LONE STAR 2 MAN MIDGET SUB, THUNDEBALL FROGMEN AND MORE FROM FERRYMAN

Ferryman has sent me these wonderful shots of part of his frogman collection. There's some real Sixties gems here:

Above - Thunderball-style sub with scratchbiult fin

Above - Bradgate Little Big Man Underwater Mission

Above - Thunderball - style Harvey frogmen by Lone Star

Above - a rare Lone Star 2 Man Midget Sub

And last but not least, a HK Frogman Set with lifted Action Man/Gi Joe art!

Flippin' Out over Frogmen

Back to the watery depths and continuing the frogmen theme, here are some fantastic figures from the National Geographic line. The Submersible is about a foot long and has moveable grabs, thrusters and opening cabin. The figures themselves are akin to small 8" Gi Joes, fully poseable and replete with accessories like spearguns, mask and the scuba diver comes complete with sea scooter.

REVELL ATOMIC SPACE EXPLORER SOLARIS 1968

I dunno but there's something very SPACEX - like about the 1968 REVELL kit box art above (Ebay). Both from the same era for sure. Have a look at the SPACEX advert below and see what you think. It's probably the speech bubble and cartoon style graphics. The colour box art looks great!

Hidden Depths

It must be a natural thing to love frogmen as well as astronauts - extreme environments, special equipment, hidden dangers...

Ive always had a collection of aquanauts and frogmen and subs on the go alongside space toys, as they always fascinated me as a boy. One of the best examples of frogmen toys were these unusual Britains Mini Sets. A rare departure for the toy soldier maker, these figures were smaller than the average soldier figure and came with a mini scene in each box. Possibly this contributed to the lack of popularity of the sets, as they only appeared for a couple of years after release in 1969. A few sets were added to the line in 1970, but then they disappeared from catalogues shortly after. I always felt this would have been a series begging for astronauts or spacemen, but it was never to be.

Featured at the top is the 1969 page from the catalogue, showing the cool transparent green octopus! I was a bit upset when i got mine to see it was a dull, elephantine grey! As you can see from the remains of these toys today, he's a bit dirty now but still looks as intimidating as ever! The second set of Divers and shark struck me as being a bit mixed up - surely the frogmen would have sat better with the shark and the deep sea divers might be more likely to see the giant octopus ?

A brief flurry of deep sea films cropped up in the 80's/90's, such as the Abyss, Deep Star Six and Leviathan - one or two toys rode the wave on the back of these, but nothing special. I dont know if it was the similarity to spacemen that got me into frogmen or whether it was just a wetsuit clad Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage and Fathom!

More watery fun to follow...

JUNIOR WORLD ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Just got time to post these before the surprise birthday party starts proper! I used to love these encyclopaedias especially this one above. I could stare at the watery skin diver painting for hours!

And inside were these beautiful pics of deep sea creatures, all teeth and fins, each one bigger than the other!

And finally a third page of more wonderful illustrations and in particular the shimmering pastels of the one-man submersible, ersatz SPACEX card-art for sure!

and in close-up!

Below is my own humble but fun collection of frogmen. I particularly like the PENN PLAX one as it's a great old aquarium brand and also the manufacturer of one of the rarest, if not the rarest of all monster toys, the 1960's PENN PLAX Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I'm sure there are many more frogmen out there so let's see them!

RAPHAEL LIPKIN FLIPPY FROGMAN: TABLETS WERE NEVER SO MUCH FUN!

Like many bloggers I have long been a fan of frogmen. I remember as a 60's kid playing for hours with my Pedigree Action man frogman. I can feel it now swimming beneath the troubled waters of my bath seeking out my huge rubber Action Man shark, which was busy terrorising that wonderful lead-botted Deep Sea Diver! I remember having loads of cheapo plastic frogmen (some on Ebay US now) and little scuba subs Thunderball style!

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Frogmen had that same mysterious allure that Astronauts had back then, explorers of the unknown and like super cool. Every one a 007! One of my favourite pictures was of the skin diver on the cover of the Junior Picture Encyclopaedia, which I'll have to track down. In fact I loved all those different terms - frogman, skin diver, scuba diver and poshest of all, spelunker! Funny, like astronauts, they've faded into obscurity.

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I have often wondered what a PROJECT SWORD or SPACEX frogman would look like if such a toy existed. I imagined them swarming from SEA SWORD or para-diving from the NEEDLE PROBE in search of hidden oceanic spies! Well I was thrilled to find the RAPHEAL LIPKIN FLIPPY FROGMAN on Ebay US! Not only is it such a cool toy 'powered by harmless jet-action pellets' amazingly it's made by the same toy company as the SPACEX II range, Rapheal Lipkin aka Pippin! Wonderful! I've just thought, I bet Alka Selzer would be a great substitute for those pellets! (is it still around? Or the other powdered bubbler, Andrews?)

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Any one else got any Frogmen in their collection? I'll post pics of mine soon. Just got my better half's birthday to celebrate tonight! hic!

1966 TV21 X60 COMPETITION PAGE

WOTAN posted this wonderful page from TV21 in the side-bar last week. I read it and loved it so much that I thought I'd post it in the main column. Dated 1966 it's just fascinating to see that 120 of the fantastic JR21 X60's were available to win! And all you had to do was colour in the black and white drawing of what look's like the recently ebayed X50 rocket (more on this from Ferryman during the blog's Birthday month from September 15th). Wonder if all 120 X60's were won? Bet not many of them survived either!

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We'll be running our own brilliant competitions during Mid-September -October and there's even a JR21 mint toy to be won just like back in 1966 (not the X60 but something equally excellent). Stay tuned!

FIFTH PROJECT SWORD SOLO COMIC STRIP AND T IN A CIRCLE

This is the fifth PROJECT SWORD comic strip that was published, July 22nd 1967. 2 pages and a Fleet ID Guide. Note the basic nature of some of the toys in this Guide. Are they all actually toys or are some of them simply models? And there appears to be a T in a Circle on the nose of the Moonbus! If this is the case it is the strongest evidence yet that the original SWORD range was indeed T in a Circle. Has anybody got a Moonbus like this?

Credits: Top two pages - Woodsy Collection, Fleet ID Guide - Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History Site (GACCH). For an in-depth look at all the SWORD strips visit GACCH.