A Garden in Preston, Summer Circa 1970

The place: my parent's garden in Ashton, Preston, England

The day: Sunday

The Season: Summer

The year: circa 1970

The people: Dad [reading], big brother, big sister, niece, nephew, garden gnome and in the last pic that's me in the Donny Osmond cap and badged-up jean jacket trying desperately to look cool and my best mate Robin Adderley doing a much better job of it!

Playing As Kids

Well it's the last day of a four day Royal 'Holiday' here in the UK. The economy will suffer they say and struggle to re-boot tomorrow. Then again, the boost to the nation's spirit could apparantly double our effort once were back at work! Such are the witterings of the talking heads on today's News.

Watching the News is a comparatively recent thing for me, only earnestly seeking it out each day since I was about 40. At one time for me it was the symbol of everything 'old' and stuffy, the faggy fash TV my Mum and Dad watched. The Saturday Pools and World of Sport [especially the Wrestling] came a close second in the 'crap grown-up telly' stakes!

Before any of this though there was just play. Playing in or playing out. I think I was happy doing either. I have a feeling I played 'out' mostly in my mates' and my own gardens, which all seemed to be huge for some reason. Sometimes playing out spilled over into the street, where we 'kicked the can', rode our Choppers, played pitch and toss with pennies and tanners and generally wandered through ginnals and snickets chuntering away about nothing much at all.

Mostly I recall playing at my home or my mates', either in or outdoors, which didn't matter as the 'game' just carried on regardless. For some reason it always seemed to be sunny so hours and hours were spent in the garden playing action man, space, monsters, cars or war with toys strewn about everywhere. I can see me now sat in the garden with my friend Vincent dressing our action men in the ubercool German infantry uniforms we'd just been bought. Later a whole platoon of us advanced to full-scale garden warfare with deck chair barricades, safe zones and a small field 'hospital' stocked with bandages my mate got from his Mum who was a nurse! Our rifles were either plastic Tommy guns or those planks of wood with gate-latch bolts Dad's loved to make in the shed. We must have had grenades but I just can't remember what they were - apples? I do remember much shouting and battle-crying, running, jumping, leaping, falling, dying, counting to twenty and running again! Phew! It was hard work all that play!

Where and what did you play as a kid?

SPACEX: A GALLERY OF ALL THE TRI-ANG TOYS AND SETS

This old SpaceX toys trade journal ad from Games and Toys March 1970, kindly supplied many moons ago by resident ad detective Toad, mentions 37 'fabulous items' and tantalisingly 'more to follow' [wonder what they had in mind?].

OK, the two toys pictured in the ad are 2 of the 37, but what exactly were the other 35 meant here?  Wonder if the 37 included the boxed toys and sets? Well Swordies, it's a right royal Bank Holiday here at Moonbase so to satisfy my own curosity I've had a go at compiling a gallery, in no particular order, of all the 37 SpaceX toys and the 8 Tri-ang boxed sets I know of with pictures from a jumble of sources over the past decade. See what you think but many of you are far better versed than me in the SpaceX universe so please do tell me about any additions or omissions!

Tri-ang boxed sets NOT to exact scale!

RARE SPACEX TOYS: THE GANG OF FIVE

The SpaceX gang of five pictured from top to bottom are:

1. Rocket Transporter

2. Crash Tender F7

3. Nuclear Freighter/ Salvage Craft [I'm classing this as 1]

4. Soyuz 6 & 7

5. Photonic Propulsion Space Station

[bottom three pics brown-framed by me]

There's tons of SpaceX toys on Ebay at the moment, mostly from Canada. However nice it is to see mint carded examples of the common craft, I'd dearly love to see the rare gang of five turn up somewhere [pictured above]. They're sheer elusivity makes them downright compulsive! So much has been found over the last few years, especially new SWORD stuff, but these five SPACEX toys remain stubbornly hidden from view. As far as I can tell only three of them ever appeared as colour illustrations, the other two being simply black and white drawings. As for the toys themselves, do they even exist?

Special Order 937

With all the hype surrounding the release of Prometheus, I thought it was time I revisited the original. I ran the 2003 directors cut on dvd, it's been a good few years since I watched it, as like Star Wars, it one of those films you can watch in your head, its so familiar. The directors cut included a few sections which ended up on the cutting room floor, most notably the scene as Ripley sets the self destruct and is en route to the Narcissus and stumbles upon Dallas, barely alive, cocooned in the shaft. The main difference in this scene as opposed to later similar scenes, is that the victims aren't carrying a chestburster in their incarceration, but as we can see from the remains of Brett, are slowly morphing into eggs. The alien is apparently using the genetic and organic material from the victims bodies to grow into a living egg. The scene finds Brett almost completely absorbed, but Dallas retains just enough humanity to appeal to Ripley to kill him. Its a gripping scene an a change of pace from the helter skelter dash through the corridors as Mother counts the minutes down to the abort sequence.

