Tuppence Ha'penny to Neverwas Avin' U

Came across this snippet today in Retail Newsagent, Bookseller and Stationer, dated November 2nd 1968:

SWORD Toys Campaign

A PROMOTIONAL and advertising campaign to boost the SWORD range of space-age toys from Century 21 Toys Ltd. is being launched throughout the country during November.

The campaign will embrace trade, provincial Press and children's comic advertising, advertising on millions of bus tickets and competitions for both retailers and consumers.

It starts in Birmingham, Cardiff and Glasgow in November when millions of bus tickets in these three key cities will carry advertisements for SWORD toys.

Early in December the 280, 000 circulation comic TV 21 will carry a "Design a new SWORD toy" competition with a first prize of a hovercraft trip to France.

Advertising is planned for TV 21, Eagle, Valiant and Buster, and Century 21 Toys are holding a national window display contest with separate classes for retailers and special display staff.

I asked in the comments, "Why those cities?" Shaqui had this to say: "Birmingham was the heart of 'ATV Land' which, according to some who worked on 'TV21' gave the higher percentage of reader feedback, probably owing to the Anderson series receiving a greater profile in its native region. Can't speak for the other two locations though."

Triang in the Netherlands

Good Morning Woodsie,

On the Moonbase Central page I saw that you bought last year in Denmark a Tri-ang 1933-1934 catalogue. I'm a Tri-ang collector, especially catalogues. I have a website dedicated to Tri-ang. 

Would you consider to sell your catalogue?

Kind regards from the Netherlands, Joop Vendrik
www.triang.nl

Dear Joop

Thanks for writing to me. Alas, I don't have that or any Triang catalogues I'm afraid. Sometimes I post things I've seen on Ebay but do not own. However, I love your website and will post your email and site link on my blog if that's ok. Moonbase readers will certainly be interested in your obvious enthusiasm for Tri-ang toys, particularly as my blog is partly dedicated to Tri-ang SPACEX plastic space toys.

Keep up the great work, Paul aka Woodsiein England

Ridiculous to Sublime

Andy B has reconciled himself by sending us some classic vintage sci fi posters!

Or has he - what do you think ?

Moonscapism

A tenuous connection to the Apollo Moon Exploring articles we posted earlier, this 1980's Lunar Landscape set is made by Dekker Toys of London. The connection being, that contemporary with this release was a space set with a pvc playmat and remoulds of some of the more common APEX toys such as the atlas rocket and gantry, bubble car and gemini capsule. Presumably, this playset must have been from the same range and offered four large vac-formed moonscapes (each different) and would have originally come with pots of paint and a brush. As you can see, the paints have been used, rather enthusiastically on the plastic moonscapes, but all four and the box have survived rather well to this day. I picked these up on ebay this last week, hoping they may have contained the same design of moonscape as appeared in the big Spacex Superset, but all four are simple smoothly cratered landscapes.

If the date was ever in doubt, the box art clearly puts the set at about 1979/80 due to the inclusion of the Mego Buck Rogers and Black Hole figures, Airfix Hawk model (incorrectly built!) and a small Hasegawa Egg Shuttle, which I also bought at the time. So now all I need to do is get the paints out and put a more realistic finish on the 'scapes!

Tractor Beam On!

These fabulous Explorer Cars have been seen several times on the blog before, most notably for their usage of the Lone Star rocket launcher and Minitanks Panzer chassis. Its interesting to note that on the card art, the painter had obviously positioned the rocket launcher upside down when he was drawing it!

There are times when Ebay is like a virtual Aladdins Lamp, rub it, make a wish and stuff appears! So it  seemed recently after the blog coverage of Apollo Moon Exploring toys showed some of these cool little tractors in amongst the contents of the boxed set. I had come across them earlier in individual boxes such as the version shown here from Will Osbornes personal collection, but it had been many years since I had seen them packed individually. The photo below shows the remnants of my original collection in various states of disrepair.

I was surprised to find a trio of the vehicles turn up on for sale recently in small bags with header cards in glorious lithoed colour. The tractors are clearly marked with an LP trademark, showing the monster figure clutching the letter LP in front of a sunrise. LP trademarks appear on many similar space toys, especially the 2 inch astronaut figures and lots of other Hong Kong toys, but what does LP actually stand for ? There are six in the full set, the crane and tipper versions as above and a bulldozer version of the streamlined crawler. These three bagged sets are currently available on ebay UK, grab a set while you can!

Atrocity Exhibition

Andy B has thrown down the spacesuit gauntlet with what is possibly the worst space film poster ever! Unless of course, you know better... or this ?

and worst (?)(!) Sci Fi Paperback too! Thanks again andy!

Driven to Distraction

I've just discovered the vehicle designer who worked on Tron Legacy has a site publicising his book 'Cosmic Motors'. I've only leafed through the book, which is on my hit list, but the site shows some utterly beautiful rendered artwork for futuristic race cars, personal flight vehicles and bikes. I love futurist vehicle design and Daniel Simon captures a slick Hot Wheels vibe together with a realism in the designs and illustrations that makes them look utterly believable. He's married the sophistication of the design with sexy suit-clad ladies for an F1 feel to the race shots too.

