Nazgul at the Gates

 A few snaps of my home-made Ringwraith and his dark charger ( borrowed from Sindy!).

It was fun being with them but mordor getting away! 

Enjoy! 

My Knickerbocker RingWraith: Have you Xena?

My latest toy bash is a go at a Knickerbocker Ringwraith.

This wraith has wide hips, so I opted for an old Xena as the base figure.

Mid-way, I've added bandaging, Fimo and beads, a pen top helmet, wrist guards, a new hand, a sword and an axe. There's a Fimo cloak too.

Next stop, painting black.

Watch this Wraith!

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Done! One Black Rider at your service!

Waddaya reckon?

Now where's that ring?

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A bit of wraith background. 

Here's the original and rare Knickerbocker RingWraith action figure 1978, as can be seen online.

 I was offered a carded one for $1000 this month! Needless to say I declined!

A famous TV find was Jordan Hembrough's in his superb US series 1 of Toy Hunter, episode 2, where he uncovers a loose Knickerbocker Ringwraith in the Smoky Mountains. 

Here's a very short clip.

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx8g0iOa560hzoikZDYsCbkFAXYwKMpxif?feature=shared

Watch the whole find in the entire episode courtesy of You Tube, circa 13.08 minutes in (after the Howdy Doody puppet)

https://youtu.be/di1Yhc3uBNw?feature=shared

The wraith figure is based on those seen in Ralph Bakshi's fabulous but truncated Lord of The Rings animated movie from 1978. Have you seen it?

Knickerbocker's Gollum

I'm researching Knickerbocker's Lord of the Rings figures at the moment with a future project in mind.

Looking at their Gollum figure I was struck how much it looked like a toy figure I had as a kid, the restless skeleton, a sort of King Tut from Ellisdons of Liverpool.

Here they are side by side, Gollum on the right. Knickerbocker's line was based on Ralph Bakshi's animated film version of Lord of the Rings - have you seen it?

My Precious!

 

Being in the beautiful Peak district National Park is putting me in mind for all things Tolkien.

The woods, the valleys, the rocky edifices, I can well imagine the Rohirrim chasing Wargs right through them! 

With Middle Earth in mind, this week I'm hoping to acquire a cassette box set of the 1981 BBC radio production of Lord of the Rings, which I heard at the time and have hankered after ever since. My Precious! 

Do you recall the radio serial readers? What were you doing in 1981?

Buxton Bounty

On a frosty day trip to the Peak town of Buxton nestled betwixt snowy hills the Missus and me mooched among the many charity shops.

Prices of vintage toys and games have shot up in Charities of late, especially old board games, of which I saw a few like Airport, Hotel, Escape from Colditz and Totopoly.

I did pick up some some old tech, namely a 1989 VHS pre-cert Kung Fu Horror film called The Men from the Monastery, a 1974 Shaw Brothers production. I collect old horror and thriller videos, preferably big box but small and pre-cert are fine too. This is the first 1980's horror video I've seen in a charity shop for years, so I was chuffed.

I also got a set of BBC Radio cassette tapes of their 1981 production of Lord of the Rings. This is the 2001 re-issue and just part 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, which I first heard, along with the rest, in the Spring and summer of 1981, whilst volunteering for the RSPB at the Ouse Washes. It was all very Middle Earth!

I like Tolkien tapes and books and have a few. The older the better and preferably with classic art on the covers. I have sold some old computer games like the Hobbit and regret it, as the box art was fabulous.

Have you any old VHS or Videos or Lord of the Rings books and cassettes?

The Search for the Radio Times Lord of the Rings Art

In 1980/81 I worked and lived on an RSPB nature reserve, where in the winter evenings I listened to the BBC radio serial of Lord of the Rings in our cabin. Volunteers, hippies and punks gathered round the wireless to listen to Tolkien's tale.

It was a really wonderful production and fitted right into my Middle Earth craze at the time. I loved it.

I've loved all things Tolkien forever and remember seeing the amazing artwork connected to that BBC radio play, in particular this fantastic golden illustration on the big BBC box-set of cassette tapes that were released, one I still hope to own one day.

But here's a blog entry from Brian Sibley about searching for and eventually owning something much more unique, the actual original BBC and Radio Times artwork itself!

His story of how he tracked it down from the Radio Times is a truly fascinating tale. 

I hope you enjoy it on Brian's blog. I sure did.

https://briansibleysblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/cover-story-lord-of-rings-on-radio.html?m=1 

My I've Gotta Have that Klett Cotta Sauron Moment

Visiting my  girlfriend back in 1979, (now my Wife) in her home country of West Germany, I was fascinated, among other things, by her admirable bookcase.

