TAKE COVER

Still sorting through a box of old LP's for Amazon. I've come across 2001 Space Oddysey and never realised that it was signed by the late great space artist Robert McCall. We've probably all had a McCall in our Sixties homes without even knowing it! A beautiful painting. The trajectory of the Moonship is just amazing.

Another LP I've got is this Sound of Sight. I recognised the cover artist immediately. Do you? It's Jack Davis. I remember his fantastic cartoony style on those wonderful colour 'You'll Die Laughing' monster sketch gum cards in the late 60's. I've still got some I think!

BANK HOLIDAY ICE CREAM ANYONE? I'LL HAVE A CENTURY 21 WITH NUTS AND A FAB PLEASE!

"Hi Paul, I've attached some photos of my plastic ice cream vans. The two large ones are made by Clifford and are colour variants of the same toy. The one you found on Ebay [see below] appears to be a canteen version rather than an ice cream vanFeel free to blog these, Ferryman" 

Beautiful Ferryman! Thanks for sharing. For readers' info, the smaller boxed van at the top is Century 21.

Here's the 'canteen version' Ferryman refers to as it appeared on Ebay in April. the picture below is a close-up of the serving window.

Below is a recent Ebay montage of the CORGI die-cast original of the Century 21 version pictured at the top.

Finally I've thrown in these pics of a cool blue Camper Van as it's the May Bank Hols. I spotted this earlier in the year on Ebay thinking it might be JR21. With a model number of 52, the maker's marks appear to be the double MM of Merehall and the crossed HS trident we've seen before on the JR21 Typhoon Motorcycle and Sidecar [bottom]. So there is a connection to JR21 but just who was the HIS toy company?

    

     

    

ITS CRUNCH TIME

Way back in the eighties, crisp manufacturer KP came out of nowhere with a brilliant mail away premium - the Alien Battle Fleet. For six packets and a few quid, you got a brilliant little die-cast spaceship. When this offer came out, I went straight down to the local shop and bought about 30 odd bags of these damn snacks, ate a few and binned the rest. The back of the pack showed fout different designs which included a brilliant drill-headed ship. I got enough packs for a full set and for an additional fleet of the drill ships. Unfortuantely, due to a botch up on the packs, the code for the drill ship which shows under the wing was written wrongly on the pack, so I ended up with fou of the 'dragon' headed ship instead! Still, after writing to KP to let them know of the mistake, I got another four ships in red instead of black. The same type of ship also turned up some months later in a Kinder Surprise egg - the larger plastic ones with mini eggs inside. This is the brown one in the lower picture.
To promote the offer, KP ran a weekly series of three adverts in Eagle comic, a brilliant parody strip drawn by comic veteran Frank Langford. Luckily, i managed to preserve my copies of Eagle long enough to find these ads years later!

JR21 - NEW DISCOVERIES: X-90, COMICARS, VW PICK-UP AND SPACE SAUCER

Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water up pop a whole flottila of fab toys new to the blog and all JR21! First up is a humdinger and completely new to me until WOTAN spotted it on Ebay a week ago - the magnificent X-90 FLYING SAUCER CAR. Described as 'Friction Drive, Lifting canopy/ fly the "saucer" with attached mechanism. Length 21cm. No.241 Made in Hong Kong'. Wonderful! In light of this discovery and the X-80 Space Capsule, which surfaced in Hong Kong earlier in the year, the X-series checklist of JR21 toys is due an overhaul. More to follow on this.

Next up is also a new discovery but not in the X-series rather the more general range of JR21 plastic toys like the Bedford Van I posted this month - a COMICARS car. Found loitering on Ebay US it was described as '5" long, plastic, circa 1960s, strong friction, Made in Hong Kong, #315, Porky Pig?" I'm expecting this odd little chappie to arrive any day after negotiating one Icelandic Volcanic Ash cloud en-route to Albion. The box art depicts a completely different car with what looks like a doggie driver, so I expect further sightings of Comicars. More to follow on Porky.

Third in this quartet of new Rosenthals is wishful thinking on my part really. As part of a recent haul of vintage plastic at the local Boot Sale - Jimson, Lucky - I also picked up this lovely orange VW Pick Up, Now there is no JR diamond monogram but there is the number 313, just two below one 'Porky Pig' Comicar! Can anyone confirm the VW's make?

Finally and equally as speculative as the VW above is this gorgeous SPACE SAUCER seen below in both blue and red colour variations. I spotted this recently during one my regular trawls of the fantastic ALPHADROME database. The entry doesn't really offer any clues as to the make but various features lead to consider that it might be JR21: the look of the plastic, the Union Jack, the Space Saucer lettering and most significantly the similarity of the box art to that of the JR21 NEW FLYING SAUCER. The New Flying Saucer was copied by many other toy companies such as T in a Circle and Bohm, so it may be that the Space Saucer is also a copy. Can anyone put me out of my JR misery and confirm one way or another?

Copyright Alphadrome

One last thing. Should Bank Holiday Monday be a real scorcher (yeah, right) then I have just the thing to cool you down JR21 style! Watch this space!

Edit: WOTAN butts in - seeing the X-90 for the first time I was immediately reminded of the Scalecraft Aerocar I featured on the blog some months ago - the X-90 clearly predates this and the toy one shown below. The toy version on the right favours the vertical alignment of the rotor on the X-90 to0!

