I'm always amazed about what get's knocked off. You have to have a degree of success as a toy line to even bother knocking it off.
This Space Police bootleg took me by surprise then [who is it meant to be?]. I never realised that its inspiration, Space Precinct, the Gerry Anderson TV show from the mid-90's, was that big and its toy line warranting knockoffs like this.
I still see loads of loose Space Precinct figures at car boot sales but I've never seen this bootleg.
Were you a Space Precinct fan? Did you have the toys?
Ironically, Space Precinct was originally going to be called ... er ... Space Police !
ReplyDeleteha ha, this bootleg got it right Mish!
DeleteI passed on the toys at the time. Vivid didn't make a diecast toy of the Police car/spaceship and decided just to stick with the large plastic version which was quite expensive. IMHO the series itself was not very good, though it had a couple of cool episodes. The characters were pretty bland and uninteresting, obvious and very bad American voice dubbing all over the place, the live action sets were very poor - streets looked like any city in the UK - they even used real 1990s cars and vans and filmed so they hid the wheels to make them look like the flying versions in the model shots, and it took a while for tne VFX to get up to speed. There's an article with VFX supervisor Steve Begg about what he thought went wrong here: http://davidsissonmodels.co.uk/Steven%20Begg%20Space%20Precinct.htm. They also made a DVD 'Space Precinct Legacy' about what happened. Very sad. In one of the Gerry Anderson podcasts one of the producers mentions that when they went to tne US to sell the series on that same day Star Trek Voyager came out and they realised then that they didn't have a chance up against shows like that.
ReplyDeleteThat's unfortunate going up against Star Trek Voyager on the same day! Fascinating stuff Yorkie and thanks for your insights.
DeleteI think the Space Police pilot with Shane Rimmer looked better!
ReplyDeleteShane Rimmer was indeed a well-known actor and of course the voice of Scott Tracy Anon. I wonder why they didn't stick with Shane?
DeleteI did the Vivid blue and white vehicles in the past. Quite big.
ReplyDelete