Plastic Fantastic: Italian Ferry, Spanish Carrier

I recently put these two toys together. 

On the left is a large yellow plastic car ferry from Italy and released by Renam of Naples.

On the right is the older white Aircraft Carrier complete with SpaceX-type spaceships released by Bullycan of Spain.

For completeness here are the two makers' details from the toys themselves.

Renam

Bullycan

and a few shots of them on their own

Have you got a toy ferry or an Aircraft Carrier readers?

MY FIRST T IN A CIRCLE MOON BUS PICTURE

These 2 images have been in my archive ever since I got online in the early to mid 90's.

They were from a huge collectables site called Gasoline Alley and were the first T in a Circle Moon Bus I'd ever seen.

I remember how excited I was at the time, not really knowing anything about it or how it fitted in with the normal SWORD Moon Bus by C21.

Back then and right up to 2008 I thought T in a Circle and Tarheel were the same thing!

As it happens an example of this boxed toy is the one remaining want on my wants list of SWORD toys. One day!

Which old toy images did you first get excited about online?

Brian's Poolside Horrors

Hi Woodsy. As you could probably guess, my collection of old novels is largely based on dinosaurs and sea monsters.

Good poolside reading in Summer!

Brian, New Jersey

Toys Together by Kev D

Hi,

As requested, here are some photos of toys together.

Take care,

Kevin D

ANDY B's TOY TEAM-UPS

Woodsy

I might be accused of taking your request less than seriously!

Andy B.

SAMURAI IN HUDDERSFIELD

When I was young teenager I adored the Samurai.

One of my favourite books was one I borrowed from Preston library called Japanese Arms and Armour by H. Russell Robinson.

I so wanted to own it but it had to go back to the librarian.

It featured huge colour pictures [or plates as they were called] of Samuari arrowheads called Yanone and I particularly loved the sheer beauty of the Y-shaped Karimata or cord-cutter.

For a couple of years in the early 70's I attempted to make every old Japanese and Chinese weapon I could from fancy goods and garden tools.

I used them in my old Powis Road Dojo and wrote about them in Kung Fu Capers in 2015.

I made stacks of arrowheads back then but never conquered the cord-cutter.

Skip forward 44 years and my teenage dream to own Japanese Arms and Armour came true, when I purchased a copy from the estate of the late John 'the OX' Entwistle, bassist with The Who no less!

You can see it stood here at the back of some of my other martial arts tomes. Its open on the Yanone page and you can just make out the Y-shaped arrowhead.

Well, yesterday in a double-take of remembered shed-raiding and frantic tool-bashing back in those Samurai 70's, I saw the perfect DIY part for making the elusive cord-cutter Karimata head.

It was lying on a pile of tools on Huddersfield Market!

It's a garden shed tool hanger!

If only I'd seen one in my Dad's old Cash and Carry warehouse when I raided it for parts in 1972!

Talk about the ripples of time.

Or as Basho said:

The old pond,

A frog jumps in:.

Plop!

Did you like the Samurai readers?

MYSTERY STINGRAY SOLVED: DOSSIER CLOSED

I recently posted a video of a mystery Stingray model [twice! Doh!]

Keen-eyed Andy B and Bill B both ID'd it as the mail-away kit from Lyon's Maid in the 60's.

Here's the Cinema ad for Sea Jet, Zoom and FAB courtesy of You Tube with what I assume is the Airfix mail-away model in the Sea Jet segment?

Our very own Scoop owned the kit and here's the TV21 ad he posted 5 years ago on his ace post Airfix and Anderson:

Did you have the Airfix Stingray too?

Did Gerry Anderson and co actually make the Lyons Maid adverts do you know?

*

PS. There is still an unsolved Portuguese Stingray toy ID mystery!

http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/mystery-portuguese-stingray-toy.html

Bay Area Matchbox Toys Ads Database

I was amazed by this American database.

Its from the Bay Area Matchbox Collectors Association or BAMCA. I must admit I had no idea that Matchbox collecting was so organised in the US.

Anyways, this is the site's Matchbox toy ad database, so all ads from magazines etc in one place year by year. I don't know if the site is still active. Hard to tell.

http://www.bamca.org/cgi-bin/ads.cgi

What do you think?

ZERO 

HOUR 

IS 

COMING!

MADHUNTER: VINTAGE TOY SCOUT FROM MEXICO

If like me you like seeing vintage toys from around the world you should likese videos.

