I had to chuckle at the artwork on this pinball. Besides all the fab spaceships, there's an astronaut floating through space with a huge girder! ha ha.
The beauty of space toy art is that it flirted with the impossible, and to hell with authenticity. That’s where imagination comes in, while so much space art of the last forty years is so tediously “realistic,” it leaves me cold. SFZ
Yes, the future lies before us like an endless sweet shop SF and the old space art captures this beautiful hopefulness that we had as kids perfectly I agree.
It reminds me of some small "Battle Library" style comics I bought very cheaply at Woolworths as a kid. They were Flash Gordon, but the Sy Barry reimagining, with more realistic tech. One episode featured asteroid mining and an orbital refinery that would extrude an endless steel girder that was cut into lengths, bundled and de-orbited to Earth. Flash is being given a tour of the operation. A Slim Pickins style old timer spaceman is measuring the extruding girder with a hand tape measure! It seems the automatic system has failed and he's having to do it manually. The supervisor has a melt down when he realises the cut pieces are oversize. "Alluz give 'em a little extry, I sez!" says the old timer... The overweight cargo causes re-entry problems for Flash and his pals...
Egad, I haven't seen that comic in over 50 years! The amount of ephemeral 60's popular culture crammed into my greying head is amazing!
The beauty of space toy art is that it flirted with the impossible, and to hell with authenticity. That’s where imagination comes in, while so much space art of the last forty years is so tediously “realistic,” it leaves me cold. SFZ
ReplyDeleteYes, the future lies before us like an endless sweet shop SF and the old space art captures this beautiful hopefulness that we had as kids perfectly I agree.
DeleteIt reminds me of some small "Battle Library" style comics I bought very cheaply at Woolworths as a kid.
ReplyDeleteThey were Flash Gordon, but the Sy Barry reimagining, with more realistic tech.
One episode featured asteroid mining and an orbital refinery that would extrude an endless steel girder that was cut into lengths, bundled and de-orbited to Earth.
Flash is being given a tour of the operation.
A Slim Pickins style old timer spaceman is measuring the extruding girder with a hand tape measure! It seems the automatic system has failed and he's having to do it manually.
The supervisor has a melt down when he realises the cut pieces are oversize.
"Alluz give 'em a little extry, I sez!"
says the old timer...
The overweight cargo causes re-entry problems for Flash and his pals...
Egad, I haven't seen that comic in over 50 years! The amount of ephemeral 60's popular culture crammed into my greying head is amazing!
Gazunks! Sy Barry is 96 and very much still alive! I had to look him up!
DeleteI should have looked it up too!
DeleteIt was Dan Barry, not Sy Barry!
No worries!
Delete