HARPOO7

 

 

 

 

More frogmen and their accessories. These fabulous 007 harpoon toys, part of the 007 frogmen - spy craze that ran in tandem with the space craze in the 60's, belong to supercollector Ferryman. He explained to me in 2011 that both toys were based on existing ray gun tooling with barrel and butt attachments.


The Lone Star one (top 3 pics) was well known for having made various appearances as Dalek and Star Trek guns over the years. The smaller gun (with black body) is less frequently seen but its original form appears to be heavily by the Lone Star Dan Dare gun. The smaller gun has no makers name on it and simply says made in Hong Kong. The bottom picture is a comparison of both. Awesome! Thanks for sharing once again Ferryman.

Lett's Write About The Future

Lett's TV 21 Diary gave another airing to SWORD's Beetle/ Snow Train on page 207 [below]. It would have made a fabulous Century 21 toy. Imai had a go a few years later with their remote control model kit of the Beetle, which they named Thunderbird 7 and sadly removed any reference to SWORD on the box. Technically the Beetle was the Snow Train with it's heat shields up making it look like a millipede. I'm surprised that Lett's diary didn't mention this. There is also a black and white picture of the Booster Rovket but sadly it's not in my archive. I wonder how many kids actually used this book as a diary, the diary of the future no less! In many ways a blog is like a diary, a true diary of the future! Anyone got the Lett's or other Sci-Fi/ Space diaries?

SWORD DIVER 1

From the Project SWORD Annual 1968

SUNKEN TREASURES

The blog archive has many hidden depths nowadays and threads seem to have run in and out of it throughout its four years. Frogmen and subs are just such a thread as they are grafted in the DNA of us baby boomers. Supecollector Ferryman sent me these wonderful shots of his frogman collection back in 2009. There's some real Sixties gems here. See what you think.

Above - Thunderball-style sub with scratchbiult fin

Above - Bradgate Little Big Man Underwater Mission

Above - Thunderball - style Harvey frogmen by Lone Star

Above - a rare Lone Star 2 Man Midget Sub

And last but not least, a HK Frogman Set with lifted Action Man/Gi Joe art we looked at yesterday!

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