Another look at some of the photos I took of Sixteen 12's Retro Eagles taking paint inspiration from the old Dinky models.
Very much a 'Marmite' item for collectors; some hate them, and some love them. I admit, I fall firmly in the' I love them' category.
When I bought my first Dinky Eagle Transporter, way back in the seventies, the series hadn't aired on TV, so I quite happily accepted the space craft was green .
Then I found the Eagles were white, so, like many people I just clipped the Transporter Pod into my white Dinky Freighter Eagle - problem solved!
A little later Dinky decided to paint their Freighter blue which put a stop to that!
As all the Dinky Transporters were green, Sixteen 12's versions are the same. With the Freighters, Sixteen 12 wisely chose the blue colour.
N.B. Sixteen 12 were planning to release a Retro version of the SHADO Mobile taking inspiration from the blue Dinky SHADO 2, but unfortunately in these times of uncertainty that's been shelved for now.
Okay, here's my confession:
ReplyDeleteI never really liked Space: 1999 much. As a 10 year old kid in 1975, it wasn't very realistic, and frankly, even though I knew it was too silly to take seriously, it scared me anyway.
Nevertheless, I loved the designs of the Earth Ships: Eagle, Hawk, Ultra Probe, Meta Probe, Voyager Probe, Antares (yeah, I know it's not 1999, but it's still in the genre.) I loved the Freighter and Winch variant Eagles. When they came out with the large 2 foot Eagle kits with the different pods, I would've loved to grab up those models. (If I had a few spare hundred bucks lying around, the time to build them, and a place to display them...!)
Not so crazy about the 2nd season ships: (I'm afraid The Swift and SuperSwift just seemed like cut rate Eagle re-treads to me, only without the visually interesting spinal framework that made them look cool in the first place.)
The thing that kind of bugged me about the Eagle was that, while it made total sense as a moon vehicle, it seemed silly to use it to land on alien planets with atmospheres. (Kinda wish they'd designed a special atmospheric Eagle variant for that.)
So, in my comic strip, I have sneaked them into the background, back when I was doing a story about a moonbase.
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20030728.html
But, I never got the Dinky Toys model Eagles. I just didn't like the show well enough at the time. But, I do like the Eagles with the Dinky color schemes.
If I were going to go back to the Moonbase, I'd use the Dinky color schemes for sure. :)
Ha, ha! For someone who isn't that keen on Space 1999 you've still done your homework, Scott. ;)
DeleteYour cartoon has some nicely styled Eagles in there, plus a Moonbase Alpha launch pad. All very reminiscent of something from Futurama. The big ship has a look of 'The Botany Bay' from Star Trek.
It's an interesting idea of having an atmospheric Eagle, I suppose it could have been like a lifting body, or maybe something like a Star Trek shuttlecraft.