They feature MADHUNTER, a Mexican toy dealer who is like the Toy Hunter of South America.  He travels the world for toys but specialises in his native Mexican heritage.

His stock is totally mind-blowing. Think of any vintage toy you had  and he will have a Mexican version. Major Matt Mason, GI Joe, Johnny West, Stoney, Bonanza. You name it he's got it.

These two longish videos are just a sample of MADHUNTER's prolific You Tube channel.

Enjoy!

PS. Have you got any Mexican toys?

TOY RUMMAGE HUDDERSFIELD

We were in the Northern England Pennine Uni town of Huddersfield today.  

We spent a happy afternoon rummaging through the excellent second-hand market's stalls and the charity shops, an activity we've done many times.

Although we're not buyers anymore [too much stuff already] we love looking and finding things of interest.  

Naturally I look for vintage toys and here's a few I saw today [pics of the same on Ebay et al]:

The International Express tinplate toy train, which I've only ever seen online and in books. Its an impressive thing although I'm not sure what the large funnel is for. You?

Palitoy's Fun Flyer in its box: a sort of small child's vertibird toy. I was very tempted to get this as its basic plastic looks really grabbed me!

I also found a small soft plastic toy figure in a box of toys. It was about an inch tall, maybe taller and was a young man dressed in blue overalls. I had thought Fisher Price Adventure People but this figure was soft plastic. He looked a bit like a Tracy brother but wasn't.

I've searched through my Tomart's books of action figures, volumes 1 and 2 up to Star Trek  and found nothing. If its in volume 3 I've had it!

He could be a tradesman or some kind of worker. 

Its slightly similar to this Loving Family figure from 1993 but is much thinner and dressed in dark blue overalls or a jump suit. He does have a similar face and hair though!

Any ideas?

DEAGOSTINI MONOBRAKE

DeAgostini’s (Model Space) version of the Monobrake , International Rescue’s search and recovery vehicle.

The Monobrake is used in the episode, The Perils of Penelope to enter the Anderbad   Monorail Tunnel and search for the missing Lady Penelope and friend of International Rescue, Sir Jeremy Hodge.

The Monobrake is a low slung vehicle which allows Monorail trains to pass above it. It carries a telescopic arm which can extend and attach to the overhead monorail.  It is powered by a rear jet engine if suspended or a gas turbine on the ground.

The vehicle does make a couple of cameo appearances in the episodes, Cry Wolf and Security Hazard.

As usual I’ve given the  model a little light weathering  and as it’s an open cockpit I’ve done a tiny figure of Virgil at the controls (There’s not really enough room for Gordon as well)

I Caught Red Planet Again This Week

I caught Red Planet [2000] again the other night. Its the movie with Val Kilmer as the only surviving astronaut on a Mars mission. He eventually returns to the mothership on an old Soviet probe. Its not to be confused with Mission to Mars from the same year when Mars was obviously on millennial film-makers' minds.

Its a good blast at a space drama, Red Planet. Parts of it are really great: the convincing sets, the epic locations and the exciting hardware. I love the hacking of old tech like the Soviet probe. It reminded me a lot of the recent flick The Martian with Matt Damon, where he kitbashes the stuff left around him. I've blogged about this before as its becoming a common trope in modern space films and presumably one which has a chip of realism in it, that colonists' futures may rely on hacking abandoned junk. Pulling it off on screen isn't easy and relies heavily on the talents of the effects team and prop makers in the same way it did in say Gerry Anderson's TV shows and the mastery of Derek Meddings et al.

This time round I also liked the whole moving-ground-bugs thing, which pre-dated Apollo 18 and its scrabbling rock spiders by a good 11 years. There's something profoundly creepy about the idea of insects hiding on other planets and the possibility that they may come to Earth is just as bad!

The Val Kilmer - Tom Sizemore repartee was enjoyable. The whole question of  science v. God is a difficult one to pull off but here its done with a light touch.

Alas I found the whole throw-a-colleague-off-a-cliff-and-go-mad-with-guilt sub-plot really irritating. Having said that the overly-macho and aggressive character played by Ben Bratt, who eventually get's thrown off said cliff by Mentalist star Simon Baker, is incredibly annoying in a way that jars within the film. It reminded me of the unnecessarily hostile antics of the geologist in Prometheus, who also meets a shoddy end. These characters just seem out of place.

Aimee I'm still thinking about. It's a sort of Lost in Space companion and more lethal than Mars itself. In the end its predictably blind aggression saves Kilmer, as he propels himself towards The Matrix's Carrie-Ann Moss, falling short of the ship and once more requiring a Matt Mason-like back-pack winch to reel him in, another trope in lots of space flicks [can't think of any though now!]

