2011: A Space Odyssey

Let the Odyssey Begin!

Happy New Year!

Picture credit: Michael Coate from his amazing 2004 website about 2001: be sure to click on the 'seat engagement' list' three quarters of the way down.

Top of The Year 2010

HEY SWORDIES! THANKS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT, CONTRIBUTIONS, CAPTIONS, JOKES AND GENERAL SWORDINESS DURING 2010!

You're all invited to the Moonbase New Year Cyber-party!

[if I've missed anyone in the piccy, apologies, I ran out of piccy people!]

So, what's your midnight tipple going to be?

KEEP ON SWORDIN'

WOODSY

SWORD Patrol 2

Always on the lookout for a decent sea-worthy SWORD boat, my friend Leo [monte-firu on Ebay] provided me with these pics of an Argentinian gunboat by Revirplas you can see above [top three pics]. It's got everything: cool sleek styling, yellow deck, two Apollo Moon Exploring-like missiles, an eccentric dome and an concave oblong radar rather like that SCOUT 1 [bottom]. The box art is pretty cool as well with what on first glance appears to be a Dyna Soar in the sky [top pic], but on close inspection it isn't I don't think [in close-up third pic down]. Nonetheless spacey cool!

Silver Thingies

With the Christmas cake mostly eaten and New Year round the corner, I'm enjoying a brief spell of normality and browsing Ebay. Looking at a 2001 Space Glider [top pic] currently on offer, it reminded me of some other space toys. I've searched the blog for them and featured them all together above: Spacex Rescue Craft [middle pic] and a group shot of various spacecraft including Scout 1 [bottom]. I think it was the silver exhausts of the 2001 Glider and the Spacex Rescue Craft [small painted picture], which I found similar but seeing them now they're aren't really!

Pictures: Ebay and Wotan

New Art by Andy B

TF1 by Andy B

Probe Force Tree

Zooming Round the Christmas Tree in Probe Force 3!

inspired by the conifer-like background of the Tarheel Probe Force 3 box art

[flat template courtesy of Canadian reader Graeme Walker]

Gift Tags for Toad and Ed

For EvilEd - a film I've never seen but looks great

For Toad - pond warrior princess

[model: starship modeller 2005]

Mist -O- Matic Merry Christmas Card

One year in the mid- Sixties the Christmas Cards I gave to my Mum and Dad and Sibs were made easy by one of my fave toys that year: Mist-O-Matic, a sort of paint spray tray that created a mist of colour, which covered templates and left shapes on pieces of card. My top Xmas card design was the Santa head above, which I would recognise anywhere. A 'spin-off' of the better known Spiro-Matic, Mist-O-Matic is easilly in my top ten [non-space] toy list. Wotan and I waxed lyrical about this and other paint toys earlier on the blog. What we have still never managed to find is a picture of another Sixties classic paint toy, Paint Witch, which were a sort of witch hat topped thick pens. They were so cool. Anyone got a picture?