DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!



As mentioned earlier in the week the spectacular underwater battle in THUNDERBALL spawned a whole generation of frogmen and skin and scuba divers. Graced with fantastic one-man subs, sleek rubber suits and must-have harpoons, this action sequence, at just under 6 minutes, provided the toy industry with enough rubber suits for the whole of the Sixties.

Probably the most sought after THUNDERBALL treasure is the Tri-ang Underwater Battle board game. It's not one we had in our house but it looks fantastic. Anybody got one?

About 20 years ago during one of my earliest forays into car boot sales, I was lucky enough to net a mysterious frogman torso. Long gone now, it turned out to be the head end of the cool Lone Star Working Model Frogman seen above in its excellent box. Double O Elastic Band!

I suspect though that the single-most popular image of a frogman during the Sixties in the UK was Palitoy's Action Man frogman pictured above. It really is a fabulous rendering and I've even seen it tattooed on someone's arm! Anyone else remember the box art?

Why not dive into some old TV commercials for Action Man courtesy of You Tube, together with a very humorous fan-made diver tale.

As always you can't keep a good bandwagon down and lots of cheaper divers and frogman surfaced to add extra fizz to our bath times. Above is the ARY Deep Sea Diver, which I have half of somewhere in the attic and below is the WF DEEP SEA ACTION DIVER, which I had as a young spelunker and fortunately still have one. Don't you just love all those pipes, hoses and air tanks!

Anyone else have any deep sea divers?

SPACEX T SHIRT

For you SpaceXers out there here's a SpaceX T-shirt!

Made for the private space contractor SpaceX, the logo does remind me of our favourite Tri-ang space toys aka SpaceX too!

It's on Ebay [nothing to do with me by the way!]

Roll Up, Roll Up

A thoroughly desperate Monday morning was brightened most considerably this week, when I met a good friend on the way to work. I was presented with a fabulous gift as a souvenir from a european holiday, Although the item in question actually hailed from Manchester Airport, it did enjoy a cruise along the Danube and visited as far afield as Vienna and Budapest, before finding its way home to sunny Lancashire. The perfect gift for me, this neat little clockwork Fridge Rover is merely inches long and is fitted with powerful nagenets,

The simplest and smallest things being so often the most satisfying, this wonderful little rover adheres firmly to the fridge door and takes off, radar whirling, in a gravity defying trundle across the vast naked expanse of metal. In the week that Curiosity begins its trek across the martian landscape, my Fridge Rover is busily exploring the front of my fridge freezer!

So thank you Bovril - and say NO to hard butter! :-D

UP PERISCOPE WITH ANDY B

Dear Woodsy,

In response to your call for underwater toys. [Above] is a copy from the internet of a toy I had when small, a Disney 20,000 leagues under the sea tin submarine. This was made in a variety of colours; when wound it dived under the water and surfaced again. Great toy, wish I still had it.

The purple sub above is a plastic clockwork bath toy (works well, although tilts to one side when running!). When wound and released, the propeller turns and the periscope rotates.

Also two from recent years. The small grey submarine [above]  was marketed as a pencil sharpener with "bronze effect". I sanded it down, trimmed off a surplus of guns, filled the underside with milliput, then painted it in the style of a 50s-60s toy. Final touch was the piece of cotton rigging. It now adorns my workroom mantlepiece.

Regards,

Andy B

The Rise and Fall of Randy's Divers by Ed Ice Berg

Woodsy,

Regarding the recent post about toy divers: A friend of mine named Randy used to erect a toy train layout every year for Christmas and each year it had a different theme. In 2002 he built a Navy Layout (he was former Navy). One of the many interesting details was a small tank of water (aprrox 12"x12" x3") installed under the drawbridge in such a way as it appeared to be a part of the naval yard entrance. In this tank he would place several of those plastic toy skin diver's that I believe used baking soda to get them to rise and lower. I rememebr seeing these kinds of toys when I was a kid but they are still available and Randy used modern era versions of the toy for his set-up. The only two photos I have show the tank and the diver's but NOT the diver's in the tank :-(

 

Cheers!

Ed

 

More divers to come later from Andy B!

WHEN THE SEAS WERE BRISTLING WITH FROGMEN

I am a great fan of rack toy header art. One particularly rich seam of artistry were frogmen, skin divers and mini-subs. When I was growing up in the Sixties bags of frogmen were everywhere: corners shops, toy shops and beach kiosks [they were the bees knees!]. I suppose the high point was the underwater battle in THUNDERBALL thrilling us in cinemas in 1965 and turning us all into frogmen overnight! It was caught brilliantly in the fim's poster art. 

There are loads of examples of diver artwork, with many jumping on the Thunderball bandwagon [or one man sub!], so here are just a couple:

Recently I visited the South England coast and was thrilled to see that the art of the header card is still alive and kicking. Hanging on racks in a beach shop were lots of bags of cool Ocean Explorers. Modern excellence!

Does anyone else like frogmen toys? Pictures, stories, toys, artwork welcomed.

Could Godzilla Wrestle Thunderbird 2?

Watching CLOVERFIELD again last night and tut-tutting at the shaky camera work spoiling the film, I wondered just how big ol' CLOVERFIELD might be compared to the spaceship, in which it presumably landed in New York's harbour. Having googled for monster and spaceship scales [yes, I admit an odd google even for me!]

 

 

I found two sets of scales in metres we've seen before, monsters [NextRound] and Thunderbirds [Nigel Sadler 2009] which I've combined for easier comparison. It would appear that Thunderbird 1 is on a par with Mr. Stay Puft The Marshmallow Man and Godzilla is about half the height of TB2. Cloverfield, king of the monsters, is a titch compared to Thunderbirds 3 and 5. Can anyone top trump that?