HOUSTON, WE'VE GOT A PROBLEM!

Back in April 1970 I was a typical 9 year-old boy of the time interested in a wholesome mix of Oxford Bags, Ben Sherman shirts, monsters, girls and space travel. At the same time three intrepid Astronauts blasted-off to the Moon on Apollo 13 and the whole world watched with bated breath. On April 14th the statement "Houston we've had a problem" was uttered, later being changed over time by popular culture to one of the most iconic of all space phrases "Houston we have a problem". You can find the original on Wikipedia together with the attractive mission insignia (above), which means "From the Moon, Knowledge". I was also interested to read that the 1995 Howard/Hanks movie started a resurgence in interest for the space program. Is that the case? I don't remember that!

One of our fellow readers, Darth, has been busy this week speaking on Canadian TV about Apollo 13 as part of the 40th Anniversary celebrations. Some of the interviews took place at the Canadian Air and Space Museum, where Darth's Project SWORD collection is on display as well! You can see Rob (Darth) here.

In many ways Apollo 13 and 1970 signalled the beginning of my growing-up, as I entered my second decade age 10 that Christmas. I would love to see cinefilm footage of that festive season to see exactly what I got but none exists I don't think. At some point in those first few years of the 1970's I discovered Kung Fu, Saturday Morning Top Rank Disco's (where we drank Slushies and wore platform shoes!), received my first bottle of Hai Karate After Shave to combat encroaching bumfluff and on Christmas Day 1975 drank my first glass of beer in a pub with my Dad and two brothers only then to slump in the Breakfast room chair and sleep through the Queen's Speech (photographic evidence of this exists!). Alas I fear that during this rite of passage during the early 70's, as I 'adolesced' completely, my interest in space travel waned significantly and through some covert operation carried out by my Mum my entire collection of toys dissapeared from my bedroom. Mum must have exposed me to a Men In Black-style Neurolizer as I have no memory of this presumably drawn-out nocturnal removal process whatsoever! How do they do that?

Sadly our family life came to an end in 1977 and as I've got older the stuff that filled my tender years, like many of my generation, has become increasingly poignant and important to me as I face up to a rapidly approaching and somewhat daunting Decade Number Five!

SPACEX AUCTION AT VECTIS UK

The above large lot of carded Spacex is being auctioned at VECTIS UK on the 20th April. Have a look here.

EVERYTHING STOPS FOR T

Unlike TARHEEL toys, which seem to have all but disappeared on Ebay, T IN A CIRCLE on the other hand, has surfaced, and continues to do so, in abundance, much to my utter delight and my T collection has swelled like a Yorkshire T bag.

I was lucky enough to win this fabulous boxed T Cabin Cruiser recently. It's yet to actually moor at Moonbase, so I will post more piccies once it's here. It's new to me and the blog as well.

I was also fortunate enough to snaffle a long-standing gap in my T fleet, the T New Flying Saucer. The box has an old US price tag of $1.69 for KRESS. Anyone know this store?

Since Ferryman posted his amazing T Amphibious Car I have been on the lookout for one. I was pleased when I won a battered one for a few quid but now it's in the Moonbase garage I'm far less confident it will ever have a hope of looking like the gleaming minty example below it, which eventually sold for nearly £100 without a box lid!

And last but not least here's one last chance for someone to get hold of the wonderful T Luxury Yacht as this Buy It Now on Ebay USA is ending in a FEW hours! I have one. It's a cracker!

PREPARE TO DROP!

Another unlikely contender for a toy line must be Paul Verhoevens sci-fi shoot-em-up, Starship Troopers. Based loosely on Robert Heinleins novel about earth forces in an ongoing battle with sentient insectile aliens, the film was a quantum leap forward in computer graphics imaging for the big screen. Phil Tippett, who had previously been on the Star Wars production crew, brought millions of scrambling, screaming arachnids to life on screen. As the film was essentially a running battle punctuated with the obligatory schmaltzy love scenes, Verhoeven managed to cram in plenty of blood and guts making it a little unsettling for younger viewers.

