WINTER BLUES

As it enters well into it's six month I'm totally naffed off with the British winter. Cold, wet, grey, lightless, sleety days and nights without end. I shouldn't moan as it's -18 degrees in a morning at Helsinki Base where Arto live's!

To drive away those winter blues I'm currently employing a hefty dose of rock-shock treatment with a large pair of old fashioned headphones and You Tube's loudest tunes.

 

 

Rocking Moonbase at the moment is the White Stripes' epic Blues riff meltdown Ball and a Biscuit from their 2003 landmark album Elephant. Listen here and turn it up! Be warned, this slice of rock could turn you into to an air guitaring rock god in seconds!

 

 

Its just possible that I'm your third man sugar but its a fact that I'm the seventh son.

ZERO-X ON RECORD

Recently I had a cruise round cyberspace to track down certain LP records. I was after records which pictured the Zero-X on the sleeve. With the OX having its own movie, Thunderbirds Are Go, I had thought that there would be stacks of them. No such luck. Despite there being an official Thunderbirds Are Go soundtrack record, it doesn't even feature the Zero-X on the cover!

The only record I could locate at all is this one pictured from Japan on the Victor label from the 1960's. I assume that its the soundtrack to Thunderbirds Are Go? The artwork appears to be signed but I don't have the LP and can't find a bigger picture to have a proper look. Is it recycled Imai model box art?

The only other record I could find with the Zero-X on the sleeve isn't even really a record. It's a laserdisc! More precisely, its the MGM double feature of Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6 in a deluxe letter-box format from the 1990's. The sleeve art is, I think, the same used for some cinema posters at the time of the film, though once again I'm unsure who the artist is.

So after such a paltry result for LP's, I wonder if Zero-X featured on any other Laserdiscs, cine-film boxes, video sleeves, DVD's or Blu-ray? I'm also interested in any pictures of any Thunderbirds films and episodes in any viewing format.  Contributions welcomed!

INTO SPACE WITH ACE BRAVE

‘Into Space With Ace Brave - Space Master’, a pop - up book produced in the mid fifties and drawn  by Ron Turner.

Inspired by the similar Dan Dare pop-up book which came out in 1953, Ron’s version was produced after he had finished working for ‘Tit - Bits’ comics and was looking for other work.

The first pop up shows the command deck of  the space ship ’Asteroid’. The ship is on it’s way to Mars to rendezvous with the deep-space ship, ’Aspirant’.

To while away the journey, Ace Brave recalls some of his adventures.

Peril! - Ace along with fellow spacemen, Rex Manley and ‘Rocky’ Cragg  land on  Venus and do battle with a Terrathon.

Crash Landing! -  While taking off from Mars, the rocket fuel pumps packed up half a mile above the ground. Ace managed to land the ship using the nose rockets.

Space Patrol -  Interceptor rockets blast off  from Moon Control to ward off Space Pirates that are threatening Ace’s ship.

At the end of the book, Ace and his crew board ‘The Aspirant’. Twenty four hours later they blast off into deep space. One day, Ace says, he’ll be back to tell you all - what lies beyond!

Ron never did do a follow up - During an interview conducted by John Lawrence in  The Comic Journal  he did recall doing another pop-up book but believed that may have been a western.

Darkside sc fi cd

Just a quick note to anyone whos ordered a free cd, theres been a slight delay getting the covers printed, but they will be with you shortly.

HOLY GRAILS

Holy Grails are the stuff of dreams. By their very nature they are almost always unattainable. Their scarcity makes them irresistible but most of us will never own them. So why do we think about Holy Grails?

Collectors of Project SWORD have a hard time of it here. We agree that the Moon Base Base Play Set is the Holy Grail, tantalisingly described in the pink manual [below] but beyond a couple of shop displays, does it actually exist? Does this add to its desirability or is it a waste of time to yearn after it?

There are Holy Grails in every area of collecting: childhood collections, comics, space toys, books, films and so on. They may be entirely personal to you rather than being  the rarest of objects. What is your Holy Grail and why?

 

TV DINNERS

I've just been watching 2001 A Space Odyssey. There's so much to say about Kubrick's meisterwerk so I'll start with something quite banal, but something I love to see in films, food or more precisely, meals. I think that add an essential human quality.

There are a number of meals in 2001, ranging from Moon Base executive delicacies to Moon Bus space chicken sandwiches, but it is the plastic tray meals that I'm particularly fond of. These are eaten by the two astronauts of Discovery One, Dr's Bowman and Poole.

