MY BIG FOUR: SPACE FRONTIER ROCKET

Like the DESERT PATROL JEEP, this was one of my BIG FOUR tin toys when I was an anklebiter in Sixties Preston, the fabulous SPACE FRONTIER ROCKET by Yoshino of Japan [footage found on YouTube]. A huge horizontal rocket with spinning front and rear sections, mystery action and illuminated nose cone. But the best bit was when the rocket stopped dead and the hatch opened allowing a space cameraman to rise up on a sort of armature. Totally wondrous! This toy was one of my top destroyers of entire Airfix carpet armies! I bought my 'adult' example for £60 years ago from STARC, a robot dealer who I met at Doncaster toy fair [wonder if he's still around?]. The box art is very atmospheric but the boxes to these toys often seem scuffed and worn for some reason. Who else had or has one?

Picture: Vectis

Major Boost?

The long-awaited Major Matt Mason movie appears to have been given a boost and its rubber heart could be beating again! Read here. http://collider.com/tom-hanks-robert-zemeckis-major-matt-mason-moves-forward/203219/#more-203219

THUNDERBOXING

Saw this in my photo archive of Ebay stuff from yonks ago and noticed the Thunderbird 1 lookalikes in the background of the box art. Those Tracy spaceships got everywhere! Have you seen them turning up in odd unrelated places? box art? fairgrounds? book covers?

WHEN IN BLACKPOOL ALSO....

.....Visit Thunderbooks, where, like me, you can spend a happy half-hour browsing the cool stock and vintage collectibles. The proprietor is a nice chap called David Nightingale. David is a pioneer of Anderson collecting and published the seminal magazines [1981-1988], Century 21 [1988- 1994] and Action 21. You can read more here. David also trades online as Star Trader.

TV21 - ALL IS REVEALED PART 3

In September of 1968, Joe 90 aired in the UK. Obviously, it was impossible to incorporate his exploits into TV21’s continuity. So, Joe was given his own comic - Joe 90: Top Secret which arrived in January, 1969. It signalled a sort of turning point for the readership of TV21 and a choice . Apart from that years TV21 annual, a third Thunderbird and second Captain Scarlet annuals were published along with two others. The Joe 90 annual and the Project SWORD annual. The first set in the near future, the second set in 3031.

The Scarlet annual contained three excellent cutaways - The Clam Sub, first seen in the episode ’White as Snow’ , The Hovercraft seen in ’Traitor’ , and The Radar Truck first seen in ‘Manhunt‘.

The Joe 90 annual showed cutaway sketches of the Jet Air Car and Sam’s saloon, which to my mind were mildly disappointing compared to the Captain Scarlet cutaways. Both these cutaways were reprinted in colour in the Joe 90 Dossier, a booklet given away with Sutherland potted meat spreads.

However as the series was really about the transfer of brain patterns by scientific gizmo’s and computers, rather than fantastic vehicles so the annual carried some better cutaways of Culver Bay cottage and Mac’s laboratory showing the BIG RAT and the RAT TRAP.

We already know about the re used Zero X cutaway artwork in the Project Sword annual , but I also liked the traditional cutaway of the Moonbus .

By 1970 TV21 had  merged with Joe 90: Top Secret  and had changed beyond recognition. City Magazines published a second Joe 90 annual and the last TV21 annual which would maintain some of the original continuity, along with a combined Thunderbird and Captain Scarlet annual which did come across as a last gasp, the latter containing a breakdown of the Cloudbase Computer, and Dr Fawn’s Medic- Bay.

So there you have it, some of my favourite cutaways from the world of Century 21.  I hope you enjoyed them.

　



　

JEEP AT THE PRICE

Further to my recent post about my old Desert Patrol Jeep by Modern Toys I had a browse round for variations and knockoffs.

This Desert Super Tiger above appears to be one such copycat albiet tooled-up for the garish Eighties. This is a Chinese knockoff from 1985.

The next two I found on the superb VECTIS auction site. Above is a Greek copy by Lira with its blue based box. Below is the Marx Tricky Action Jeep, which might be the forerunner of them all.

This last one appears to be a blue-gun variation from South America.

And if you've never seen the Desert Patrol Jeep in action then feast your eyes on this short You Tube film. It's one crazy vehicle! I remember taking it to my first school around '67 after Xmas. It was wild! Did anyone else take presents into the class, to show everybody and the teacher after Christmas?

TV21 - ALL IS REVEALED PART 2

At the beginning of 1967, TV21 released it’s Thunderbird Spring Extra which had an heavy emphasis on the film Thunderbirds Are Go and the Zero X. One of it’s features was the cutaway of that mighty spaceship. This, as most of us know would be reproduced later in the SWORD annual.

In spite of the box office flop of the film, Thunderbirds was still as popular as ever, and Century 21 publishing was riding high. Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons would join the comic towards the end of the year, and TV21 was at it’s peak.

The 1968 annual was graced with two cutaways - again, probably drawn by Eric Eden. One was the popular Fireflash, which had appeared in TV21 prior to it’s debut on TV, and the other, the Sidewinder from the episode ’ Pit of Peril’, although it was called the Jungle Cat referring to another pre - Thunderbird appearance in an early TV21 Stingray story.

The Thunderbird annual from the same year had cutaways of The Mole and The Firefly, which followed the same style as the TV21 layout.

The first Captain Scarlet annual was also released . However ,rather than doing a straight forward cutaway of each vehicle, the editors decided to surround a publicity photograph with drawings of various related components which gave an impression of a technical manual.

However, traditional cutaways of some of the main vehicles appeared in TV21 comic at the beginning of 1968 starting with the Saloon Car in issue 156, again drawn by Eric Eden. The ever popular SPV appeared in issue 160.

I’ll cut along now but I’d be cut up if you don’t join me for the final instalment when we look at the last hurrah for the Century 21 cutaways.

Time Travel Tower

Blackpool - an iconic and memorable town, its a bit like an inappropriately dressed auntie that sidles up to you at the xmas party, drink in hand, to smack wet kisses on your chops while pressing you to her ample bosom. At once pleasant and at the same time slightly uncomfortable. But after a quick swig of your favourite tipple and a bag of chips, that subtle magic is there again. The first time I visited the town was in the mid seventies, five of us crammed into a mini cooper, me and my parents were delivered onto the Golden Mile one summer evening. It was an experience ill never forget, staying up way beyond bedtime and all the shops open and enjoying a roaring trade. I came home that night with a Lunar Zoomer, one of those pieces of flexible hoover pipe that you whirled around your head and listened to it warble. I also stuffed myself with all kinds of sweets and pop and marvelled at the vast array of gift shops, sex shops and arcades, ranged along the front. There were some of the best toy shops ive ever come across tucked away in the back streets, stuffed with old toys as well as new. Even in the succeeding years, it was possible  to discover vintage space toys resting on the shelves, alongside hordes of cheap hong kong toys made for the seaside shops. The addition of  Dave Nightingales wonderful Thunderbooks store meant I could pick up armfuls of manga comics and japanese import kits too.

I visited Blackpool at the weekend and spent the day walking the front and watched the illuminations light the night sky. Between the donkeys, the stag partys, the candy floss and the shops peddling cheap rubbish toys along the front, the magic was still there. The toys had long gone and the old toy shops with them, but that frisson of kitchy, vintage fun was timeless and in its simple way, priceless.