An avid reader of hippyish paperbacks myself, I I was amazed to see these foreign versions of novels I knew and the many I didn't too. 

There was Mister God This is Anna, the Dharma Bums, Siddhartha, Solaris and Fata Morgana among the tomes.

But most alluring of all were the three books of Der Herr Der Ringe, Tolkien's incredible Lord of the Rings trilogy.

This 1977 German version comprised of three paperbacks published by the unusually - named Klett Cotta publishing house. The three books were green and nestling in a green card slipcase. Not only was the green colour striking, the cover art was to my eye, wunderbar. 

Simple and dark with an inexplicable slug-like mass writhing on two of them, all three brandishing Sauron's eye, I loved them.

Now long since gone, I've often thought about these memorable books many times since.

Coming right up to date, amazingly I recently saw a set in a German charity shop at a very reasonable price. 

Knowing that our car would already reel from everything we were taking home to Blighty I decided, sehr sehr foolishly, to pass up the chance of owning them again.

I couldn't think about anything else. Like a wasp buzzing in my head I eventually returned to the shop a week later and as is decreed by Sods Law, they were gone.

Next time I see them I shall heed the great Wizard Gandalf's words ' thou shalt not pass! '

Have you got any Lord of the Rings books?

Things of Power

I was in two minds about The Rings of Power on Amazon. Episode 1 was an ice-breaker I guess. We had come to expect so much after Peter Jackson's two terrific trilogies.

As I've watched the next few episodes shown so far I have begun to enjoy RoP very much and now look forward to Fridays when it airs!

Wanting more Middle Earth, I've re-watched the Hobbit trilogy with the Missus. With the Hobbit set far in the future from Rings of Power you can still see the various pieces forming and moving round the table of Tolkien's earlier world.

I wonder if there'll be any toys?

I've also seen terrible reviews of Rings of Power too. Panning it. What do you think so far readers?

I Have The Power!

The Power of the Rings is Amazon's new big bash at serializing Tolkien.

It comes as another platform launches House of the Dragon so the battle for our fantasy subs is on.

As I have Prime I have seen the first two episodes of Power.

Like anything new about something you've grown up with it's always going to be odd to start with.

In screen terms for me The Power of the Rings is a prequel to Peter Jackson's definitive Lord of the Rings film trilogy from years ago. In that sense it's like A Phantom Menace et al after the glory of the first three Star Wars films. It was never going to be easy.

In literary terms I assume Power is Tolkein's Silmarillion and other older tales prior to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings but I'm only guessing. Despite the Silmarillion being on my bookshelf for 45 years I've never read it. I did try as a teenager but found the style a bit stiff. I regret not going back to it when I was young.

I will wait until I've seen The Power of the Rings in full before I decide what I think. It comes out an episode or two at a time at the moment.

At a cost of purportedly a billion dollars the stakes are high for fantasy like this. I wonder if Peter Jackson is watching? 

Are you readers?

ATHENA, JIMMY CAUTY, GANDALF AND ME

 Ah, those wonderful Athena Tolkien posters!

Lord, how I adored them back in the Seventies.

My flat walls were plastered with them.

I had a beloved woodblock version of Gandalf too, which sadly went to Mordor.

The artist was one Jimmy Cauty from the Wirral and like me, just 17 at the time! What a talent he had! And like me he's still going!

I'm pretty sure I still have some of them rolled up in the attic from forty years ago! Its like Rivendell up there! Nothing ages!

This related Glastonbury poster was a particular favourite. I hope to reach the Tower on the Tor again one day.

Jimmy Cauty did the beautiful artwork for the LP The King of Elfland's Daughter as well. Its an album I've never heard.

This is some original artwork for the actual book The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany. I still prefer Jimmy Cauty's though.

The book is on my bucket list!

Did you have any Jimmy Cauty art?

A WEE DRIVE 6: LOOSE ENDS

Just some final oddments from our Scottish driving tour before I sign off this photo album.

I saw this moss-festooned gravestone with its inverted dove in the graveyard of Grace Darling, the famous maritime heroine.

I've often wondered what happened to Candy and Andy, those strange dolls used by Gerry Anderson's Century 21 pictured here eating ice-cream!

Well they may well be here in this shop window in Braemar dressed in their best highland tartans!

What do you think?

How about some centuries old graffiti?

This was part of a bunch of scribbles scrawled into the walls of Braemar castle.

The guide told us they were made by soldiers in the 1700's stationed in the castle and bored stiff.

Here's a shot of our final accommodation, over the border in England. This fine old huge and isolated Northumbrian farmhouse was a real gem, brimming with ancient and eerie charm. Straight out of a ghost story! The full cooked breakfast was to die for!

and finally, as a footnote to our summer tour in Scotland, a big country reminiscent of the splendour and beauty of Tolkien's Middle Earth, messing about with my phone I snapped a negative image that reminded me of an old LP I used to have, Bo Hansson's Lord of the Rings!

