When I was a kid I adored Colourforms Outer Space Man. I had series 1. Alas all went the way of the trash in the early Seventies. I can't believe I didn't even keep one!
Anyways, things have moved on and the fan base for Outer Space Men has grown, particularly in the US where new companies like the Four Horse Men and new figures have emerged.
The new figures even include Outer Space Women, which certainly wasn't the case in the 1960's. There are lots of modern OSM ladies and I've picked two from the internet to highlight here.
First up is Terra Firma, the Woman from Earth.
It reminds me of a female version of Major Matt himself.
Do you like her?
There's some fabulous dinosaur box art coming next week from Rob in the US.
In the meantime here's a superb image of one of the Polish stamps I adored as a kid in 1965. This is the T. Rex.
Did you have stamps like this?
Spy belt set - wow!
Just listening to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road the album on YouTube. Corblimey, its from 1973! Gawd! So long ago and I absolutely adored it back then when I wuz just 12 years old. 2nd Year at Secondary School! Oh what a year!
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road captured the moment, the Zeitgeist. Elton John was one of the golden gang who ruled the airwaves back then along with Bowie, Rod Stewart and Marc Bolan. I was heavily into Bowie but Elton's album just blew me away. I have a sneaky feeling my old Mum liked Elton too.
I played Brick Road on my stereo until it wore out I bet. I knew about Elton of course, from beautiful singles like Your Song and the grand Rocket Man but the only LP I'd heard was Don't Shoot Me I'm only the Piano Player, which my older Brothers had. I loved Don't Shoot me and regularly listen in on You Tube. I remember seeing him sing Daniel and Crocodile Rock on Top of the Pops.
But its Goodbye Yellow Brick Road where Elton came alive for me, his masterpiece, at least during my youth. Amazingly it was his 7th LP. That's a lot of work getting there but boy, when he did! The double album has 17 or 18 tracks that I never forgot. Some are better than others but the whole thing as one is just fabulous. I certainly thought so back in '73!
Outstanding songs include the title track itself as well as Bennie and the Jets, Roy Rogers, The Ballad of Danny Bailey, Harmony and Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting. Special mention has to go to Candle in the Wind, which I sang every night to my baby daughter as she fell asleep. Despite its underlying tragedy and later becoming a royal hymn, its a song which has always meant a great deal to me and my daughter and on the occasion of her wedding we danced the Father-Daughter dance to it, tears filling our eyes!
Back when I was 12 it was also the album cover that grabbed me, when LP art was well, an art form. The small cartoons inside the gatefold were just sublime and all in all the whole package was just fantastic. I even had a sequined metallic bomber jacket and platforms like Elton on the front but who didn't in 1973! I can almost feel the sheer weight of those platform shoes as I dragged them around Preston trying to look cool with my Oxford Bags and Ben Sherman shirt! I even wore thick black prescription spex already then like Joe 90!
And so Sweet Painted Lady is starting in my earphones. Seems its always been the same. I'll bow out now and sing along to the Moonbase Mutt Blue.
Did you like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road readers?
I was in a bike shop yesterday looking at stuff for my Grandson. Staring at all those shiny bells and bike pumps brought it all back, the fab kid pushbike culture of the early Seventies. What fun!
I remember the bikes I had, a Raleigh Chopper and a Moulton Mini and maybe another 'normal' one, over those formative years. Bikes and kids were inseparable, like Romans and chariots. They were our chariots as we Ben-Hur'd through the streets to the local park!
I remember all the accessories you could get: the mirrors, the handlebar tassels, the wonderfully loud bells, the pavelco gears, the lights, the dynamos and the cool metallic decals.
Best of all were the DIY accessories, especially the spoke clickers. I adored those things, which were basically thick card attached to the bike frame with a strong clothes peg. The card would click like mad as the spokes went round. What a racket they made but wow, great fun!
I can feel the wind rushing past me now as I free-wheeled down the hill, legs high, tassels flying and the spoke clickers clacking like castanets. Get out of the way! Blimey, what great fun it was!
Did you accessorise your bike as a kid readers?
I was thinking how fabulous those old B-movies were advertised at the back of American monster comics like Creepy and Eerie.
The man with the X-ray Eyes, the Incredible Shrinking Man, Horror at Party Beach, The Mole People and so many more brilliant titles.
So many come flooding back: Tarantula, Them, The Black Scorpion, Frankenstein Conquers the World, the Black Sleep and Plan 9 from Outer Space.
I stared at them all and wondered if I would ever see any of them. My favourite titles were the She Creature and War of the Colossal Beast, the latter being one the best film titles ever in my opinion.
Like the comics they were in these old films now seem like portals to another time and place and I often think fondly of those happy times I spent browsing those pages and saying those amazing film titles out loud so long ago.
Did you look at those movie ads at the back of comics readers? Have you got a favourite?
In reply to the item on the Hawk Guerrilla Combat Team kit from the early 1960s, I thought he and others might be interested in a short history of this US programme.
Zero Length Launch involved mounting a rocket engine under a normal jet fighter, and simply blasting the aircraft in to the air. The rocket motor would then be jettisoned, and the aircraft would fly its normal mission.