There is something totally futuristic about these compact white plastic trays filled with coloured pastes and part of a future I felt sure we'd be enjoying by now. I suppose plastics where part of the white hot technological revolution of the 1960's in a way we just don't view them now. Plastic household items were icons of the future back then and I remember my Mum proudly storing food in Tupperware pots in the fridge. Tupperware was synonymous with a brighter cleaner tomorrow and there were front room parties to celebrate its usefulness. Sadly I never got to go to one. You?

 

The closest I've got to Kubrick's beautiful white trays in my 52 years are a set of gorgeous orange camping trays stacked and strapped together and very similar to these on Etsy [mine are buried in the loft somewhere!]

In terms of food in space the nearest we all come to experience this nowadays is the in-flight meal provided by airlines. It's still a far cry from the processed symmetry of 2001's trays isn't it!

But without doubt my own odyssey into processed tray food was during the 1990's when I used to love what were called 'tv dinners'. Around since the 50's in America, they took off in the UK in the 60's with the advent of domestic refrigeration at the cutting edge, the ice box and the chest freezer. TV dinners came in handy Kubrickesque compartmental trays, either foil or plastic and often contained pastel-coloured veg, mash and meat in gravy. They came in their own cardboard packaging [ a great collecting  area I reckon!] and often kept me going after working late. My favourite were the chicken or turkey TV dinners. A sort of Apollo Sunday dinner. Mmmmm. Processed heaven and excellent training for space travel!

The modern 'ready meal' is the posh progeny of TV dinners and hold nothing of their futuristic charm. Or is this my nostalgic bias? Does anyone else like TV dinners?

GOING UP TOWN

Me and Missus Moonbase went up town today, something we haven't done for ages on a Saturday. And to think, it was absolutely essential, almost sacramental,  when we were all kids! We lived for Saturdays!

 

 

The Missus and me used the park and ride bus into Doncaster and headed for a favourite eatery, Cafe Med, in the busy market. Besides the great Mediterranean food I love the market stall opposite. Its choc-full of old plastic cake decorations, like footballers and ships. Alas, no golden astronauts but I did find two neat little spaceships for a pound.

 

 

The market's own vintage toy stall was its usual hive of activity but I didn't find anything to take my fancy this time despite a Joe 90 Dossier and shiny Aurora Star Trek painted model tempting me. The market's Video and DVD dealer is always a delight too, with rows and rows of vintage VHS like Ammytyville 2 and Halloween III Season the Witch. The price of £5 each was, however, too much for a man on a budget [sounds like a TV series that!]. No Thunderbirds or 2001 Space Odyssey VHS variants to add to my collection but amazingly I did walk away with six videos free gratis as the chap was throwing loads out to make space! They include Eighties gems House II and Nightmare on Elm Street IV. Result!

 

vhscoverjunkie

 

Doncaster's charity shops have often provided hidden treasure for us over the years but nothing for me today I'm afraid. There were some treats I would have snapped up 10 years ago in my toy fair days including a set of ten mint boxed National Costume Dolls of the world at £1.50 each.

 

 

We rounded off the trip with a visit to newsagents WHSmith. Here I drooled over the latest Eaglemoss Batmobile, which Scoop has been blogging about and the first Marvel Super Heroes Fact Files magazine in a brilliant card sleeve, which looks as big as a shop display! A real bargain at 99 pence, but I resisted as I can't see me getting the rest. Since I couldn't find Collectors Gazette I bought The Darkside, a magazine about monster movies, which as readers of the blog will know, I do rather like.

 

 

After that we caught the bus back to the park and ride. We may not be 12 anymore and singing all the time but all in all going up town was  lots of fun. Do you go up town readers?

TANKS A LOT: SPACE ATTACK UFO MISSILE TANKS

The world of PROJECT SWORD collecting, like any passion, has a core collection of the main items and  a murky outer rim of indirectly related stuff. The unlicensed UFO Missile Tank, pictured below, fits into this latter category as it's only link to Project SWORD is the use of recycled Moon Crawler artwork on the lower left corner of the box. It has more to do with UFO than SWORD but as its the only toy with the Moon Crawler box art it holds a special place in the SWORD canon [some Moon Crawler models exist but I am talking about toys]. For whatever reason this toy can still command high prices on auction sites.

So I was thrilled when reader Arto, up in Helsinki Base, spotted this red variant of the Missile Tank, on the Vectis auction site: the Space Attack Missile Mod..? The maker's name in yellow top centre appears to be FIM. Anyone got one of these tanks?