Breaking the Mould

I was intrigued by the 9 inch rubber moulds for sale on eBay.

What would you say the figures are?

Rubber Soul

Blimey, I so recall this rubber frog idling online. I had so many rubber animals and insects as a kid. Frogs, snakes, tons of snakes, crabs, ants, flies, centipedes and even a severed hand! 

I can still feel the waxy surface of them and deep oily smell.

Happy rubbery days!

Did you have any?

I've gone Bats!

 We picked up a jiggler sucker bat tother day 

Perfect for Halloween!

It reminded me of a 1979 toy I would have loved as a kud in the Sixties,

Mattel's Gre-gory!

The big bad vampire bat.

Here's a comic and. I couldn't find a TV spot.

Besides it's rubbery action, Greg's unique selling point was a blood pump in its chest!

 I wonder if it sold well?

Operated by a pump button on its back, this feature has dried up now in most Greg-gories by the sounds of it ( as attested by You Tube videos on the toy).

Is this haunted tree mouse a toy you had or remember Gruesome readers?

Ed's Got The Bends

Woodsy,

Here's my bendies. 

I am not at all a fan of pliable/bendable soft plastic figures but have acquired these over the years. The green alien has a wire armature in him, while the Colourform repo's are just a pliable soft plastic. The flippy-floppy Diener stuff I sold off years ago.

From Vegas Base

Ed

THE WORLD OF BENDABLES SPACE ALIEN

 FigureRealm is a good source of toy info.

The 1979 World of Bendables Space Alien set is one such toy and new to me.

Have a look.

https://www.figurerealm.com/actionfigure?action=actionfigure&id=100239&figure=spacealien

What do you think?

KRUSHER STANDS TALL!

 

You know me. I see monster clones everywhere.

The 1979 Krusher  - above - got me thinking about Ymir. Was this alien predator its inspiration? You know, the big fella below that destroys the Colosseum in 20 Millions to Earth released in 1957.

But now I'm thinking the monster was maybe inspired the later beast in the 1971 movie Equinox, especially when you compare the artwork - this Super 8 film box for instance - to the Krusher box art above from 1979.

The two raised fists between the lettering? Coincidence?

What do you think readers?

Should I just go to a dark room and drink beer instead?

SOPHIE THE GIRAFFE: THE INSIDERS' VIEW

We bought a soft plastic Sophie the Giraffe a few years back at a boot sale. Old and cute.

Check out what these two guys have to say though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlQJ3saQ66I

SPACE RAIDERS 1978

I saw this news release for Deiner Space Raiders online and thought I'd post it.

These papers are from  early 1978. I assume these were rushed out to cash in on Star Wars the year before.

The order form and new release appear to be both for same trader, R.E.Mills of Ohio. Diener themselves were based in Chatsworth, California with a showroom in New York.

I see these erasers all the time online although I don't recall seeing them around in the late Sevenrties here in Blighty.

I have a feeling the figures are inspired by space movie monsters maybe but are the ships from movies too?

Incidentally, the capital D logo of Diener is remarkably similar to that of Durham toys based in  New York and North Carolina.

THE WASPS ARE AMONG US

First flies. Now wasps!

We have a wasps' nest directly where the rain's leaking into the kitchen. The roofer and the pest controller are arriving in Thunderbird 2 later today.

I can't think of single toy I had based on wasps. Not even a rubber one from Chester Zoo! Did you have any?

I did get stung as a kid. I was in the garden playing. The only memory I have is of Arthur the Bread Man being first on the scene. He's just delivered our loaf, orange juice and vanilla slices. He beat my Mum to the garden anyway, holding his cap and money belt! No idea what he did. The sting was on my backside!

I've been stung many times since throughout my life, the last time just two years ago in Staithes. Now that was a killer. Being sat on a bench near a cliff edge didn't help the situation either. I had to remember to run away from the edge when it stung me! Boy did it hurt and its not even on the Schmidt Sting Scale!

Have you been stung by a wasp readers or maybe something else?

RUBBER TOY ANIMALS

Were off to a Tropical World today. Its a standalone jungle thing but similar to the hot houses that used to feature in Zoos when I was a kid. Places like Chester, Belle Vue and Blackpool.

Hot houses were always full of strange exotic smells like warm bananas and butterfly kak. there were probably bigger smells in there too like alligator and monkey.