However, the licence was picked up once more by Galoob and they placed the toys in the Action Fleet line along with Aliens and Star Wars. A line of six inch action figures was also made complete with vehicles. The Action Fleet line are easily some of the most impressive and unusual space toys ever made outside of the Star Wars cadre. Similar in premise to Remcos early Hamilton Invaders toys, they featured two small soldier figures to each boxed set and either a bug or a vehicle. The Plasma Bug (pic 1) is possibly the most outlandish. In the film, the giant creatures blast streams of glowing plasma from their abdomen and the toy features a spring launched ball of blue energy attached to a ribbon. This can be shot out and reeled back in. The Tanker Bug (pic2) was the central bug in one of the most impressive sequences, as hero Johnny Rico jumps onto the back of the flame spitting bug and blasts a hole in its carapace to plant grenades. Each tiny soldier has a magnet in the base, allowing them to be attached to points on the bugs such as the back, jaws or tongues. The Tanker Bugs have a launchable 'tongue' of flame on a ribbon with a magnet attached.
Easily the most scary bug is the fearsome Warrior, tiger striped in black and yellow (pic3). This was the central protagonist and to see the hordes of these creatures streaming over the hill to attack the marine outpost, is one of the best parts of the film. This came in the standard six inch size bug, a smaller battle damaged version from the carded Battle Pack sets and a large electronic one, complete with realistic scream!

The Hopper Bug (pics 4/5) is probably the prettiest with its irridescent green shell. This was also produced as a remote control toy (pic5) with rather limited walking action.
The squishy Brain Bug featured in one of the grossest moments of the film as it sucked out the brains of the human pilots. On screen it appeared as a fleshy, gooey being, which still managed to convey a feeling of eerie, cold intelligence (Pic6).
The standard Warrior Bug prepares to relieve the Marines of their limbs (pic7)
Dropping the hapless forces onto the bug ridden planets were the Retrieval Ships (pic 8) above. One of my favourite designs from the toy line. The boxy base unit has a door at the back to allow the troops to jump out, but also contains 8 large bombs which can be released to carpet bomb the bugs by pulling back on the tailfins.
In case the bugs are dug in to the hills or a fast air strike is needed, we have the TAC Fighter (pic9) - a two man interceptor with large missiles to blast the warriors out of their den.

Finally we have the second remote contol vehicle, the Dropship. Slightly larger than most of the other toys it has a crew of three, four remote launch torpedos on the top turret and an odd shuffling movement as the designers obviously decided to use the same mechanism from the Hopper Bug in the toy.

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES: ALIEN APOCALYPSE

Inspired by WOTAN's fabulous Alien article I remembered seeing a stylish film a couple of years ago by the 1950's Italian schlockmeastro Mario Bava, PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (PoV) made in 1965. For years a debate has raged as to whethere the imagery in the film influenced Ridley Scott and HR.Giger in their 1979 acid-for-blood opus. The crux is the appearance of a huge abandoned spacecraft piloted by a gigantic fossilised being in PoV, supposedly one inspiration for the 'derelict' and 'space jockey' in the early stages of Alien. PoV is segmented on You Tube and these elements appear at the start of section 6. See for yourself below:

I'm sure the discussion will continue unabated as the influences of many modern films are as murky as a xenomorph's egg sack. I would be interested to know if the author of the Alien story, Alan Dean Foster, included the derelict and space jockey?

I still shudder with regret when the Kenner 12-inch Alien figure is mentioned. Now a sought-after boxed collectable (often missing the clear brain dome), at one time it was being sold off for pence in British discount chains in the mid-1980's! I didn't know back then! In Poundstretcher everyone can hear you sob!

Heart of Darkness

In space, no one can hear you blog. No examination of spaceships can overlook the singular designs which came about from the 1979 science fiction epic Alien. Star Wars may have introduced the dirty, weatherbeaten look to space films, but the Alien saga took it a step further into the gritty, filthy realism of industrial spacetravel. Besides introducing one of the most scary and unusual creature designs ever seen, H.R Giger, the artist behind the concept, also managed to load the film with powerful psychosexual imagery both in the alien and in the ship designs.