Have you heard this old LP readers?

IS DISNEY'S FANTASIA BETTER THAN LORD OF THE RINGS?

If you've listened to my latest radio story Sarge: the Golden Astronauts you'll know I've got the underworld on my mind! 

Looking for other visions of the dark one I stumbled across this You Tube clip from Fantasia, the Disney epic from 1940. Its staggering how modern it all looks, helped immeasurably by being in colour. The winged devil is quite stunning as are the bare breasted harpies [which must have been a problem in 1940] and the imagery is rather scary, especially for small kids!

Despite having sold a couple of copies of the soundtrack record album at sci-fi fairs, I know very little about the film but can appreciate that its at the very origins of animation. Do you know the film well readers?



When watching the clip I couldn't help noticing a similarity with the 1978 animated movie The Lord of the Rings by Ralph Bakshi. The Disney Devil could easily be Balrog!

Here's a You Tube clip showing Frodo meeting the frog-like Gollum.

and another You Tube clip showing Eowyn facing the mighty Witch King from the different but related animated film The Return of the King released by Rankin Bass in 1980.

To be honest, despite loving the two Lord of the Rings cartoon films I prefer the animation of Fantasia.  What do you think readers?

The Mythology of Arthur Frodo Skywalker

Myths and legends often describe the war between Good and Evil. At their heart is usually a central protagonist and antagonist around which all other characters and landscapes spin.

This central conflict is often complicated and interdependent and fuelled by honour and malice in equal measure. An imbalance in this power struggle usually leads to victory for one side or the other for an indefinite period.

 

 

One myth, that of King Arthur and the Knights of The Round Table, is so rooted in British legend that it is part of our cultural make-up. The King, Excalibur, The Lady of The Lake, Merlin. They all conjure up a time when knights were bold and sorcery was rife across the land.

 

 

At the heart of the legend is the idea that the land is the King and the King is the land. They are one and the same and as such will prosper when the bond is strong and perish when weak. The King without the land and the land without a King would lead to darkness and doom.

 

 

I would like to suggest that this ancient myth has influenced many modern tales of power. Two that spring readily to mind are JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Goerge Lucas's Star Wars. Like the Arthur legend, both contain a central character thrown from everyday life into a world of war, where dark forces are rising ominously. They and no other can unite the armies of Good and defeat the legions of Evil.

 

 

As with Arthur's legend and its central tenet that the land and the King are one, we find similar philosophies in both Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. These can be summed up as 'one ring to bind them all' and 'may the force be with you' respectively. Like that found in Arthur, both these beliefs are rooted in the unison of Man and Nature, both bound together across time and space.

 

 

I have attempted to pull out specific similarities between the characters and devices used in these three 'legends', so see what you think.

 

King Arthur   LOTR             Star Wars

Arthur -          Frodo           - Luke Skywalker

Merlin -          Gandalf        - Obiwan

Lancelot -       Aragorn       - Han Solo

Mordred -       Sauron         - Darth Vader/ The Emperor

Uther     -          ?                 - Darth Vader

Guinevere -    Galadriel      - Princess Leia

Morgana -      Saruman       - ?

Knights           Orcs             Stormtroopers

The Dragon - The Rings    - The Force

 ?                   - Shadow      - The Dark Side

Excalibur      - Narsil         -  Light Sabre

Round Table - Fellowship - Jedi

Avalon         - The West     - ?

?                    - Balrog        - Rancor

?                    - Gollum      - ?

The Sword
In The Stone - ?                   ?

Holy Grail       One Ring     ?

Lady of The
Lake                ?                   ?

?                      Mordor         Death Star



Any further suggestions/ thoughts/ gaps/ rebuttals/jokes gratefully received as always! May the force/ land/ ring be with you!

The Fellowship of the Fens

Back in 1981 I lived on an RSPB Bird Reserve, the Ouse Washes, in the English Fens. For many reasons it was one of the best years of my life. I had just turned twenty and had left my home town of Preston for good. 'I am The Beat' by the Look was in the charts and The Lord of the Rings was serialised on BBC Radio 4. As Winter gave way to Spring on the Washes, Wednesday nights were, for half an hour, the preserve of Gandalf, Frodo, Balrog and Sauron. It was a truly atmospheric radio series, adapted by Brian Sibley, made all the more 'precious' as there was no TV in the Washes volunteers' hut, which we called Cygnus. For a few bright months, as the Reed Warblers flew, the Ouse Washes was alive with sounds of Middle Earth and the horn of Gondor!

Did anyone else listen to it?