Redline Thunder

A long love love affair began with the small purple car above. From the moment I saw the Mattel Hot Wheels advert on tv showing the fast race cars speeding across the floor and down the orange track (even though the pictures were all black and white) and came across the fabulously flamboyant packets with the beautifully coloured cars in, I was gone. Hooked. Sold. End of.

Frequent trips to the Anchor Stores on Park Road in Dingle, every Saturday morning with my dad to gaze in rapt wonder at the huge window full of Aurora and Revell kits and the huge range of Major Matt Mason toys, punctuated by brightly coloured red and yellow packets of Hot Wheels cars. Hot Wheels were always more expensive than the lesser Matchbox models and it was some time before I managed to pester my dad into shelling out for the Deora. A flat futuristic slab of a car with orange and yellow surfboards on the back, it was poles apart from the dull sedans and boring trucks that Lesney were making at the time.The Deora was designed by Harry Bentley Bradley and was one of the more radical designs featured in the original sixteen models. Recently it was brought back as a more rounded version as Deora 2 and also as the chunkier version Deora above.

 

Following hot on the heels of the Deora and the first range came other amazing designs such as the Lotus Turbine, Shelby Turbine and Indy Eagle above. Among the first cars to come along were the Splittin' Image and the Swingin' Wing - fabulous designs that broke the mold in terms of car design. The white Splittin Image below is a recent reissue.

 Another early Bradley design was the Silhouette, which also made it into real life courtesy of Bill Cushenberry.

This memorable car was also produced by Zylemex as the 'Brute' in a larger scale. I picked up a rather battered version on ebay recently, missing an intake, some fairings and with a spectacular bash in the perspex cockpit! Any advice on how I might repair that would be most welcome!

Finally, two more fixer uppers, the Regal Eagle and Maching Bird, obscured under several layers of hobby paint, beginning to reveal their original spectraflame colours after a good rub down with Brasso (thanks Paul)!

A Star in a Reasonably Priced Car

Picked up this rather nice Lucky Toys friction drive race car. 50p on ebay. Think its missing a wing mirror and a decal off the back, roll bar is snapped and theres some loss of chrome, but its a pretty thing. Anyone able to shed any light on it ?

Almost immediately, the resourceful Anonymous Vreede has identified it as a real life car!

The AVS Shadow Lowline: http://www.supercars.net/cars/1726.html  And i thought the toy was cool!

Out of the Shadows

 

Some small time ago, Paul Vreede suggested that the Spacex Reconnaisance 2 ship might be based on the Blackbird SR-71 and the earlier YF12A spyplanes. Recent declassification of information by the CIA of photographs from Area 51 and the Skunk Works from 1963 show the precursor test vehicle - project OXCART or what would become the Archangel A12. 

OPERATION OXCART - ARCHANGEL A-12

 Sat upside down on a support pillar on a runway at Area 51, the test vehicle was designed to see how radar visible it was. Unfortuantely, soviet spy satellites overflying the area meant that the vehicle had to be frequently hidden in 'hoot and scoot' sheds as the satellites passed over. Due to infrared scanners and the heat of the desert, even after the plane had been moved, the difference in ground temperature would be noticeable from space and A51 technicians went to great lengths to hide the presence of the ultra-secret craft, including cardboard mock ups and heating the tarmac artificially to confuse the heat seeking cameras!

BLACKBIRD RADAR TEST

A great article on National Geographic shows the great lengths that the crews had to go to after an A-12 plane crashed in Wendover, Utah in 1963.

The super streamlined fuselage and silver finish have a much closer look and feel to the later Blackbird, but its unlikely the top secret OXCART programme could have directly influenced the Tri-ang designers, unless they managed to sneak past the security at the Skunkworks!

Excitement Building

System Chase Craft from Blakes 7

Scale modeller Kev Davies wowed me recently with more of his amazing work. Check out these wonderful creations with Kevins own captions!

Shado lunar module made from plastic and filler

Shado Mobile made from the wrong Tiger Joe tank (the small one, I'm now making one from the large one).

Skydiver from UFO, about 3.5 foot long and rather heavy

SPV made from wood and metal

TB1 made from plastic and car body filler,

TB3 photoshopped onto a background

TB4, made from wood and plastic and in need of re-making better

Boys World and the Pleasure Cruiser

During the heady days back in 2009 when we were all excited by new timeline discoveries. The Philosphic Toad made, for me, one of the most fascinating connections with the spotting of the Spacex Pleasure Cruiser in Boys World 1968 http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2009/01/pleasure-cruiser-concept-art.html. I was recently lucky enough to acquire said Annual and thought it would be fun to post the full strip, 'Stealers of Men', which features the Pleasure Cruiser. To start with we have the cover and a few other bits and bobs too.

PS. This was originally posted when Blogger crashed two weeks ago. Any comments made then may have been lost sorry.

Lunar Climber Concept: Lunar Jeep 1 from Darth

Hi Paul, I found this magazine called "Flying Saucers" June 1968. It has what looks a lot like the vehicle that Paya made. Inside it just says "Lunar Jeep 1" nothing about an artist. The whole concept looks like it was a derivation of the McDonnell Douglas "LASS" thing where a Saturn IVB was landed on the moon with a large rover inside.
Cheers
Darth

Bon Voyage

I'm signing off for a week's holiday but to keep things Swordin' I've scheduled a few posts to appear during the week. Woodsy

Strato Ray Gun and Thunderbirds

"Be it known that we, Sidney Wasserman and Allen M. Sterns, citizens of the United States, residing at Detroit, in the county of Wayne and State of Michigan, have invented a new, original, and ornamental Design for a Toy Gun, of which the following is a specification, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, forming part thereof..." [extract: Ebay patent copy auction]

Looking at Wasserman and Sterns STRATO toy gun above it immediately reminds of the Thunderbirds pistol by Lone Star as featured on the excellent Vintage Thunderbirds Toys site and all its subsequent knockoffs like the Pilen and Rocket Gun versions [Rocket Gun pictured]. What's the story there then? Did Lone Star get a licence to use the design?