The personal race pods defy conventional means of propulsion, with a star wars style gravity negating drive. The detail extends down to the tiny scratches and decals and instruction panels on the vehicles too.

Cold Days in Hell

The Thing is, well more accurately the Things are - a series of films based on a novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. originally under the pen name Don A. Stuart, published August 1938 in Astounding Stories. For its time, the story is pretty graphic and quite ahead of its time in terms of theme. The idea of a creature able to mimic other life forms precisely on a genetic level was new and predated Watson and Cricks discovery of DNA in 1953 by quite a margin. Although Campbell doesn't refer to the DNA in the story, the concept is clearly evident.

The first outing based on the story was Howard Hawks 1957 film 'Thing from Another World'. This took the basic plot elements of an antarctic team of scientists discovering a ship and its sole pilot entombed in the permafrost. I first came on this film by accident, one evening in the late sixties when I came home from a family outing to see the pivotal moment when the team outline the circumference of the buried ship in the ice after finding a strangely aerodynamic fin protruding from the ice. Its interesting to see the scientists all wandering about the sub-zero climate in good stout overcoats and sensible shoes.

 It seemed a promising start and indeed the claustrophobic base and further discoveries mirrored the story quite well, until the actual 'Thing' appeared (actor James Arness in shabby prosthesis) shambling about the corridors, looking every inch like Karloffs Frankenstein monster. This was further confused by the premise that the Thing was half plant and half man, having sharp thorns on his hands and a small garden of bloodthirsty plantlets. For its time, the film has a great classic horror vibe, overacted and trying desperately to catch the fifties zeitgeist of 'flying saucer terror'.

Campbells original story described the alien when it was dug out of the ice and speculates that the tryclopian, blue skinned body may have been the beings original form, the creature reverting to its natural state as it slipped into hibernation. Wayne Douglas Barlowes book on extraterrestrials in sci-fi illustrates the creature well and was my first introduction to the original story. You can just make it out at the top centre of this scan, next to the demonic Overlord.

John Carpenter picked up the story in 1982 with his gutsy remake, a box office flop, but one of my favourite ever alien films. This followed the original story more accurately and some of the alien designs and special effects were outstanding. Carpenters Thing stressed the alien and the metamorphic nature of the beast, as it called upon its genetic memory of all the alien creatures it had encountered, developing a sinister arsenal of claws, spines, tentacles and teeth in its desperate race to propogate itself. Some of the scenes were rich with black humour as well as gore, the film isn't for the weak disposition, but makes up for it with some hilarious one-liners and amazing creations. Probably one of the best scenes is after the Thing has attacked several station members and one of the more portly staff suffers a heart attack. Until this point, its difficult to discern who may have been exposed to the Thing and attention is clevery diverted elsewhere until the the guy is on the operating table about to be defibrillated and his chest opens into an alien maw lined with razor teeth, neatly chomping off the doctors arms! After the Thing is quickly torched by Kurt Russell, the sheer tenacity and drive of the Thing to survive is demonstrated as the head of the unfortunate on the table detaches amid the flames and drags itself across the floor with a whip like tongue. Hiding under a desk, it quickly extrudes six spider legs and a pair of crab-like eyestalks and makes a dash for the door.

The main theme of the 1982 film revolves around the discovery of the Thing and its ship, but by a separate team of Norwegian scientists. By the time the Thing is rediscovered by the american team, the norwegians are all dead and the base in ruins with corpses littering the area. Many questions are raised as to what had happened, some of which are answered by a brief section of video tape showing the scene where the team outlines the buried vessel, but the full story remained a mystery. This is where the recent remake of the Thing comes in, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and written by Eric Heisserer. The film is in effect a direct prequel to Carpenters film and takes advantage of current FX technology to render the Thing in all its glory once more. As it is a prequel, it would make sense to watch the 2011 version first, but as a lot of people will have already seen the 1982 film and because the way it sets the scene, asking 'why did this happen ?' I think its better to watch them in chronological order, with Carpenters first.  But the important thing to note is that the 2011 Thing is far and away the best of the three, the attention to detail relative to Carpenters story is minute and the effects are excellent and its not even remotely funny!


When Carpenters Thing first appeared on the cinema, I recall the audience laughing out loud at the opening titles, when the word 'Thing' burned through the dark on screen. I didn't find it at all funny at the time and enjoyed the film tremndously, I loved Ennio Morricones score too and bought it on LP. What I didn't know at the time, though was there were actually Thing-based toys! In the course of writing this article, I came across a website which shows the marketing blunders attending the release such as a Mattel Thing action figure and a Sno-Cone Maker!


For anyone who wants to go back to the original story for a truly excellent read, the novella and some background information to the films is available here.