After seeing the real thing the biggest treat always was to choose a couple of rubber toy animals in the zoo shop.

You know, big locusts, giant spiders and long floppy snakes. For some reason it seemed to be just insects, reptiles and amphibians that were rubberised.

There were boxes and boxes of them and slowly but surely I had my own rubber zoo at home.

My favourite was a large rubber frog. It was cold to the touch and so clammy I couldn't stop handling it!

Did you get rubber animals at the zoo readers?

HORNETS ARE AMONG US

Being off-world is a real buzz.

Much further south than Moonbase, the Missus and me are for the first time experiencing the company of Hornets.

There is a ragtag bunch of them outside. As yet they have stayed there, unlike their smaller cousins the Wasp, which I am ejecting from the cabin with the trusted glass and paper technique of old. In the past I've been stung by wasps more times than I care to dab savlon on!

Hornets are much bigger than wasps. Like that skinny kid on the back of American comics who had sand kicked in his face, these Hornets are like wasps pumped up on Joe Weider protein shakes. They're massive - but strangely passive.

I had thought that Hornets had pinched waists and teardrop-shaped abdomens with a mean hooked stinger but I was wrong. 

Filled with the wasp hordes of Seventies fantasy artist Rodney Matthews my imagination has run amok and wrecked the hive. No wonder though when I had stuff like this on my walls! I still have a poster like this rolled up in the attic! Did you or do like Rodney Matthews?

Maybe Rodney's things are actually wasps but to me they were always Hornets.

The real one's look like this, Hornets that is, at least here in England:

Confusingly, especially for the Hornet novice like us, there is also a Hornet Moth where we are in Norfolk. It looks a heckuvva lot like a Hornet!

Having read Norfolk Moths and the Norfolk Wildlife Trust's sites [from whence the two images have been gratefully borrowed] the main difference between the Hornet and the Hornet Moth is the waist. The moth doesn't have one!

Yep, no Victorian pinched-corsetry for this moth. Its one huge black and yellow bockwurst all the way to its head!

Armed with this new information we shall have to inspect our neighbours more closely and check their waistlines!

Thinking back I'm pretty sure I never had any wasp toys. I had a whole jungle full of rubber insects like flies, centipedes, crickets, all harried by frogs, snakes and even crocodiles. 

But no wasps.

Why was that?

Are we so scared of wasps that toy makers refused to make them?

Or do you have a different wasp history readers?

Do you have Hornets nearby?

japanese blog about ufo project sword rubbers

This a typically eclectic Japanese toy blog that I adore.

http://blog.livedoor.jp/divajoanne/tag/%E9%A7%84%E7%8E%A9%E5%85%B7

Within it is the first article I've found in Japanese about the Japanese UFO Project SWORD rubbers that I collect. At some point I will try to get it translated.

Interestingly some of the rubbers are of the less common transparent type.

http://blog.livedoor.jp/divajoanne/archives/1062313850.html

The Japanese blogger has also blogged about rubber hands.

http://blog.livedoor.jp/divajoanne/archives/1062387128.html

This may or may not shed light on the mysterious hand model number system found on the undercarriages of the UFO Project SWORD rubbers, which I vlogged about some time ago on You Tube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG0YD9_bsPg

rubber warriors

Setting sail into the choppy waters of cyber auctions often brings nothing ion the nets but now and then I bag a few morsels.

The carded vending toys above are all soft rubber versions of out friends the LP astronauts and the LP aliens. They call them Star Warriors.

Over in Japan the Glicos keeo on coming and I thought I saw a green Moon Bus in this lot but no its a train. the blue spacecraft front left looks a bit like the cab at the head of the Nuclear Ferry toy.

the discarded decade: nineteen eighties plastic toys lurked beneath the car boot stalls in crumpled boxes

I used to love going to car boot sales. I went every Sunday morning for years during the 1990's in particular. It was the high point of the week. I'm not sure why I stopped.

Anyway, some of the small nuggets of fun I often found for some reason have formed links in my aging brain. They're not linked really but I suppose they tell a basic story of space toy design in the Nineteen Eighties, toys that became the unwanted detritus tossed beneath boot sale stalls in the Nineties.

First up I regularly found the cheeky little T-Bob from M.A.S.K. from Kenner's 1986 range.

The little fella was clearly inspired by Star Wars' R2D2 and his stiff little fingers reminded me of my dear old Minibot from the Sixties like this one.