I'm still unsure about Val Kilmer. He's always been an odd leading man for me, although he was hugely popular in his heyday. 

From Willow to post-Keaton Batman, he certainly had an important career in fantasy flicks but for me his non-fantasy pinnacle has to be Heat, the crime epic with Robert De Nero and fellow Red Planeteer Tom Sizemore. His character acting in that is just brilliant.

I did enjoy the film and feel spurred on to catch Mission to Mars again from the same year. Did they spawn any toys or collectables?

Have you seen Red Planet? What did you think?

Japanese Space Board Game

I loved Waddington's Blast-Off the board game when I was kid. 

It was the box art more than anything I admired and space games have always caught my eye ever since.

Here's a Japanese space game that has great graphics.

I saw it on Yahoo and saved the pics last year.

The counters look great

The board art looks good too.

Have a you a favourite space game?

MYSTERY STINGRAY MODEL

I saw this mystery Stingray on You Tube.

Any ideas what it is readers?

Johnny Lemon Martian Eye

With War of the Worlds tripoding through my mind this week I couldn't help but notice that the inside of our BBQ spice looks like ...... 

George Pal's Martian 3-split eye!

All it needs are the three different colours!

to look like this!

Now that's a Johnny Lemon DIY toy part if ever there was one!

Then came our masher

sporting what appears to be a radar or tracker screen at the bottom!

I know I've seen this array on a toy or fantasy gizmo but can't think what. You?

Have you any Johnny Lemon toy parts in the home like these?

Japanese Sweets-Filled SPV

The sheer diversity of |Japanese Andersonalia never ceases to amaze me. They just love Gerry Anderson and always have done.

I saw this sweet thing on Mandarake and kept the pictures.

It appears to be an SPV filled with sweets. I love the rear yellow engine.

 I know nothing about it really.

I will have to dig deeper into this one.

Any help welcomes readers.

It reminds me of a British JR21 Thunderbird 2 filled with sweets we featured 10 years ago.

http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/sweet-filled-jr21-thunderbirds-by-steve.html

FAREWELL TO THE FALLOW

No more the open fallow field. Blue surveys the ploughed slopes where we'd filmed folk horrors this winter and we both realised that its farmed spring mantle prohibits any further entrance.

The clean straight edge of the turned earth draws a sharp line on our wanderings over the bleak season, its sable curd now protected by the hostile cracks of twelve bores.

So we are forced to the margins like halflings, padding through the stream-side scrub,

Where unexpectedly Blue finds an upturned bottle buried deep in the wooded soil like a glass boletus.

As the thought of freeing it flickered through my mind I recalled the ghostly tale by M.R.James, A Warning to the Curious and a frisson of fear charged up my spine.

I left the bottle where it was.

What message may have been inside do you think?

What Do You Think of Repro Toy Boxes?

There's a new wave of repro toy boxes for sale appearing online, which I've noticed of late.

They appear to be professionally made and look very crisp.

There are many Century and JR21 repro boxes in there too.

What do you think of this new availability readers?

Would you buy a repro box for one of your toys?

APOLLO 1 ANYONE?

I keep on seeing this model vehicle on Japanese sites and have realised how much I like its sleek Seventies styling.

It recalls the sharp lines of the Lotus Esprit.

It appears to be called Apollo 1 and often has a trailer.

Above is a shot I saw online of a whole array of Apollo 1's

Doe anyone know the story behind this kit?

Did Century 21 Toys Use a Marx Tank?

I've often wondered if Century 21 Toys used a Marx Cap Firing Tank as the basis for their Mobile and Bridge Carrying Tank.

I haven't got either but I do have the turret of the Century 21 Toys tank kindly donated by Bill B.

Here's a my thinking in pictures.

What do you think?

TWO TOY TITANS MEET: OX AND MECHANOID

Here's an image from last Summer in the garden. I am hankering for sunshine!

On the table are a plastic Mechanoid and snap-together Zero-X.

Vintage plastic icons all.

Have you got different toys you can put together and send me a piccy of?

LANCE'S TOWERING TRIPOD

Hey Woodsy,

Loving the WoW posts and seeing all the different takes on the Martian machines. 

I sent you mine if you'd like to see and share them with the rest of gang. Sadly I have not gotten it to actually walk so it is just a static model. But at least it towers and glows a bit!

Lance

USA