Amidst the myriad blogs and sites about the space race and its countless concepts I occasionally stumble into a new one which holds fresh nuggets of conceptual gold.
One such blog, False Steps, warranted further inspection and out popped a superb illustration that immediately made me shout loudly 'That's got Major Matt Mason Written all over it!"
I give you General Dynamics' 1964 'Study for a Lunar Escape Device', a scary looking space deck-chair with a rather natty rocket engine strapped to space hoppers!
The False Steps author has a disarming and comical style of writing, especially the titles and captions to his posts.
He amusingly describes this device as 'literally flying from the seat of your pants!", which really made me chuckle. Have a peek yourselves; there are more graphics of this escape unit plus much much more.
[Sadly the False Steps blog is dormant, ending in 2017 and presumably as a result of the author Paul Drye publishing his book of the same name].
As for its Major Matt-ness, the brilliant escape device above calls to mind all those wonderful space flyers, chairs and boards that Mattel magicked up for their wired man in space, such as:
The fabulous Recono-Jet
[courtesy of Blueflamechevelle]
The Space Station Chair as seen within this TV ad by Our Nostalgic Memories
and the never-produced and glorious Space Rover as seen on the magnificent Wildtoys website. Super modeller Frank May recreated it too, which is showcased on the Wildtoys site.
Do you think the General Dynamics Escape Device would have made a good Major Matt toy?
Can you think of other toys that are majorly Matt Masonable?
Major Matt Mason -my favourite!
ReplyDeleteIn terms of downright dangerous space jalopies, my mind immediately goes to the Airfix 1/72 scale astronauts and their two man death trap and the even more extreme one man flying hat boxes!
Not sure I know it Looey. Send us a pic if you can find one!
DeleteThat's the outerspace version of Lawn Chair Larry! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry_flight
ReplyDeleteI see what you mean Captain! ha ha!
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