Bloggiversary Special: Blastoff with the Dekker Space Helmet by Tony K

If you were a budding spaceman during the '70s, you may remember the desirable Dekker Space helmet with its aesthetically cool green retractable visor and NASA style sticker. The helmet was sometimes packaged as a set with a stylish junior space suit. The perfect attire for those daring lunar missions around the dark side of the neighbourhood.

As a nipper, I remember drooling over this classic piece of space plastic in our mail order catalogue. I vividly remember the page showing some wannabe junior spaceman, grinning alongside a trio of happy costumed '70s kids, sporting '70s hair styles. They were somewhere in the 4-8 age range wearing colourful and adventurous outfits, representing a cowboy, soldier, nurse and astronaut. If there'd been any justice in the universe, that catalogue kid in the space suit would've been me!

Despite my ambitions, the Dekker space set eluded me throughout childhood. But hey, that didn't keep me out of the space race. My impoverished yet imaginative space agency improvised equipment with cardboard boxes, felt tips or silver foil and sellotape. The kinda cobbled together creations that would've won an approving nod from Ed Wood.

The pictured example of the Dekker space helmet came by way of trade at a friend's vintage toy shop last year. The space suit's long gone and the plastic space mike from inside the helmet is missing. Not a problem, because the suit wouldn't fit me now and the space mike's unnecessary because in space no-one can hear you scream.

Tony K

UK

WILL'S OSBORNE SPACEX AND SPACE TOYS 1

This is the first of a series of pictures courtesy of collector and toy shop owner Will Osborne. I have known Will since the late 1990's when I was researching Project SWORD and Spacex toys. Will was a font of information when I started out and continues to be. I'm sure you will enjoy his fabulous pictures and toys. 

Of this first set, Will says:

Hi Woodsy. Another Ideal robot [sort of] . The Dekkertoys moonscape with some Spacex for scale and the Spacex Moonbase Set with its lunar plan. Enjoy.

MY MOVIE AND TV HORROR MAKE-UP SET

Ideal to blog on Halloween, this is my vintage Dekkertoys 'Dick Smith' Horror Make-Up boxed set from 1976. I found this at a car boot sale about 15 years ago. I couldn't believe it!

My set is incomplete but its a scarce thing and many items are thankfully still there. It was endorsed and developed by the famous horror make-up wizard Dick Smith. 

This Dekkertoys set is the 1976 UK variant of the boxed set first available by Pressman in 1975 in the United States. 

Dick Smith was the make-up maestro on the seminal spookfest The Exorcist and also on the less obvious The Godfather as written on the box. 

There is an interesting biog of Mr. Smith in a neat booklet that came with this fab set. 

Have you got one or another monster make-up set?

What do you think of Dick Smith's film work?

Pure Moonscapism

Spacex Superset Craterscape

My recent photoshoots have all taken advantage of some ready made moonscapes, all in vacuum formed plastic. One of the first Spacex Supersets contained a moonscape, in fragile white plastic, shaded in pale blue. When I first saw one as a kid, I was taken with the colour and it has stuck with me ever since. Decades later, I finally got one and was surprised how small it actually is, about a foot square. With Spacex toys, the only really practical area to place them is in the centre, otherwise the jagged terrain means that only two wheels will be in contact with the terrain, making a very odd looking picture.

I picked up a piece of military diorama online, a shell scored landscape, which doubles as a moonscape quite well. I tried to paint this one in a similar fashion to the Spacex one, but its perhaps a little highly coloured. Its about 7 inches long and ideal for the smaller vehicles like Kinder Egg Space. The circular  Airfix Lunar Module base is a nice handy size for displaying small models too.

The largest of the dioramas came from a Johnny Astro set and is made from a slightly heavier plastic, which is possibly blow-moulded than vac-formed. Its a more striking blue and features the central crater, but with sweeping hills and other features around it.

The last four are made by Dekker Toys in the seventies - as you can see from the box, which sports an Airfix Hawk and Mego Black Hole and Buck Rogers figures. These four scapes were designed as 'paint it yourself' projects for kids and when I bought them on ebay, someone had tried to give them a once over with brown enamel. First of all I painted them with A Dulux Matchpot of white emulsion and then gradually built up colour and tone in blue and grey, finishing off with white highlights again. As the detail on them was a little sparse, I took the opportunity while I had them out at the weekend, to repaint them with some PVA Texture Gel, a white glue with glass beads in it. As the PVA dries clear, I dry brushed the shadows and tones in with a couple of spare pots of blue and grey I had lying around.

The little beads looked especially effective with some side lighting and resemble dust and broken rock on the surface, whilst the streaks in the PVA added additional texture.

Note the scientifically inaccurate teabags!

DEKKER TOYS MOONSCAPE FOR STAR WARS FIGURES?

I love this old toy Lunar Landscape set from Dekker Toys I see now and then online. It reminds me of the SpaceX Moon Base Set box art but with action figures!

But which figures are pictured readers and what's that Eagle-like spaceship?