Watching this again reminded me of a magazine article I had showing the Kenner plans for the Alien toy range. The 18" figure had so distressed parents after its initial release, that it had been quickly pulled. Apparently, plans were in progress to produce a small action figure line of Star Wars like figures, but due to the adverse reception of the big figure, the plans never left the prototype stage.

The figures were obviously sculpted by the same hand who produced the first Star Wars figures, Ash, Ripley and Dallas all have a similar stupefied expression and static poses. The Alien on the other hand is equally menacing and demonic as its larger brother and sported a slide out inner jaw, activated by a button its head. The biggest loss must be the chance to own a Moebius/John Mollo designed suit-wearing figure. Whether this is intended to be Kane is hard to tell. The Alien did eventually appear as an action figure line, but greatly changed from its initial beginnings.

What's Your Latest Vintage Toy Purchase?

What's your latest purchase on the collecting front? Mine's a couple of small plastic BRM JR21 racing cars, which I bagged on Ebay [thanks to Wote for the heads-up]. Tell us what yours is?

ED VALIGURSKY ROBOT GUN

Earlier this week we looked at the McCall inspired artwork on a space water gun. Well not to be outdone, Ed Valigursky got his own OUTER SPACE GUN [above] complete with his robot cover art from the Cosmic Computer paperback 1964. I love that record-faced robot, one of Valigursky's signature bots. He painted tons of robots for book covers. Just google his name in images for a look.

Dr Who Tesh Gun

Kevin D has just finished his custom (and working) replica of a Tesh gun from the 4th Doctor story 'The Face Of Evil'. It lights up and makes the correct sound effect. Made mainly from plywood covered in aluminium and some plastic tubing. Amazing Work!

STAR ATTACK AND OTHER STAR WARS - ANDERSON BOOTLEG TOYS

I love a good toy mash-up where knockoffs collide. And where there's a blockbuster there's many a mash-up! If the mash-up is good enough it'll last for years. A good example is STAR ATTACK [aka Space Attack as previously blogged in 2009] as shown above in both carded and boxed versions. The constituent parts pirated from THUNDERBIRDS and COLOURFORMS OUT SPACE MEN have truned up in this miniature form countless times both separately and together. But to give them that extra knockoff shelf appeal these sets, at least the carded one, rips off STAR WARS even though it's got nothing to do with the toys themselves! [not sure what the box boxart depicts as the piccy's not that great]. Amazingly these sets are possibley still being made! [thanks to Arto for first alerting me to them].

Continuing the STAR WARS/ ANDERSON theme, here's a pencil eraser from Japan called simply SPACE SHIP. On the front is a manga-esque soldier fighting our old friend Chewy in a rather natty red shirt and holding something very odd. To boost it's mash-up credentials they've thrown in an Eagle from SPACE 1999 on the back, which they've rather lazilly renamed SPACE-X009! [pictures courtesy of Noppin].

Anymore good mash-ups you know of?

I WAS RUBBERISED ON THE PLANET REX

Many kids of the late Sixties knew that Coloufirms Outer Space Men alien action figures [top pic] fitted superbly with Mattel's Major Matt Mason, his buddy Captain Lazer and fellow aliens Callisto and Scorpio [above bottom]. They were all rubberised and played well together without too much green blood loss!

I'm not sure who designed Mattel's two aliens [anyone? and was there a third alien called Orr?] but the creator of the Colorforms gang was Mel Birnkrant. Mel is still going strong and has the definitive website on the Outer Space Men, which is well worth a look at.

Coming full circle and inspired by the opening of PROMETHEUS today in the UK, I wondered what more modern alien action figure might have gone well with the Colourforms and Mattel space folk? My own suggestion would be the HR Giger- designed ALIEN figure. I never owned any ALIEN toys back in 1979 [I was 18 and busy growing my hair long] but if I had I'd have wanted the gargantuan KENNER ALIEN with it's clear domed brainpan pictured above. Probably the wrong scale for most Mattel or Colourforms but Captain Lazer would have had a worthy 12 inch foe if they'd met! I wonder of Birnkrant and Giger have ever met for that matter? They're both still around!

What would be your favourite additions to the Mattel and Colourforms aliens lines?