Space Fleet 2000

A long time ago, in a sweetshop far away... Swizzels Matlow rolled out a series of candy containers shaped like spaceships. Each one was filled with sherbet and was made of coloured injection moulded plastic.

Unscrewing the lid and eating the candy inside, left the plastic shell ready for a quick wash and then the containers could be joined together to make various shaped spaceships, or by using the three different spaceport sections, a large and expandable space station. The ships were sold in a counter box and at 10p each it was easy to cherry pick the ones you wanted to complete your collection.

Way back in the mid eighties, I made regular pilgrimages to newsagents and sweetshops to find as many of the little spaceport sections as I could.

The candy was horrendous and made my teeth ache just by looking at it and as I had previously made myself ill by consuming boxes of KP Outer Spacer crisps in order to get the Alien Space Fleet, I usually just emptied out the sugary contents and went straight on to building the station.

There was also a Spacefleet 2000 poster showing all the ships in the line - but i cant recall where this came from, possibly it was a mailaway.

Sometime later, I happened across a similar candy premium called Astro Fizz in the shape of a space glider type ship. This one was hastily filed in the vaults and still has the sherbet inside! Yuk..



POSTSCRIPT BY WOODSY 2015:

USA Version by Ca De Candy 1982 CD 2000 Space Fleet - small pics from an old Ebay listing [see my comment below - Woodsy - in the comments for the listing description]

RANGER BOOK 1967

The Summer of SWORD is nigh when SOLO launched it's first PROJECT SWORD comic strip in June 1967. The rest is history as they say! To wet our appetites here's a few pics from another gem from my own 1967, the wonderful RANGER BOOK including the fabulous and unforgettable TRIGAN EMPIRE, beatiful cutaways [the VC10 is by 'Cross'?], the swordesque ROCK PILOT, Terror of the Bush, loads of battles and flags [not pictured here] and to finish, at the end of the annual the brilliantly drawn and coloured SPACE CADET. Anyone else like Ranger? Was it published around the world?

SILENT RUNNING

Watched 1972's SILENT RUNNING this weekend. I think I saw it years ago - basically the Earth's last eco-systems are shepherded in domes through space first legally then not. I enjoyed the first half immensely - the humans' interaction, the order to destroy the eco-domes, the ensuing struggle. Bruce Dern is excellent as the fanatical eco-warrior and the three small droids are prescient of Star Wars 5 years later. The film raises the question of whether Widlife is more important than Human life at a time when environmentalism was in it's infancy and more confrontational than today but still very topical, probably moreso. Dern's quick despatching of his three fellow co-workers is harsh leaving him solely in charge of the last dome in existence. He suffers brief remorse for his crimes but overall the murders are glossed over. More effort is put into his relationship with the 3 droids, well acted by double-amputee actors. The second half of the film, where Dern is alone in the dome with said Droids is rather like watching grass grow literally and I imagine modern cinema audiences would find it boring. More than the obvious eco-pocalypse motif, for me the most interesting aspect of the film is it's portrayal of an astronaut's extreme solitude and insidious descent into oblivion, both mentally and spatially, a theme hinted at in its ambiguous title and touched on in other movies: 1968's 2001, Solaris in the same year, 1979's Alien, 1997's Event Horizon and last year's brilliant Moon by Duncan Jones, son of one David Bowie. Sensationalised for the cinema no doubt, the question of the effects of isolation in space is critical to long-stay astronautics and our vision to go to Mars. What does anyone else think?

LP SPACEMEN: ITS ALL GREEK TO ME!

Those cheeky LP astronauts got everywhere except in a SWORD Moonbase! Here's a Greek game with 4 of the little fellows on Ebay.

SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN

Well im back in the land of eternal twilight again having made the crossing to sunny Cyprus for the last 10 day and just caught up with the blog action.

Having previously bought my spacex nuclear ferry from a cypriot ebayer, I was half expecting to find a sleepy little toyshop tucked away in the hill, chock full of old toys, but to no avail. Saw the Pope blast through last Friday and got roasted by constant sun, but the closest I got to space was seeing a beautiful meteor light up the evening sky, trailing green flame as it fell.

Back to work tomorrow!

Wotan

MIKE DELAMAR'S SCRATCH FIRE TENDERS NEARLY COMPLETE!

After two years of work the talented young modeller Mike Delamar has nearly finished his fantastic scratch reproductions of this fleet of Thunderbirds Fire Tenders. As covered before on the blog, Mike's is truly awesome work. Century 21 would have snapped him up back in '67 for certain! If you want to follow the last few posts on Mike's Eagle Forum thread then look here from time to time: http://www.eagletransporter.com/forum/showthread.php?p=156478#post156478

FANTASTIC - A POWER COMIC!

I've been sorting out spare comics to sell on Ebay/ Amazon and come across one of my favourites, FANTASTIC. Here's a few images from my small collection. It was a weekly UK [only?] comic I got back in the Sixties. Most of theses are dated 1968 [was it out in June 1967 along with SOLO?]. FANTASTIC was just that, stuffed with great super-hero strips [including Prince Namor and the  original X-Men, with a lycra-cladded Beast], ads for stamps/wayfinder shoes and Kinky/Choc Top Woppa/Sky Ray lollies and wonderful free gifts. I can remember the 'target gun' [with elastic band] and the Apollo capsule as if it were yesterday! And Gerry Anderson got a look-in too - check out the TB6 movie/ Cap. Scarlet ad. Anyone else like FANTASTIC or similar comic?

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOUNG IS A WORLD, BUDGIE 1972

It's pouring down outside. Just right for this pensive track from Budgie on their wonderful SQWARK album 1972, YOUNG IS A WORLD. BTW the cool rocket-skull jet on the LP cover is by Roger Dean, cover art meastro of the Seventies. He made a model first. Some of his other models include toy elephants with tank heads! His art book 'Views' is one my most prized posessions from my teenage years along with the similar 'Studio' showcasing Berni Wrightson and other young artists. As for Budgie, they were my rock hero's back then and I thought Tony Bourge was the best lead guitarist I'd ever heard and similarly Burke Shelley on bass on vocals [the drummer I remember is Pete Boot - also brill]. I knew every riff and lyric up to either If I were Brittania I'd Waive the Rules or Bandolier, whichever was the later LP. Sadly I know nothing after that, which is how it went for all my fave bands. I just stopped at a certain point. Is that the same for everyone?