Dan Dare - Ex Libris Wotanicus

The Eagle comic kind of passed me by as a child, as I missed its heyday by some years. I did manage to run into the beautifully painted artwork in annuals etc and actually lived in the same village which gave birth to Eagle comic and Dan Dare, the little run down shed where he was born is still visible today. However, I did manage to witness Dans frequent resurrections in the 1978 comic 2000ad and also in the New Eagle comic in the late 80's. The new Eagle was an abominable collection of photographic story strips, only just rescued by a illustrated Dan Dare section. Eventually, the editors saw the error of their ways and resorted to standard all comic format, albeit fleshing out the comic with reprinted material. Dans frequent rebirth was a regular occurrence as the comic went from super exotic far future Dan to a more traditional, yet hi-tech version. The artistic chores were handled by a multitude of artists, but one man stood head and shoulders above the rest - Ian Kennedy.

Kennedys work was almost always full colour and technically brilliant - from an art and design standpoint to a mechanical aesthetic one. Almost all his spacecraft and vehicles had a sleek realism to them and a powerful dynamism reminiscent of Embleton or Noble.
I always enjoyed the protracted space battles between Dan, his current choice of whizz bang spaceship and the Treen hordes commanded by the ever malevolent Mekon.

Kennedy appears to have a technical background in aerospace and has illustrated aircraft in other magazines. One particular foray into Dans history showed WW2 planes and later an English Electric Lightning piggy backed on a Lancaster bomber during a test flight. The same strip also showed a Horten flying wing drawn with remarkable accuracy. All Kennedys spaceships are always unusual such as his 'HIMAT' fighters above and the large battle copter and distinctive green enemy fighters. No matter how ridiculous the story became, it was always a joy to see such splendid artwork.

THE LOUNGE BOX ART OF THE T CABIN CRUISER

Readers' comments on the beautiful box art on my new T Cabin Cruiser got me thinking. Despite their usual clean illustrative style, is this too good for T in a Circle? Were they established enough at this point to commission a stylish piece like the party scene (below) on the side of the box? Or did they use artwork available at the time?

 

I'm not familiar enough with 1960's illustrators to recognise many individual styles so I did a bit of digging. Many magazine pages, adverts and book covers were illustrated in the 'lounge' (my term) style of the T party scene. Indeed our very own Swordfather, Ed Valigursky did wonderful magazine ads for cars as seen below.

Another popular artist doing such work in the 50's and 60's was Joe Bowler. He did 'the Beautiful Beatnik' in 1960 (below).

via Beyond, Deux

But probably the artist who has caught my eye the most during my brief peek into the 1960's world of illustration is Angel Badia Camps of Spain. Below is an example of how he had mastered the groovy look of the period as can be seen in the T party scene as well. You can read much more about Angel on the fabulous blog Today's Inspiration, where David Roach discusses the commissioning and recycling of images by Illustration Agencies of the day such as S.I, A.L.I and Bardon. Would they have handled toy boxart as well I wonder?

via Illustration Mundo

So, does anybody recognise the style of the T party scene or indeed the stylish boat on the box cover?

As a postscript to this bloglet, I found this wonderful slideshow by Carleras of Angel Badia Camp's work. Some of the paintings look amazingly similar to WOTAN's 'Tell Me Why' super creeps he posted the other day! Could they be Camps and maybe not Cuneo?

ARCTIC WINDS BLAST MY MEGA RIG

Back from a lacklustre and totally arctic Car Boot Sale, I'm relaxing watching the news with a large mug of hot coffee.Typical mixed April weather, warm one day and absolutely freezing like today. However, summer is on the way. Yesterday I heard my first Cuckoo of the year and saw my first Swallow, but as my Lady Wife says, one Swallow doesn't make a summer! Just browsing through Ebay, other than the always-interesting SWORD/SPACEX offerings, a few leftfield odds 'n' sods have caught my eye this week like this amazing multi-wheeled FIRECAT. It reminds me a lot of the articulated SWORD Snow Train, which features prominently in the 1969 SWORD Annual.

Similarly this white VW Bus resembles the more obscure SWORD ANT, which also appears in the SWORD Annual. And every space base needs personnel and there have been some interesting toy astronauts for sale including these bagged SPACEX-like LUNAR SPACEMEN with a nice header cards.

 

And finally, googling for LP there appear to be a few blue and white LP spacemen for sale at Plastic Toy Soldiers, an online store.

Keep on Swordin'.

2112

I've been listing LP's on Amazon this evening, whilst listening to one of my all-time favourite albums, 2112 by RUSH. I first heard this epic slice of rock back in '75 with a couple of hairy 14 year old mates in the sound booth in Brady's record shop in Preston (remember them?). Having already heard RUSH's earlier 'Bastille Day' from their LP 'Caress of Steel', 2112 was simply in another league and catapulted the band to the top of our rocker charts. The album's seminal first side is basically the story of a young person who discovers a guitar in the wastes of a dystopian world. Alas, the powers at be, the Priests of the Temple of Syrinx, have banned music and force the young axeman into exile. Tragically he ends his life just as a solar battle erupts and the ending, although seemingly totalitarian, can mean different things. A work of utter beauty and one of the best 'heavy' rock albums ever. Only equalled by their opus 'By Tor and the Snow Dog' on the Fly By Night LP in terms of fantastic vision fused with riffs to die for, side 1 of RUSH's 2112 is quite simply rock and sci-fi heaven. As we would have said in 1975, 'Mighty'! If you've never heard 2112 you are in for a treat as it's all on You Tube. Part 1 below for openers! Enjoy!