I was at a Dinky fair and picked up a couple of old Matchbox Crash Tenders similar to ones used in airport scenes on Thunderbirds and other G.A. series.
While I wouldn’t describe myself as a collector of old Matchbox toys, certain ones do peak my nostalgic interest. The Hendrickson ‘Cooper-Jarrett’ truck and the BP Autotanker are a couple of favourites and both of course feature as ‘extras’ in several Anderson shows.
The Crash Tender, which, as I’ve no doubt you’re aware can be seen sharing a scene or two with Fire Flash at London Airport, or parked at Glenn Field during the assembly of Zero X. It was produced by Matchbox in 1964 and early versions had a silver foam cannon and suspension. Latter versions had a gold cannon and no suspension. The plastic ladder, hose and lettering were supplied on a separate sprue ready to be fitted by the buyer .
The die cast toy was pretty much identical in design to the Century 21 version ( apart from size and features, of course) which came a year or two later.
I though maybe some of the readers might like to see a few shots I took of them.
Here's three old black and white trade photographs from my online archive. The top one looks like the Tarheel/ Durham Super Copter. The bottom two, which I own, are of a SWORD Moon Prospector/ Probe Force 2, but I have no idea what the bottom picture kids and bunnies is about. Anyone any clue?
Wote's fab post about Roger Dean and Chris Foss covers struck a chord with me as Roger Dean was and is my favourite LP cover artist. As a teenager I adored the welsh heavy rock trio BUDGIE and many of their early classic albums were graced with Roger's brilliant visions. Many were showcased in his book Visions published by Dragon's Dream and if, like me, you frequented Athena shops to get your Seventies posters you could find Dean's LP covers publshed by Big O. Any more Athena shopperes out there?
I've featured just one Dean here, above - the fabulous cover of Budgie's bangin' Never Turn Your Back on A Friend, which includes their stylised Budgie Man mascot, who appeared on many of their Dean covers. The album contains the epic 10 minute long opus Parents, one of the most important songs of my entire life.
The memorable inside cover featuring
Tony Bourge on lead, Burke Shelley on bass and Pete Boot on drums.
They produced more sound than herd of stampeding Rhinos!
I'd never heard of Mazzy Star until I looked up the beautiful and inspired backing track to the current UK Gears of War 3 TV advert. So here it is in full - Into Dust by Mazzy Star courtesy of YT. Haunting.
While were on the subject of computer games, its funny to hear Woodstock say that the whole video game thing passed him by. Nowadays, what was a bit of a niche market for geeks back in the early 80's, has become a mass media culture and almost everyone has played some kind of video game at some point either on a mobile phone, console or on a pc. The big draw for me was always the graphics, the Amiga being the closest thing I could get to the arcade machines playing R-Type and Nemesis with the gorgeous coloured japanese space fighters and alien monsters. Eventually I gave up on the floppy disk driven Amiga and bought into the playstation culture. The graphical leap between the 16 bit graphics and the full 3d rendered art on the Playstation and Xbox was immense and ushered in a completely different experience of play. Modern games on the PS3 and Xbox360 are so far removed from early platform and shoot em up games on the Amiga as to compare a pencil sketch with an oil painting.
Apart from the graphical leap, the way games are designed has changed radically and one of the best proponents of game design is Bungie games, creators of Halo: Combat Evolved. Ten years ago in November, they released a first person shooter which put you in control of a genetically enhanced super soldier battling against an invading alien horde. What set it aside from its competition, aside from the spectacular graphics, was the story. Every aspect of the game was scripted like a film and cinematic sequences punctuated the action. The backstory was immense and immersive and was completely enthralling. The game is on the verge of its fourth incarnation now and for the tenth anniversary, the original game has been updated with cutting edge graphics. The design of each and every element has been considered from the mechanics of the weapons to the cultural beliefs of the alien races.
If anyone had to start with one sci-fi themed video game, this would be the point of entry. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary edition will be on sale shortly and will definitely be on my Xmas list!
Heres a promo video for the last release, Halo Reach which set the scene for the Halo series. Features a strong female lead in the style of Vasquez from aliens, but the characterisations in the game are seriously realistic and its possible to empathise with the characters in the game. The game graphics of recent releases arent dissimilar from the standard set in this video either!
Wote's Amiga post reminded me that I have a stack of old computer games I inherited from a relative somewhere in the loft. They were cassettes and floppy disks. This is a shot I took of some of them before they were stored away. Alas the whole games thing passed me by for some reason. I didn't even have a go with a Sinclair Spectrum! In fact I'm fuzzy about where Commodore, Amstrads and Sinclairs actually fit in the history of these games. Maybe I should have a go and start now with Wote's Amiga!
Ok. Before we start wondering what the hell i'm on about now, id like to clarify. Way back in the mists of video game history, when computing power was still measured in bits, Commodore released the 16-bit computer that changed the way I viewed the world, the Amiga. For some largely unexplained reason they called it Amiga (spanish for 'girlfriend') and I fell in love with it immediately. Besides being able to save the universe from invading aliens, the Amiga came bundled with Deluxe Paint, a basic art package that paved the way for me to tread the route into digital art on the mac and Photoshop. What really drew me in though, were the gorgeous boxes for the games, especially those by Liverpool based software company Psygnosis. Using a huge back catalogue of Paper Tiger artists work such as Roger Dean, Tim White and Peter Jones, the gloss black boxes all featured evocative typography and wonderful colour illustrations, some of which even found their way into the game graphics too - albeit in a much simplified fashion. Ive still got almost all the boxes of my games and the games themselves and a small pile of Amiga computers too, which are dusted off periodically to give the old Xbox, Wii and PS2 a run for their money.
Artwork originally used on 'Cities in Flight' series of books
Artwork for 'Forever War'
Robbie the Robot on steroids - also appeared in the game!
Psygnosis early game - almost unplayable
Blue Oyster Cult!
Meanwhile, heres a selection of the artwork. Some of the games were utterly awful and near unplayable in the early days, but some were classics and led Psygnosis to become one of the biggest developers in the UK and still in flourishing business today.
