ED'S PEN

Woodsy and Fellow Moonbasers,

In response to your inquiry about novelty pens, I got this at a job fair shortly after retiring from the military and thought it was cool enough to warrant its own bit of space art.

From Vegas Base

Ed

Is it a Ship, Is it a Plane, No! Its a ......

 This is an odd one.

I thought it was a spaceship toy online.

Bit it isn't!

It's a pen!

Its a ball point pen too!

Have you got any novelty pens?

CAPTAIN SCARLET: NEVER WIPE HIM OFF!

These are unusual so I saved the Ebay snaps.

Wipe Off colouring cards by Berwick from 1967.

and its Captain Scarlet!

Look at those ace line drawings of the characters and the vehicles!

Did you have anything that you wiped off?

We'll make You the Master of the Sharpies!

It always impresses me what Sharpie pens can do.

Both of the buses were scrappers. The front one has been Sharpie's.

Have you used them on your cars?

Bingo in Space

I couldn't help saving these pics of this bizarre spaceship bingo pen I saw on a Spanish auction. Yep, it's a bingo pen with a near spaceship on top! Eyes down!

 

What do you think? 

MR. REMBRANDT: THE DRAWING DROID

Reading my beloved Board Games books by Desi Scarpone I saw a game I'd not noticed before. Mr. Rembrandt by Ideal from 1970.

I've never seen Mr. Rembrandt in the flesh and on first impressions I thought the robot involved in the game was the famous Mr. Machine, also by Ideal.

Looking closer I see its a different plastic robot and one capable of drawing. Mr. Rembrandt is a mixture of a toy robot and spirograph. How cool is that! 

Besides pictures on online auctions like the ones shown I also found this video footage of the artistic droid. What do you think of this toy game?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l54N4zzK5dk

PANTOGRAPH: YOU CAN DRAW ANYTHING YOU LIKE!

 

Ah, the Pantograph. I used to see these advertised at the back of comics and often wondered what it would be like to draw 'anything you like'.

Not sure its a toy, I think I did once had a go. The device let you draw things bigger too.

I've not seen one for years so when I saw a bundle on an old auction I saved the image.

Have you had a go readers?

GO APE WITH A SHOOTING PEN

I loved a good pen as a kid and always a toy gun so a toy pen gun like this would have been a huge hit.

I had to chuckle when I saw this display card online. The artwork is just ace!

Not only do we get a mischievous looking Tom Cruise junior but also a fabulously monstrous ape!

By Success, I love the model number 01P. I wonder what 02P is?

Did you have a toy pen gun?

ROCKET REPAIR DEPT

I love the name at the bottom of this old pen packaging, Rocket Repair Dept. of Hoboken, NJ, which I saw on auction.

When I was choosing names from a list I'd drawn up for my Ebay business back in 2005 Rocket Repairs Garage or something like it was on the list!

Small world!

Eventually I went for Mad About Monsters!

Do you have a space pen or a space clock or watch or other household space item?

I'M A ROCKET PEN

and I think its gonna be a long long line

REMEMBER SLIDING PICTURE PENS?

These are Terranova47's sliding picture pens. I so remember these kind of pens. Like snowglobes they were part of that glittery watery magic of childhood back in the day. Great to see some again. Thanks Terranova47!

Did you have any readers?

did you mirror write?

I was recently talking to someone about backwards writing.

You know, writing that's written as if its in a mirror.

My mates and me loved to mess with this when we were kids in the Sixties. Its was a sort of code. Not only did some of us write it but it was spoken as well.

It began with our names.

Mine was Sdoow Luap. It could have been Luap Sdoow if I reversed in the same order, which some kids did, but strictly speaking the true mirror name was Sdoow Luap.

My mates included such gems as Yllredda Nibor and Nossac Nhoj!

These could read normally by placing a mirror at the end and reading the names in the mirror.

There are some difficulties in describing mirror writing though. Is it actually reversed or is it flipped i.e. on its back?

Similar problems arise with objects in a mirror. When looking at ourselves its hard to describe what we see as reversed. Left has become right and so on. I'm not sure what the term would be. Half turned?

Back to writing, there were other styles too like upside down writing. Typewriters added another dimension too.

What do you think about mirror writing and were you any good at it readers?

CHILDHOOD PENS

I always got new pens at Christmas. It was like a new dawn of writing implements every December to see me through the coming year of scribblings.

Sometimes the pens were wrapped up in Christmas paper and sometimes they came as they were. Sometimes they were jammed into my Christmas stocking. However they arrived, I always welcomed them with open fingers. They were my best pens.

The pens themselves were essentially of four types:

Posh pens - these were usually silver metal ball-points, which had a neat pocket clip usually in the shape of an arrow. More often than not they came in a shiny blue or black box and were made by Parker. The favored present from Aunties and Uncles. Parker pens were reserved for writing special letters to important people like Santa Claus, Aunties and Uncles thanking them for the pen and very occasionally the Queen. Every now and then these pens were upgraded to the impossibly posh fountain pen. With their magazines of fiddlesome ink cartridges and even worse, a whole bottle of Steadtler ink, they remained pristine for years due to an extreme lack of use. No-one was posh enough to warrant being written to with what was in effect a quill.

Big multi-coloured pens - these were thick missile -shaped plastic pens stuffed with a rainbow of ink cartridges. To change colour you pressed one of the coloured spring-loaded catches which ran round the top of the pen like a spirits bar. The very stuff of a Sixties childhood, one of these pens and a Silverline drawing book could captivate children for days and nights on end. I can well imagine that somewhere along the line they changed the course of history.

Calligraphy pens - these were more arty than posh and usually given as prezzies by anyone in the family interested in art. I had several boxed sets during the Sixties and Seventies and using every beautiful nib available I practised my flourishes and swirls as vulnerably as Bede himself and nearly drowned in a lake of ink. I would be interested to know how many children who had sets like this went on to become 1. sign-writers 2. comic letterers 3. forgers.

Last but not least we have that most modern of pens [well, they were in the Sixties], Felt pens. These free-flowing rods of colour were a complete revelation and became the defining medium for armchair illustrators like me. Forget waxy crayons or dusty chalks, felt pens were the real deal and must have been invented by kids. They came in all shapes and sizes but my personal faves were huge sets of millions of colours. They came in tins as big as tables and were never far from my side. It is possible that felt pens made us who we are today.

What are your memories of childhood pens readers?