The Alien saga is mainly an adult series with lots of blood and gore and genuinely unsettling moments, so its odd to find that it spawned a toy line. Besides Kenners large scale Alien action figure and a similar MPC construction kit, there wasnt much to be had in the way of toys until the Micromachine brand from Lewis Galoob began to introduce a larger scale model for Star Wars in the nineties, called 'Action Fleet'. As this series was quite successful, they added a sub series based on the Alien movies. Halcyon, the troubled kit manufacturer had already had limited success with its expensive large format model kits of the APC, Powerloader and Narcissus (see first photograph), but the 'play value' was nonexistant. Galoobs Action Fleet picked up the classic 'bug hunt' element from Aliens and added small figures of the Marines, Aliens and heroine Ripley together with cool action features such as opening hatches, interior detail and features such as the cryopod inside the Narcissus and moving weapons on the Marine vehicles.
During the production of the first film, Dan O'Bannon and Ridley Scott drew heavily on the work of Joseph Conrad, naming the main ship from one of Conrads books 'Nostromo' and taking the name of the shuttle 'Narcissus' from another. James Cameron continued this them in Aliens, naming th Marine Cruiser 'Sulaco' after a mining town in the book Nostromo. Production designer Ron Cobb provided most of the design work for Alien, while Giger came up with the creatures and the derelict alien ship and Space Jockey. Design chores were passed on to Syd Mead for Aliens, giving rise to the 'gun-like' Sulaco, Dropship and APC.

The Aliens models from Galoob are equally well featured and besides being very accurate models in themselves, also had the playability to enable kids to recreate some of the pivotal scenes in the film such as the Dropship attack and the aliens swarming around the armoured personnel carrier int he depths of the factory.
The APC and the Dropship come with Marines and Aliens figures and the APC has a nice touch which shows a squashed alien embossed on the bottom of the model.

The series was much more limited in its range than the Star Wars brand, although there was still scope to include other vehicles from the (then three) films, the line was not expanded apart from the inclusion of the rare Predator Shuttle. Predator would ultimately be crossed over in two dedicated films, but at the time, the connection was merely alluded to by the presence of an alien skull on board the Predator ship in Predator 2.

The toy was loosely based on the ships glimpsed in the two Predator films and is possibly the rarest of the four models.

EBAY OVER EASTER: Century 21, JR21, Durham and Hoover Toys

Besides quite a smattering of project SWORD toys (e.g. Moon Bus, Scramble Bug, PF2, TF1, badge) and some direct descendants (the wonderful Space Tract Glider and Spacex MLP), there have also been a number of interesting tangents appearing on Ebay of late, which extend our knowledge of important toy companies in the wider SWORD world.

First up is this interesting 1960's hardback by CENTURY 21 called ALL ABOUT CARS as mentioned earlier on the blog by Shaqui. It went for a song. At some point I would like to add this to my Century 21 bookshelf. Are there any C21/JR21 toy cars pictured inside?

Speaking of which, Ebay also threw up this interesting blue JR21 Motorbike and Sidecar in the 'Typhoon' style more often found in Scalextric. I'm pleased to say that I already own a green version in great shape, unlike this blue one missing the pillion's head, which as you'd expect, also went for a song. There's a similarly battered purple one up now. The much better condition red version went for considerably more. Still never seen the packaging for this JR21 toy! Anyone got it?

And adding to the already complex relationship between Tarheel and Durham toys, this DURHAM ZOO TRAIN is identical to the Tarheel version that appeared several months ago (which I was lucky enough to win but alas never recieved). Both toy companies seemed to use the same palette of bright pastels in all thier toys with the lime green and the pink being particular favourites of their's.

Similarly this DURHAM RABBIT from 1976 is identical to the Johnny Tarheel version, which was part of their Target set as blogged earlier in the year. Marx also made a version of this and I am left tantalised by the thought of a Marx SWORD toy with the Durham/Tarheel copied Space Glider being the likeliest prospect!

And saving the best till last is this amazingly detailed battery-operated HOOVER ROMAN CHARIOT. The toy and boxart are both stunning and does a lot to dispell the misnomer of cheapo plastic. Alas no model number was given but interestingly the seller said Hoover was from China, which is different to the Thailand location on my Hoover helicopter. What's Roman for WOW!

TV21 Fanderson Convention 2010

I'm excited! Just booked my place at the 2010 TV21 Fanderson convention in October! It'll be my first and I didn't want to wait till the next one as sometimes there's a 5 year gap! The thought of actually being able to ask Gerry Anderson about SWORD is tantalising!

Is anybody else going?