SCREEN AND SCREEN AGAIN

I'm a big cinema fan and the clear highlight of the year so far has been PROMETHEUS, Ridley Scott's stunning prequel to his 1979 masterpeice, a real joy for an ALIEN fan like me. I haven't been as excited about a film since Lucas's Star Wars prequel, A PHANTOM MENACE.

Looking forward to the new film season I see that a few old gems are being dusted off for a re-screening. JAWS gets another bite and the iconic Hammer zombiefest PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES lurches once again to a picture house near you this Summer. If I got the choose old flicks for re-showing it would be maybe old fashioned doube bills of black and white shockers NIGHT OF THE DEMON and DEAD OF NIGHT and colour sci-fi epics MOON ZERO TWO and THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

The two films still languishing on the drawing board I'd like to see get onto the big screen are UFO and MAJOR MATT MASON.

Which films would you choose for your cinema screens?

Galactica Redux

The Mattel range of Battlestar Galactica toys are a firm favourite of mine from late seventies. Coming in direct competition to the market leader of kenners Star Wars toys, Mattel took several separate paths to grab a slice of the space toy market. The main thrust was a series of action figures, which were simplistic and ugly, with an almost doll-like shape. Secondly, came a pair of large figures based on the sixties Captain Laser body, of a Cylon and Colonial Warror. But the best part of the marketing strategy was for me the vehicle range. Ive looked at these before, but until recently, my collection was incomplete. My collection lacked the Viper and also the pilot for my Cylon Raider. Thanks to the kind intervention of blog contributor CS, my fleet is now complete.

For some reason, Mattel seemed to be unable, or unwilling to get the look of the Cylon correct. the action figure version was closest, but still distorted, the large figure was all black with a grossly distorted head and the small vehicle pilot has more in common with Gort than a cylon.

Its a nice little figure, jointed at shoulders and hips and looks suitably sinister.The Viper pilot looks a little more doll like and is less able to stand than the cylon. One of the best features of the  vehicle range is the interchaneability of the colonial vehicles, something the Raider doesn't share.The Colonial Stellar Probe can be married with the Viper to create a long range Viper craft with the addition of the extended fuselage.

SpaceX Art Week: NASA Glider Card Art

NASA Glider Card back

Tri-ang Spacex

Will Osborne collection

KUBRICK's BRICK

With their links to Project SWORD, us Moonbasers are always interested in 2001 Space Odyssey toys. Most are vintage and like the three Japanese plastic spacecraft are very classy. But here's a modern toy, the Monolith Action Figure currently available allover cyberspace. I'm not sure what to make of this, seems very gimmicky. It would have made a great free gift with TV21 or the SWORD Annual. What do you think?

Hatchet Job

One of Toad's earliest seismic contributions to the blog was an old article concerning a SWORD toy display at Hatchett's nightclub in London in the late Sixties. I've recently re-blogged the whole article but the pictures has always fascinated me in terms of which toys are included. You can see for yourself above in as large a scale I can get on the blog. I do love the Hatchett's logo, it really sits well with the SWORD tagline and I suppose is sort of connected: swords, hatchetts! [but why on earth choose this venue for a toy display, a nightclub of all places?]

I've had a go at identifying the toys and my results are below. There are a few Apollo Saturns, Moon Buses etc, which presumabley came out of the boxes they had. There's nothing exotic like the nuclear Ferry I don't think but there are some boxes I just can't make out. What do you think they are?

UP, Up and oh its gone..

The 1970 Airfix toy catalogue had a lot of cool stuff in it, including the Diving Submarine, Water Rocket and tucked away in the corner, an Arrowcopter. As a kid, I always loved flying toys like gliders and flying saucers and frisbees etc. The Arrowcopter seemed to be a really simple catapult like toy and at the time, passed by my attention. It wasnt till years later, when I was on holiday in Cornwall that I saw that the Arrowcopter was still being produced today.

I snapped one up, more for nostalgias sake than any expectation of it actually working. When I got back to the camp site, I opened it up and took off to the big field leading down the beach. The Arrowcopter is basically a pair of plastic wings attached to a weighted pole. As the 'copter ascends, the wings are folded back, as it reaches the apex and falls back to Earth, the wings bring it back, spinning like a sycamore seed.
The whole assembly was launched by a simple elastic band, so I stood in the middle of the field, casually drew back the band and aimed for the sky. Either I misjudged the strength of the band or the aerodynamic properties of the Arrowcopter, but as I released it, it literally vanished into the ether.  The packs says it reaches 300 feet and i could well believe it! It shot straight up and disappeared from view. I assume it must have come down somewhere, but i couldnt see it descend and several hours of patient searching revealed nothing! I had to wait another 12 months till I returned for another holiday in Falmouth before I could buy another - and this time, I left it securely in the packet.

GOLDEN ADVERTS: The Advertising of Multiple Toymakers Golden Astronaut toys

Raiding my old photo archive for pics of US Golden Astronaut advertising has revealed the above bits and pieces. Not a great deal really so I'm sure there must be more out there somewhere.

The colour catalogue pages are from JC Penneys. For $8.88 you could get all 'four sets', which it describes in some detail. Interestingly it includes a blue Nuclear Pulse and a yellow Space Patrol 1, which we've discussed before on the blog but I do just love 'em!

The black and white Montgomery Wards catalogue page advertises their 'big astro set exclusive at Wards' and, assuming they're the same, it cost a whole $2 less than Penneys! Did the Wards set have 'exclusive' packaging?

The 'Cape Multiple' trade ad is interesting as it suggests that Multiple Toymakers ran out of stock of Golden Astronaut at some point presumably around 1970 [I wonder if Sales Manager Bob Barrett is still with us?]. This ad might well have been part of my own collection had it not got lost on the post somewhere between the States and Blighty several years ago after I shelled out for it on Feebay. Golden drats! I've a feeling the original picture was in colour. Does anyone know?

The legal 'Notice to the Trade' is also of note as it suggests, albeit obscured by the ebay seller, that Multiple Toymakers/ Miner Industries were sick of bootlegs and knockoffs of Golden Astronaut. There were so many, wonder which they took to court? It must be on file somewhere. I'm assuming they didn't mean Tri-ang SpaceX!

The final pic is of the mythical Golden Astronaut Club badge and ID card, which I got from Ebay a few years ago - the picture that is. Wonder what else you got as a member or was this it? Anyone know?

KILLERS IN THE MIST

Well, I'm sat here at Moonbase with a cold bottle of zero alcohol Cobra watching England's first game in this year's European Football Championships aka Euro 2012. Watching England is a bit like being an ambulance driver not knowing what the next accident will be like! 90 minutes of pure torture!

To steady my nerves I'm distracting my mind by trying to think of a word that describes the mist inside the egg field in the Derelict in ALIEN. You know, the mist that reacts when Kane walks through it. My brain's been doing mental penalties! First up is hyperbaric, which means pressures above normal atmospheric. Nope. Next comes thixotropic describing a gel which changes from viscous to fluid when shaken or stirred. Close but nope.

So what about photoplasmic, like the plasma balls, which throw lightning towards your hands. But therein lies a problem. I'm unsure if the egg mist in ALIEN is reactive to Kane's torchlight or to his touch. There's a similar phenomenon in PROMETHEUS, which is easier to say is simple melting. Which could help with ALIEN. Is the mist reacting to a rise in temperature? Oh, I don't know. Do you?

Well, England and France have drawn 1:1 so the mental gym is closed for our evening meal.