Plan from Atlantis

1 Day 22 Hours to the final Shuttle launch ever!

Weather permitting!

Remember, your Shuttle toys and collectables pics wanted for the blog!

Generation X- Box

Kids in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and probably the 90's, were blessed with tons of fabulous toys. As adults we know that its a lot of fun to get some of them back and own them for a second time. I suppose nostalgia is at the heart of this phenomenon. Today's young people, more than anything, seem totally into their X-Box's, Wii's and Playstations. When they're older do you think the collectors amongst them will collect the computer games they played as kids?

Capricorn Gone

Relaxing after work yesterday I watched an old video, Capricorn One. With an air of the mounting tension in All The President's Men, the movie is a conspiracy theorist's dream, telling the story of the Capricorn One crew's journey to Mars. The opening footage of a Saturn V ready for launch on the LUT at sunrise are very evocative of the whole 1970's Apollo project. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, a sort of cold war counterpoint to the historic final flight of the Shuttle Atlantis actually taking place this week. Anyone else like the movie?

Page Boy

When I first started collecting vintage toys in the early 1990's my passion was fed by two publications, the British mag Model Mart and the US 'newspaper' Toy Shop. There was nothing quite like leafing through them on the bus to work! My interest only grew with every new issue. It was a sad day when Model Mart went out of production. Is Toy Shop is still around? There have been a few other vintage toy mags over the last twenty years but none lasted. Here in the UK the last one with any interest in TV/ space/ Sci Fi toys, albeit limited, is the newspaper-style Collectors Gazette.

Are there any vintage toy magazines still in print around the World?

The Future was Bright

I've blogged these before but I like 'em that much they're worth blogging again. They're basically six cheapo but fascinating metalliced knockoffs of SPACEX [Golden Astronaut] called Futuristic Space Vehicles.Each one came in a neat plastic window box. This is the full range of six vehicles as listed on the rear of each backing card with cool little black and white outlines. The collection is courtesy of reader Astronit. I used to have the Forklift, which was a nice little thing. Anybody else got any?

WOTAN Wades in:

 I bust a gut trying to get a couple of these, I wanted the Cricket especially as it is distinctly different from the SPacex version in that it has side panels covering the wheels. As usual, the auctions were hotly contested and I managed to buy the MEV and the Cruiser. I'd only ever seen small photos of the craft and was quite excited to get some, let alone MIB. When they arrived though, I was so disappointed as the production values were almost non existent. The box art looks like it had been done by a twelve year old and although the vehicles are markedly bigger than their spacex cousins, the corners which had been cut to ensure simplicity of production made the toys almost unplayable as a lot of the expected detail was lost and the molding of the parts was so shoddy. The Mev arm, which on the original is a lovely three piece affair, delicate and articulated, is replaced with a single unit of stiff plastic that looked as if it had been cut out with plastic scissors. The plated paint was bubbled and flaking, even though the toy had not been removed from the package and the whole feel of the toy was 'cheap'. As a curio and a notch in the Spacex history bedpost, they are invaluable. But as a collectable, I wouldn't pay much at all. Shame.

Fair Comment

Anyone been to any good toy fairs of late? I used to love going but have have stopped for some reason. Not sure why. Big fairs were always exciting like Doncaster, Castle Donnington and the NEC Memorabilia [when Henry Cook ran it] but I did also enjoy small Sunday and evening fairs in community halls like Elsecar, Pudsey and Normanton. Do they still exist in the UK or beyond?

Explorador Planetario XV8

Continuing my Latin ride into Cyberland, here we have the Explorador Planetario XV8. This ubercool Argentinian Moon Prospector toy came in both CHIBI and BICHI versions, which was obviously the same company. The ON/OFF switch is worth a second look - it's NO/SI, where NO means No or Off and Si means Yes or On! There's a price tag on the top box but I just can't quite make out the detail.

I've always adored the lush box art but just cannot place that ghostly-white rocket ship. Where is it from?

The Last Shuttle

I can't quite believe that in 6 days, on July 8th, the current chapter of NASA Space Flight will end with the final flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Not only will it be the end of the Shuttle epoch but it seems like the end of the Space Programme that began when I was a kid in the upward-looking Sixties. I don't know about you but I feel that, despite amazing technological progress, the developed world has become limited in it's vision, pot bound in a era of pointless conflicts, consumed by our own day-to-day woes. What happened to the space-age future we were poised to have?

To commemorate the Shuttle's swan-song, I would like to post pics of your Shuttle toys and collectables during the 12 days of its flight. Lift off is on the 8th July. Please email them to me at moonzero@moonzero.freeserve.co.uk