The idea was to get aircraft in to the air as quickly as possible, and allow them to be dispersed away from airfields that would be under attack in the opening stages of World War Three. To make deployment easier, the aircraft and launching ramps would be mounted on heavy trucks. But you still needed a normal runway for landing.
Experiments using fixed ramps were conducted by the United States Air Force in the 1950s, involving the Republic F-84 Thunderjet (as modelled by Hawk), the North American F-100 Super Sabre, and the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.
The tests were successful, but the system was not adopted for service use. Having small groups of jets scattered all over the countryside would have posed plenty of problems in command and control, and supply, as well as field security.
First up, the original entry on the Hawk kit.
MOONBASE CENTRAL: Hawk Guerrilla Combat Team Thunderjet (projectswordtoys.blogspot.com)
Next, here are a few references.
Wikipedia entry for ZELL.
Zero-length launch - Wikipedia
Several film clips of ZELL in action, including this documentary, which includes a German Starfighter, and a Soviet version using the MiG-19.
Cold War Tactics | ZERO LENGTH LAUNCH - YouTube
Episode 3 of the US TV series Steve Canyon, Operation Zero Launch, is based around the ZELL trials, using the F-100 Super Sabre. The colour is poor, but the film is great.
Steve Canyon TV 1958 colorized s01e03 "Operation Zero Launch" - YouTube
I do not think I would like to be aboard an aircraft launched this way either.
Paul Adams from New Zealand
Some photos
I’ve taken of the Sixteen 12 ‘Wargames’
Special Edition White Mk IX Hawk.
As most Space: 1999 fans will know, the original model Hawk props, designed by Brian Johnson and built by Martin Bower were originally painted white as per instructions, but following delivery to the studio it was decided viewers might confuse the Hawks with the white Eagles during the ‘Wargames’ space battle scenes, so the more familiar orange paint scheme was applied, although a few pre-publicity photos of the White Hawk did appear.
On screen the sleek, wasp-like Hawk only appears in the first season episode, Wargames, and is instantly recognised by Moonbase Alpha’s science expert, Prof. Bergman as the Mark IX Hawk! The intonation in his voice leads me to think that these craft are far more deadly than its assumed predecessor, the Mark VIII!
In spite of its single appearance, the Mk IX Hawk has certainly proved a fan favourite, and over time some magazines and comics have given the Hawk spacecraft various historical back stories relating to the Space: 1999 universe.
Probably the most notable came from the American ‘Starlog’ magazine during the late seventies/early eighties, which did champion Space: 1999 at the time. The magazine’s writers concocted an ‘imagined’ detailed history suggesting that the Hawk is a further development of the SHADO Interceptor from Gerry & Sylvia Anderson’s previous series, UFO, with upgraded Mark 10 Hawks stationed in the orbiting Space Dock, (Starlog writers christened the dock, Centuri ) until the Dock’s destruction, as seen in the opening 1999 episode, Breakaway!
While I don’t really buy into the UFO connection, I do like the idea that the Hawks operate and are despatched from a space station.
I visited a local car boot sale yesterday after a long boring hiatus. It was great fun to be outside and rummaging again.
Delving into boxes of tat I listened to the stall holders' chatter and sales patter and it reminded me just how different they can be.
My favourite kind of seller is one who keeps quiet whilst I pick though the boxes and scour the table top, only speaking when I ask about the price. Obviously a bit of banter is OK - the weather, the site, the price of potatoes - but I do like to get on with my search relatively undisturbed. It's more or less how I used to sell at toy fairs.
Of course there are toy dealers at car boots too. Some toy-based chat is often fun and if they're toy fair standers then informative too, especially now as toy fairs begin to re-open.
Then there are the car boot price-changers. A typical conversation about a crate of battered Matchbox might be:
"Everything in that box is a pound mate"
I pick up a Superkings truck.
"That's two pounds. Its bigger!"
Then there are the anti-hagglers, who simply will not bargain.
"That's a fiver"
I offer four.
"Nope, I'd rather take it home"
Four fifty.
"Its worth five"
I'm not sure why they sell at a boot sale if they can't haggle but hey, each to their own.
Yesterday I came across a new seller technique, one I'll call the tracker, because he tracked everything I did and commented all the time.
I bent down to rummage and he said everything is 50p in that box. I picked out a podless die-cast Thunderbird 2.
"I knew you'd pick that" said the seller with a knowing grin.
I stood up and picked up an action figure on the table and the seller said "Three". I picked up another and he said "two". One more confirmed the tracker's patter. "One". He wasn't a countdown either.
Bearing in mind I was simply handling these figures and not asking for the price, I found this particular technique off-putting and I paid for my Thunderbird and moved away. Maybe I'm over-sensitive to a talking price tag.
What kind of sellers do you enjoy readers and dare I ask, what kind of seller are you?
I saw this on Spain's auction site and thought it looked a fine sleek Chinese airliner. Not supersonic like the ones featured here last week but impressive nonetheless.
Have you got anything like this readers? Did you as a kid?
When I saw this Durham Super Serpent I thought it looked familiar.
