THE SPIRIT OF THE HORSE

 Picking up a Breyer horse at the Diakonie in Germany brought back lots of memories.

I think it took me right back to seeing an Aurora Black Fury box in Andy Foley's TV Toy Zone catalogue when I first started collecting.

I adored those early printed catalogues and I still have them, essential reading as they were on the otherwise boring 7am bus to Morley for work circa 1990. Its were my excitement for old toys was forged.

Seeing the Breyer was like seeing Fury.

Here's a built-up Aurora Black Fury kit as seen on auction. Black Fury was a 1950's comic character, a wild horse doing good deeds in a hostile world [is Black Beauty an older character?]

I think older memories stirred as well. My old Action Man horse was a real gem when I was a kid, standing tall in the imaginary parade ground of my bedroom.

Here's one seen on auction. It was larger then either the Breyer or the Aurora horses. What a beauty!

About a year ago I saw a similar Sindy horse in a Wetherby charity shop, like this one in an old sale. I regret not getting it.

Sindy also got a second horse with that familiar bent knee.

Funny how one thing can bring up so many memories like a pebble in a pond.

As a footnote to this horse's tale I've now identified my Breyer. Its called Valegro and is not as old as I thought, around 2015. Still, its vintage to me.

Have you found something that brought back memories readers?

THE ALIEN GIANT BLASTER TARGET SET

The HG Toys ALIEN Target Set is one of those legendary toys that hardly ever cross mortal hands.

The first time I became aware of it was in Andy Foley's TV Toy Zone catalogue around 1990. That was just a picture.

I then saw the real thing on the toy fair stall of the late Mr. Star Wars Jim Stevenson, a legend himself.

This example was on Worthpoint so I saved the pics.

Has anyone got an alien target?

VINTAGE GERRY ANDERSON RIFLES MADE IN BRITAIN

There are many vintage British toy pistols associated with Gerry Anderson's TV shows but only two rifles made in Britain that I can think of. 

Both are real things of beauty!

First up, the wonderful Lone Star Captain Scarlet Rifle.

I've posted a few things about the pistol used [check out the Flash Gordon connection] but any more info or pictures about the whole rifle would be most welcome. The box is at the back.

Second, the amazing Crescent Toys Thunderbirds Rifle.

This black and white advert is the only picture I can find of this toy gun. Was it ever in production? Is it made from an older toy?

Again, any other pictures of info would be welcomed.

What do you think of these toy guns?

[let me know if you know more British rifles! There is for instance a Fireball XL5 rifle but I don't know who made it.]

BLACK FURY: AURORA'S HORSE

I'm looking forward to long winter nights under a craft lamp.

I plan to fix a few toys and make a few models.

Reader Rananculus has kindly donated a slew of Japanese toys and kits and these have been patiently waiting for play time.

I've also got a box of battered oldtimer kits to sort out including a lovely Aurora Red Knight of Vienna.

I've had in and sold on a good number of Aurora kits over the years and remember being thrilled one Sunday to find a mint boxed Black Fury at a car boot sale. It was complete and untouched and came home. It looked great on my toy stall.

My later issue square box looked like this example on Ebay.

Like many Aurora models, Black Fury was re-bridled for other kits and he was essentially the house horse for Aurora. At least three or four more kis had this same horse like The Gold Knight of Nice

and King Arthur including his the wittily titled Knight in Shining Armour incarnation as seen here on an old Worthpoint auction.

Black Fury also galloped off as part of Aurora's Apache Warrior and Confederate Raider kits, the latter pictured here from Ebay.

I adored this kit's box art simply because it featured in the first vintage toy mail order catalogue I ever got way back in 1991 from Andy Foley's brilliant TV Toy Zone.

The Confederate Raider box art shows a different horse to Fury but it's Fury inside as you can see from this later re-issue by Meobius  - as seen recently on the Bay.

Have you any Aurora Black Fury models or any of their kits or modern day re-issues?

TV TOY ZONE AND THE 7.15 TO LEEDS

Back in the early 1990's when I got the toy collecting bug I used to love sending off for toy catalogues and lists. This was 10 years before Ebay, in the UK at least, and toyfairs, Model Mart and toy lists were the way to collect your favourite stuff. One of my favourite vintage toy dealers back then was TV Toy Zone (proprietor Andy Foley) and his catalogues were works of art in themselves! They were fantastic for the beginner like me - small encyclopaedias of vintage toys' names, pictures and values. Pictured aboved are a selection of these lists I got through the post: From left to right - TV Toy Zone #10 (all black and white). TV Toy Zone #11 (colour covers and centrefold pictured), Toy Scouts Inc #25 (the proprietor was the inspirational Bill Breugman, who published the seminal Toys of the Sixties book) and finally an anonymous sales list in the form of a booklet crammed full of poorly photocopied toy ads from TV 21 and the like.

However my absolute favourite sales list has to the first one I ever got, the A4 sized TV Toy Zone pictured below. I remember reading this gluttonously on the 7.15am bus to work in Leeds early one dark morning in the early 1990's. It was a revelation to me that anyone could make any sort of a living from the buying and selling of old toys and one which would influence me for the following 20 years. I can still sense the feeling of awe I had staring at the treasures in this pamphlet, which had a couple of pages of colour pictures. One item blew me away, a Lakeside Stingray Shop Display panel! Wow! I was amazed that stuff like that was still around and that TV Toy Zone could find it! Anyway, the cover, a page of pics and part of the Anderson listsing are all pictured below.

Although there was no SWORD listed in any of the above, TV Toy Zone and other dealers, notably Jim 'Mr.Star Wars' Stevenson, regularly listed SWORD in their monthly ads in the indispensable UK Model and Collectors Mart magazine throughout the nineties (TV Toy Zone later changed to selling new toys under the name Toy Heroes and Model Mart mag sadly changed to the short-lived glossy TV Memorabilia). However whilst posting this lot my old Catalogue had one more surprise for me. On the back page I'd scribbled some notes from what must have been a phone conversation with 'Modellers' Loft'  in 1996 I'd forgetten I'd had about trade boxes of 12 carded Spacex toys in each at £20 per box - Lunar HQ and others plus loads more carded and loose. £150 the lot, which would have represented a King's Ransom for me at the time (still does!). Needless to say I didn't acquire them, which as usual, now regret!

Did anyone else like toy dealer catalogues?