated us since, well, the dawn of time. I immediately think of Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts from my youth as well as Thor of course. I suppose Superman to some extent as well.

More recent examples would have to include the US TV series Grimm and the superb Swedish series Jordskott, which for some reason never got a second series. It was just brilliant.

American Gods is less subtle but equally compelling. At the start at least. The initial scene were several hundred arrows hit a single hapless Viking gives a hint of the spectacular imagery to come. The acting is excellent, the photography is magnificent and the visions created on screen are quite breathtaking. I can think of many: the fire bison, the bleeding hammer, the Queen of Sheba's bedside manner.

What sets it apart say from Jordskott is the violence. Gods is uber-violent. Blood and guts fly round the screen in wild abandon. The carnage is beautifully filmed and as such is all the more unsettling to watch. It is certainly not for more gentle souls and the extreme language and sex makes sure you know this is adult material early on.

Amazon's American Gods is most definitely not for children.

Are you watching?

more hawk talk

I couldn't help noticing a fleeting resemblance to the SpaceX HAWK when I saw this artwork.

Its from an old Ebay auction and its a painting of a plane called a CCV.

Here's the Hawk in two different sizes.

You can read more about the CCV on the fab Aerospace Projects Review

http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?paged=8

are some gerry anderson toys one-offs?

I wonder if anyone has collected all the various Gerry Anderson vehicles that were and are available as toys and models? One of each?

What I mean is one of each of the different vehicles that were released as toys and models. Maybe some of them are one-offs anyway.

For instance this toy version of the Captain Scarlet Liquid Oxygen Truck was released by Vivid. Is it the only release of this vehicle as a toy or a model? If it is a one-off are there more unique toys like this?

I suppose to do this you'd need a full inventory of all the vehicles that ever appeared in Gerry's TV shows and films [and comics?]. It would be huge. Does such an inventory exist?

geek salad cyborg

I'm just watching a tech show on UK TV called Click. It raises the dilemma of whether robots should be taxed! The idea behind this is the notion that robots will create a deficit in tax revenues as more and more humans become jobless. A rather stark economic vision emerges.

The counter argument appears to be that robots will only take over menial tasks and therefore low-paid, low-tax jobs, thus allowing humans to take up much more skilled and higher tax paying employment. Hmmm.

Apparentky there is a cafe in San Francisco called Cafe X run entirely by robots so I suppose robots are already on the high street.

What do you think readers?

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Whilst doing some minor repairs on my battery-operated Scramble Bug I suddenly thought: could it actually scramble over the regolith on the Moon? Could my toy Moon Prospector really bump n go on it too for that matter? What do you reckon readers?

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One of the video's I've boxed up for a future house move is Slipstream from 1989. It star's Luke Skywalker himself Mark Hamill. I've never watched this film. It sounds interesting on Wikipedia. Have you seen it?

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Some words sound the same or almost the same. I think they're called Homophones like bear and bare, sea and see and lock and loch. One almost-a-homophone I particularly like is sideboard and cyborg. I've often wanted to simply exchange them in conversation and see what happens! Examples might be: just put those keys over there on the cyborg! Is it true that the Bionic Man was a sideboard? ha ha. Can you think of any more half-homophones like these?

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I am getting a small pile of novels together for my annual holiday. Besides some horror I will be taking the Bicentennial Man by Asimov. Is it a good one?

can spacex toys fit into a JR21 thunderbird 2 pod?

If SpaceX- Golden Astronaut toys were Thunderbird 2 pod vehicles which would be the ideal Thunderbird 2 toy for their size?

The die cast Dinky Thunderbird 2 would be too small except for the tiniest of SpaceX missiles and accessory craft I assume.

What about the plastic JR21 or the later Matchbox/ Vivid Thunderbird 2's?

Anyone got SpaceX and a TB2? send us some snaps!

What are your thoughts readers?

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Postscript

As usual I completely forget what's on the blog. Paul V kindly pointed out that we have pics of this very subject on MC already! Paul provided the pics as well! So, from two years ago here we have SpaceX pod vehicles! Thanks Paul.

Hi Woodsy, 

light had gone pretty much by the time I could get round to these, but not too bad. The TBs are 90's Matchbox of course, but the size of the large one goes well with Spacex!

Best,

Paul V

April 2015