Need a Tow Buzz?

I like this little half-egg moon tow.

It's almost Marx.

There's a crane, an antenna and a red light. What's not to love!

I've seen a few of these vehicles over the years. Some are completely egg-shaped. 

Have you anything like this?

Spaceballs Eagle 5

I had to look twice at this!

I thought it a Barbie dream winnebago but it looks like it's a 3D printed custom toy.

Wow! 

By GreeblerElf of Utah, USA, it's got lots of fab features for the space travelling camper!

Do you like it? 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1664253027/spaceballs-eagle-5-winnebago-vehicle 

Under Siege with the Horror Horn

 I have a few Go To films. Like old friends they're easy company and I enjoy knowing the lines.

Under Siege from 1992 is such a one, a naval actioner starring the cool cook Aikido 7th Dan Steven Seagal and one frantic terrorist Tommy Lee Jones. And oh yeah, the always exciting Gary Busey as a scorned XO. There's just something about the basic plot, the snappy dialogue and the sparse Terminator-style synth soundtrack that does it for me. Do you like it? 

Watching again I realised I knew the Captain, played by veteran actor Patrick O'Neal (✝️ age 66).

A face so familiar from appearances in just about every American TV of the 1970's, with that distinct rich voice of his, I knew he'd been in a movie significant to me as a kid.

Bingo!

Chamber of Horrors. Yes! A rarely shown horror about a wax museum and it's crazed owner, the prosthetic hand madman played by ... Patrick O'Neal.

I adored this film as a kid. It was released in cinemas in 1966, so it must have been a good few years later when it was on UK TV. Probably a Midnight Movie or an Appointment with Fear slot in the early 1970's. I was 10 Christmas 1970.

Chamber of Horrors was made even more memorable by a William Castle-style gimmick to keep the audience 'hooked'. It was called The Fear Flasher, along with it's Horror Horn and appeared just before anything gruesome happened! It must have been great at the flicks, popcorn flying everywhere! 

It had me good and proper watching it on TV; hook, line and cleaver! 

Do you remember the Fear Flasher and Horror Horn readers?

https://youtu.be/mwrHydY8uGQ?si=zlsAzUuMYqk08Ih_

Tarheel Photo Box Art

I've often wondered about the process that toy companies commissioned box art or VHS makers commissioned video cover art. I guess it's all online now but at one time it won't have been. For example, one of my favourite American boxes is the Tarheel of Tarboro Probe Force 2 photo art. How did they achieve that in 1967? Was it an artist or a photographer do you think?

Terranova47, having experience of box art and commissioning, gave me his thoughts:

Hello Woodsy

Well, I know that when I worked on VHS Tape packaging, the art was supplied as it was from the publicity material created for the cartoon, movie or TV show.

 It was a matter of cropping and fitting in all the information, copyright etc. Only on a few occasions, where the tape was a documentary, was a photo chosen from stock photo libraries.

The Project Sword box was probably a photo of the toy against a background painting. A photo retoucher added the motor stream to a print and it was re-photographed. In this case any other toys from the range may have had the same background. So it was both an artist and a photographer plus a designer for the text box and side and ends of the lid.

Now, photo retouchers used to take a print, sometimes they would bleach away areas then airbrush or paint in a replacement image. They were talented, skilled and expensive. 

These days the cost of the software, Photoshop for instance, would be the equal cost of one retouching job done the old way. Now it's possible, and I've done this, to hire someone online to substitute a person in a group shot for $25! 30 years ago that would have been hundreds of dollars!

Terranova47

USA

*

What are your thoughts about the American Project SWORD Probe Force 2 photo-box art?

Epoch waits for no Man!

After a recent natter with Woodsy, I realised I hadn't looked into the history of the Japanese toymaker, Epoch.

https://epoch.jp/global/en/company/toy-history.php

I knew they were mostly into games, and went heavily into electronic games in the 9

80's, but this timeline is a nice overview.

I had this Pokapon game, but mine might have been a bootleg!

This spaceship game is a corker!

https://vintagespacetoys.com/products/epoch-space-ship

A DragonBall Z sofubi figure...

and nowadays they seem most famous for Sylvanian Familes and Super Mario!

...and I suspect there's a lot more out there!

You got any Epoch? 

Looey

Oz Base

Space Snips

More Spanish space, here's a cut-out album with lots of spaceships to clip and snip.

I see a Bandai toy - name? -  far left. Anything you see?

The Vorpal Blade

 Something spooky happened today. I was having my morning coffee, when I switched off the ever-depressing news and flicked onto Tales from the Unexpected.

In my mind I hoped it would be an episode I watched decades ago called the Vorpal Blade.

I couldn't believe it. It was!

There are 112 episodes of Tales of the Unexpected, so I guess the chances of me simply stumbling across this episode on TV are pretty slim.

But there it was just as I remembered it.

Starring Peter Cushing in his last ITV role, this 1983 slice of unpleasantness centres around Heidelberg University around 1930, where rival fraternities are battling it out in the traditional duelling sport of Schläger or Mensur.

The aim of this stiff-looking fencing style is to cut the opponents face with the sword. In upper-class Germany these scars were marks of honour back then.

Needless to say, the particular bout in the show goes horribly wrong with blood spilt and reputations ruined.

The final scene of Cushing and his friend chatting as old men was a neat twist and yes, unexpected.

The title the Vorpal Blade was borrowed from tne Lewis Carol poem the Jabberwocky.

I wonder when I'll see this episode again? 

Do you have a favourite or recurring episode?

Flight at the Museum

There is an interesting old board 

game called Sputnik I saw on a Museum's superb site about German space board games. I love its plastic rockets! They remind me of a project SWORD Probe Force 3! 

Is it a game you know readers?

You can check out the games site here

 https://www.wirtschaftswundermuseum.de/weltraumspiele.html

What do you think?