I often confused the black wheels of T-Bob with another wheeled Star Wars vehicle at Car Boots, the MTV 7 Mini Rig like this one also by Kenner from 1981.

Another larger version of R2D2, at least in my eyes, regularly nestling at the bottom of junk boxes were the Roboforce robots by Ideal from 1984. You know the ones, they had a large rubber suction cup base and concertina arms like the one shown. I imagine that these form the basis of some collections nowadays eh?

Even more soft rubbery plastic was deployed to create another resident of the discarded piles beneath the stalls, the Trendmasters 1992 Space Trooper seen below. I think it reflects the emergence of gaming in toy design and the influence of Warhammer. But are they collectable at all?

My final installment in this disparate tale is a toy which I often wish I'd bought but for some reason didn't. It had everything I like - size, monstrous looks, alien style - and came out in the 1990's when I used to go up town toy hunting. There were stacks of these boxed critters in a discount toy shop and I looked, handled and just walked on by. I never saw the toy again. They must be collectable now?

I give you the awesome Alien Space Hunter from Trendmasters 1993.

What did you regularly find at sales and markets readers?

SWORD NEWS: NEW PINK RUBBER

 I've blogged the Project SWORD UFO rubbers many times.

Here's another bundle I saw online this summer. Whilst none of these are actual SWORD vehicles the UFO backing card is the same.

The four craft remain a mystery to me to be honest. They could be generic space designs but then again they could be specific to a Japanese anime.

The pink vehicle is wholly new to me.

Anyone got any ideas what they are?

UFO RUBBER MYSTERY

This is a mystery.

I saw this rubber online.

It says UFO but I don't recognise the two characters at all.

I don't recognise the spaceship either!

Anyone got any idea who or what they are?

MYSTERY TAKEUCHI UFO TOYS FROM JAPAN

Last week I posted more new translucent green SWORD UFO rubbers from Japan. A further search has thrown up even more toys by the same makers, Takeuchi.

The auction in which they appeared is an old one and this is the best picture I could retrieve. the new toys are the 3 longer packets. They look like small models on sprues, in 3 different colours. They may not be related to the UFO SWORD rubbers at all but they look similar and were grouped together for sale.

I cannot make out what the models are. Here are the same pictures but with the colours reversed in the hope it may help readers ID the 3 longer toys. Any ideas welcomed!

Similarly these packets of UFO SWORD rubbers, posted last week, contain some as yet unidentified green translucent SWORD vehicles.

I have circled them in white and inverted the colours in the hope that readers might recognise these shapes as well.

MORE TRANSLUCENT PROJECT SWORD RUBBERS

There have been even more translucent green Project SWORD rubbers in Japanese auctions this month. Alas, these will not be joining the Moonbase fleet of erasers.

The green translucents are mixed in with standard SWORD rubbers. I have zoomed in on each. I can't decide which SWORD craft they are, Can you?

BIRTHDAY SPECIAL: NEW PROJECT SWORD DISCOVERY 2016: TRANSLUCENT GREEN UFO ERASERS

This January I was lucky enough to get hold of this bundle of Project SWORD Takeuchi  UFO erasers from Japan. This new batch contained not one but two new things debuting for the first time on the blog.

I've blogged about these 'UFO' rubbers many times and the standard assortment is shown below [the single pack bottom row] but this batch contained some wholly new vehicles, which you can see on the top row.

These new vehicles are: pink deltoid jet and blue UFO.

Orange mystery 'car' and another different blue UFO.

A pink fighter jet and a white UFO,

and I also got another batch of standard SWORD erasers comprising of Scramble Bugs, Space Gliders, Scout 1 and Probe Force 3.

But THE really exciting stuff were in two other bags of standard erasers!

The first bag contained 2 TRANSLUCENT green vehicles, namely Probe Force 2 and 3. These are completely new to the blog!

Bag two contained 2 translucent green Scout 2's no less!

and here they are together. They are made of very soft rubber or plastic and are very bendable, as if Haribo had made them!

The undercarriages reveal the 'hands' numbering system we have seen on others from the standard range. This system involves the fingers on a hand to denote the number of that particular eraser i.e. all the fingers outstretched or just two or three etc.

This small, cool illuminated moon lamp I got off Bill for Xmas captures their translucency perfectly....thanks Bill!

SWORD is GREEN!

What do you think readers?