THE LAND OF TA

 Sam Petrucci, the GI Joe box artist,  drew these neat fantasy The Land of Ta sticker sheets for the Dennison in 1981.

There are two different ones.

Did you have any of these readers?

LUSTIGE GESPENSTER PARADE: GERMAN HORROR STICKERS

 I recently saw this sticker set online.

Horror Parade and Lustige Gespenster Parade.

By Americana of Munich.

The albums look great!

Fantastically detailed cards and pages.

They came in 10 pfennig packets. You got three sticker pictures.

Well over a hundred!

The art looks original and not lifted.

What do you think?

Anyone got a set?

Sunday Funday

Not bad at all at today's boot sale.

I picked up some cheap but unusual die-cast and plastic vehicles and a few other bits:

A G1 Optimus - Any idea how to whiten yellowing?, a Bandai Porsche ScaleRobo 1983 and a Popy Future Machine 1983, both grubby as they come.

A small batch of kit decals

A Four Feather Falls Jigsaw - battered box but my first ever!

Here's a closer look at the Popy Future Machine.

What do you think readers?

 

UGLY STICKERS AND NUTTY INITIALS: THE ARTIST?

I came across the work of the illustrator Basil Wolverton today. Grotesque faces and horrible heads. Really startling cartoon people.

As soon as I saw them I thought of two sets of stickers I had as a kid as I'm sure some of you had as well. Ugly Stickers in particular and Nutty Initials.

Does anyone know if these designs were created by Basil Wolverton?

THE OLYMPICS ARE COMING!

The world maybe sort of  gripped by Olympic fever soon - if Covid will allow it - as the Games commence in Japan. 

I'm not a sport person by any means but having read that Karate will be included this time, incorporating Kata, I am intrigued and would love to see some Olympic Shotokan or Wado Ryu. Regular readers will know that I was nuts about martial arts as a young teenager and I even considered running away to a Zen Monastery in Northumberland!

I've seen quite a lot of live martial arts in my youth including Judo demos and exams in Stretford, Aikido with Chiba Sensei in Chorley, Wing Chun with Sifu Joseph Cheng in Preston and the pinnacle, a huge Wushu spectacular at Belle Vue in Manchester, which was mind-blowing.

I'd have loved to have seen my old Karate and Kung Fu heroes at an Olympic Games: Gichin Funakoshi, Morihei Ueshiba, Keinosuke Enoida, Jhoon Rhee, Ip Man, Jimmy Wang Yu, Joseph Cheng,  Angela Mao, Roald Knutsen, Donn F. Draeger, Mike Finn, Jim Kelly and of course Bruce.

Still, I look forward to a new crop of Karateka and Judoka pounding the mats in their spiritual home, Japan.

Other sports new to the Games this year include climbing - which I would watch - skateboarding, surfing and baseball/softball.

Like the sunshine World Cup in 1970, I was hooked as a kid by the Olympics that came in 1972. I was 11 years old.

I remember how everyone was just amazing there. Superhumans with athletes like Kip Keno, Nelly Kim and Olga Korbett, who have stayed with me ever since. 

I got totally into collecting stickers for a cool sticker book from those Games in 1972. Do you recall those games? Did you have this sticker book?

Are you taken by the Olympic flame readers?

Published by Esso, my Dad got me the stickers for the book when he filled up the Zephyr or Ford Granada. I was 11 when it came out and it remains my quintessential Olympics possession

UNUSUAL STICKERS ON A MOON PROSPECTOR

I saw these unusual stickers on an old Century 21 Toys Moon prospector on auction this year.

The worn box lid has a rectangular sticker stating Q 27 5/1 I think and the toy itself has a small red sticker on the base reading 137.

What do you think they are readers?

TENTH BIRTHDAY NEW SWORD SIGHTINGS: PROBE FORCE 3 MEIJI STICKER

Japanese Meiji candy sticker depicting Project SWORD Probe Force 3.

Donated by Terry H.

Can anyone read the rear of the sticker?

Terranova's Soccer Action Replay Action Transfers

Woodsy 

Sometimes it amazes me what I thought to collect and save. 

Having used Letraset from it's early days (inspired by William Rushton's Private Eye layouts) I had no interest in using it for play, though I did buy these Soccer sets for kids' gifts.

I'm surprised to find it was saved with the plastic Arsenal badge. I lived pretty much equal distant from both Arsenal and Spurs so couldn't really decide on loyalty to one or the other, so chose neither!

Terranova47

NYC

USA

rubbing revealed the true me

I recently had cause to use some old Letraset I found during one of our recent Moonbase clear outs.

Its been years since I'd used Letraset and had to make sure I knew which side to rub on!

The rubbing I enjoyed but I found it nigh on impossible to line up the letters in a straight word. They were allover the place! 

Still it was nice to do some rubbing again and it brought back memories of similar motions as a kid.

I remember sets called Action Transfers, which came with a colourful card background and a selection of transfers that could be rubbed down to stick on the card. Sadly none have stuck in my mind as time has rubbed out the memory although dinosaurs and space ships do ring a bell. 

I also enjoyed rubbing transfers onto things like my arms and bedroom cupboard. Peace symbols, monsters, Kung Fu characters and so on. There were also water transfers which slid off when wet. The exact physics elude me now but I know I had some water transfers on the back of my hands at some point.

Further rubbing took place to create imprints of coins and flat brasses. In fact I think this art is called brass rubbing. A similar technique could also be used to rub a pencil over the imprint of hand-writing on a note pad to reveal what had been written previously. Very James Bond! Basildon Bond even!

Did you do any rubbing as a kid readers?

KEEP YOUR STICKERS ON

I've always loved stickers. When I was a kid I covered my bike in cool metallic ones [but what where they?] and my books in a range of glossy, puffed-up and Letraset stickers. Is it a lost art form I wonder? Well, I've recently come across a few interesting stickers online for this blog, kicking off with some vintage THUNDERBIRDS sets from Japan pictured above. Some of the images seem to be taken from either the TV shows or TV21 - can anyone tell? I particularly like the Zero-X, which is again of a very particular style. Is it a TV or comic version? [image coutesy of Yahoo Japan].

As I've said many times one of my favourite SWORD box art covers is Rollout by Robert McCall on the lid of the Cape Kennedy Set. So I was chuffed when I came across these old Kennedy Space Centre stickers online and especially the top right graphic of a moonlit Saturn V leaving the Vehicle Assembly Biulding one dark night. The inclusion of a boat on water is another attractive and unusual feature [is that realistic?] [picture courtesy of Ebay USA].

Here's the C21 boxart compared to the above Saturn V - VAB sticker placed side by side for easier viewing.

Yet another sticker depicting the Saturn V and the VAB is this beautiful picture below. The sun is shining, the sky's blue and the gulls are flying. It's such a gorgeous image I reckon it would have been a fine replacement for McCall's Rollout on the C21 box. The sticker appears via Flickr with kind permission from Jason Liebig. Jason has a cool photostream of amazing vintage packaging and was an X-Men artist over at Marvel no less. FOOM!

This final sticker has appeared before on the blog via Wotan. Made by Letraset it features a whole fleet of NASA vehicles. The two which really caught my eye are the moon car in the botton right corner, which, with its lampshade wheels is clearly related to the SpaceX toy Moon Buggy. Less obvious is the moon bus-type vehicle just above it. It appears to have bendix wheels like the SpaceX MEV2. Is it a real NASA concept I wonder?

So SWORDIES, anymore stickers that you'd like to share with us would be most welcome. Thanks.