MOONBASE CENTRAL: bill breugman

Showing posts with label bill breugman. Show all posts

Saturday, 9 August 2025

American Memories

The passing of another American icon of our childhoods, Jim Lovell, has made me nostalgic for some of the other Americans later in my life.

Having been collecting toys since 1989 some of the places I visited Stateside have also gone. Here are just a few threads of gossamer to a lost American world.

Alphaville

Alphaville was a vintage toys and collectables store I visited with my Missus in New York City way back in 2001 on my 40th birthday trip to the Big Apple.

The store was packed with fabulous mint and beautifully packaged toys and kitsch, a true Aladdin's cave. I was thrilled to be there having discovered them first as an online vintage toys shop, one of the earliest I can recall just as eBay was imported here from the States went live in the UK in 2000.

Remnants of Alphaville still exist online including the two gorgeous bits of artwork here, typical of the cool retro-lounge imagery of their website, a work of art in itself and a joy to browse. I really do miss Alphaville. It closed in 2010.

Toy Scouts Inc.

What can I say about Toy Scouts Inc? Only that their founder Bill Breugman single-handedly introduced me to a much wider world of vintage toys, than I hitherto knew about, in his fantastic book from the early 1990's, Toys of the Sixties, which I bought in 1993.

Bill wrote the History of Aurora too, which I have, as well as publishing one of the seminal American vintage toy collecting magazines, Model and Toy Collector.

I used to subscribe to Bill's auction catalogue, the heart of Toy Scouts Inc., and the one or two copies I have are prized possessions, jam-packed as they are with delicious collectables years before eBay. I think Toy Scouts are sadly no more.

Midtown Comics

This was another place we visited in 2001 in NYC, a large and well-known comics shop. I was stunned by the amount of stock they had and came away with a beautiful modern Green Hornet lunchbox and repro Captain Action Green Hornet outfit, both items for my toy fair stall I had back then.

I imagine, unlike the first two here, Midtown have gone from strength to strength given the popularity of comics and graphic novels.

Strand Bookstore

Again, in the January of 2001 the Missus and me spent a happy hour in this fabulous New York book shop, which I seem to recall being not too far from the business district of Wall Street and the ill-fated World Trade Center.

It was - and may well be still - a superb bookstore and the section on collecting toys a real treat. I was a fan of John Toyzilla Marshall back then so jumped at the chance of increasing my books by him, namely Comic Heros of the 1960's, a tome I still love to leaf through.

I hope the Strand has thrived and thrived.

Happy days

Do you know any of these readers?

Saturday, 22 March 2025

Rebel Yell: My custom Johnny Yuma Toy Scattergun

In 1993 I bought the brilliant American toy reference book, Toys of the Sixties, by the great Bill Breugman.

Among it's many many treasures that made an immediate impression on me was the Johnny Yuma Rebel Scattergun by Kilgore from around 1961.

A double-barrelled cap pistol with a distinct shape, it came in at least two dark shades, all of which appear to be very collectable.

It emulated the scattergun prop used by Nick Adams in the popular TV show The Rebel. Anyone know it? Here's Dell's comic version.

Here it is as well advertised top right complete with toy cap, belt and revolver.

Always intrigued by it's design I thought I'd have a bash at a custom job.

I first took this cheap fancy dress toy flintlock to start with.

After some sawing and stripping, I added two barrels, a new silver panel and a Fimo stock. I then, opting for a darker look, painted the whole thing black.

See what you think.

Saturday, 6 July 2024

Baby Boomer Mag Ads

I'm enjoying browsing mags on holiday like an old US Baby Boomer Collectables one.

Seeing M&J Variety's ad again took me right back to reading the American Toy Shop newspaper pre-Ebay days. I adored that big newspaper crammed with amazing vintage stuff.

M&J were - are? - a vintage merchandise wholesalers. Everything could be bought by the dozen or by the case. I was always in awe of what they had and mused endlessly how they got hold of this stuff!

It was based in Elizabeth, NJ. Anyone know if it still is?

Another ad that brought back memories was Toy Scouts Inc. I always loved there ace line drawing logo including The Impossibles, who I adored as a kid. I sent off for their catalogue and amazingly got one sent to me in the UK. That was the Nineties. I still have it.

Toy Scouts Inc. was run by the great Bill Breugman, a vintage toy collecting pioneer in the States. His 1989 book Toys of the Sixties is for me still the collecting bible and I still have my copy I got in 1992. I also have his book on Aurora models I think, both out of print now.

Do you have Bill's books or maybe bought something off Toy Scouts Inc.?

Saturday, 1 September 2018

JOHN TOYZILLA MARSHALL ON YOU TUBE

I have a few of John Marshall's toy books. Like Bill Breugman before him, John helped bring vintage toys to the public eye years before the internet at a time when reference books were king.

I have his Schiffer books on Monster Toys, Comic Book Heros and Action Figures of the 60's. I look at them all the time. Superb pictures and John's great sense of humour shines through. He also loves Japanese monsters especially Red King.

You can still pick them up on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=john+marshall+schiffer

So I was pleased to see that John now has a You Tube channel he's started this year. He goes by the name of Toyzilla.

Have a gander readers. This is John's introduction.