LITTLE WARRIORS' MARTIAN MINE STARRING SPACEX

Saw this neat blog, Little Warriors, and thought MC readers might like it. It has a fab little photo-story featuring some SpaceX toys no less!

http://littlewarriors-indy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/martian-mine.html

LIFT OFF WITH AYSHEA

Recently looking through my old Look-In magazines I chanced upon an article on the pop series, Lift Off!

This early evening series started  in November 1969 and continued for eight series, finishing in December 1974.

Its original presenters were Graham Bonney and Ayshea Brough.  Graham Bonney parted company with the show halfway through series two which left Ayshea  in charge.

Ayshea was born Ayshea  Hague, in Highgate, London on 12^th November 1948. As an actress, she made her film debut at age 9 as an extra in George Pal’s’ Tom Thumb’, starring Russ Tamblyn. As a singer, she cut her first record, ‘Eeny Meeny  at aged seventeen.

Her big break came with Lift Off! which was later renamed Lift Off with Ayshea. During each show Ayshea would sing cover versions of contempory songs in between songs and banter from pop star guests. She released two albums, imaginably called, Ayshea followed by Lift Off with Ayshea.

Her final single, Farewell was specially written for her by Wizzard’s, Roy Wood.

During her time on Lift Off! Ayshea  also made regular appearances in Gerry Anderson’s new  glossy series, UFO as the recurring character, Lt. Ayshea Johnson. 

Apart from being seen every week in the title sequence, her legs featured fairly prominently in the opening episode, Identified.  

She also appeared with UFO’s Mike Billington in a special photoshoot for the 1970 TV Times Christmas with the Stars edition featuring the fashions seen in the series.

Following a divorce from her then husband, record producer, Chris Brough at some point during the seventies , she remarried and later divorced  the late actor Steve Alder  who some might remember appeared as Murphy in ‘The Professionals’ TV series.

Moving to Los Angeles, she married CBS President, Michael I Levy, and started a property development and interior design business.  However in 1993, following another divorce she shut up shop and returned to England.

Ayshea  has certainly had an interesting career, and now she’s back in Britain maybe she’d be up for an appearance at the odd convention – Andercon springs to mind!

 What about giving her a call, Jamie!  

Interceptor Variations

Adding to Woodsys post about the rebranded Blue Box spaceship, a trawl through the Wotan Archive revealed these photographs from some time ago.

The first shows my original green shuttle with a purple AHI version and the Space Jet, still on card. Sadly, both of the AHI ones were resold due to hard times on Mars Base, but i've kept the green one.Below is the original auction photo, in which I won the two spacex knockoffs as well. The space jet also appears as a clockwork version in purple, white and other colours.

A toy from my own bucket list, the fifth member of the Blue Box series, the Space Tank!

This is another toy i've never seen in the flesh and have only ever come across this photo on the internet, many years ago.

And finally... just seen these on ebay:

BLAKES 7 BLUE BOX RARITY: THE FEDERATION INTERCEPTOR

 

Further to Kevin's fascinating Guide to Blakes 7 merchandise I posted last week, I've found images of two of the rarer toys. One is familiar to Apollo Moon Exploring toys fans as its the Federation Interceptor by Blue Box, a larger green version of the small red space car found in Imperial's carded sets [and the unbranded boxed set] pictured below.

 

 

Pictured at the top, the larger green Blue Box version clearly has the Blakes 7 sticker on one side and presumably on both. Here's the photo of all three Blakes 7 vehicles from Kevin's excellent guide. Oddly enough Blue Box didn't use their sleeker rocket design which usually accompanied the other three. I'm not sure what colour the two other B7 toys are but has anybody got any of them?

 

As with most things on the blog after 5 years of posts, most things have appeared as one version or another even if we didn't know it at the time. Way back in October 2008 in the blog's first month I posted a set of Blue Box space toys I had at the time [three of which were sadly Ebayed shortly after], which included this lime green space car. Blue Box clearly used the designs for as many purposes as possible.

 

 

Here's a full set of the four Blue Box vehicles offered as a Sears special in the US. Again the space car is lime green rather than the darker Blakes 7 green.

 

 

We have seen a lot of the lime green space cars on the blog before. Again, in our first year I posted Bill's group shot of various space toys including the SC3 version sat alongside the Imperial red.

 

In fact over the years I have posted lime green, red, brown, silver and white versions of the space car at different sizes, but I've never seen the darker green one as featured in Kevin's Blakes 7 guide. He wasn't joking when he said its "almost impossible to find".Anyone else seen one never mind owning one?

 

 

PS. I may have owned part of the Blake's 7 rocket myself for all I know! Not knowing the colour of the Blake's 7 rocket toy makes it impossible to know but here's the main silver and red body of a toy I had before selling it on Ebay years ago! Who knows what I had there!

 

 

MY SEKIDEN HEAVEN

 

Back in the baby boom years of the Sixties our house was like a war zone! I had my Johnny Seven to blast seven bells out of my two big Brothers. But one day they came back firing - with a toy pistol called a Sekiden, which hailed from Japan I think.

 

 

It was a ballistics nightmare! Two sekidens shooting small silver balls and aimed straight at me behind the sofa! Boy did they hurt! The sound of the Sekiden was one of those iconic noises of my childhood, like Crossfire and Captain Lazer's backpack. Like it's strange brand name too, a true classic!

 

 

The balls were some form of compressed green stuff and came in neat little boxes. My brothers loved their Sekidens and I had to surrender to the brand's sheer ferocity many many times! Happy days! Did you have a Sekiden?

DR. WHO: THE SEA DEVILS

Following Scoop's fascinating post about lost and found episodes of Dr. Who, I thought I'd watch some of my own favourites. I'll start with the Sea Devils, which I loved as a kid. They aren't to be confused with Mattel's aqua-nautical rubberised toys of the Sixties with the same name. So why not watch the first 10 minutes of the Sea Devils with me courtesy of You Tube/ BBC.

 

LOOK-IN ANNUAL 1976 GERRY ANDERSON ARTICLE

An article from the 1976 Look -In Television Annual  on Gerry Anderson and his series with some nice photos. The annual also has a Space 1999 text story called' Centre of Conflict' and a Spot-the-Difference showing a photo from 'Breakaway'.

MAGIC ELEPHANT BEANS

The other day I remembered a strange little trinket my big Brother Steve had when I was a kid in the Sixties. It was a small red bean with an elephant shaped stopper and contained a handful of tiny white elephant shapes. I can see it quite clearly!

A little bit of googling and I was amazed to find that many people had these little beans and I found a whole site, Magical Seeds From India devoted to them!

Sadly I believe that the white elephants and maybe even the stopper where made of thin ivory, which I simply wouldn't have in the house nowadays. But in the Sixties we weren't so aware of the plight of elephants.

This aside, does anyone else remember these magic beans pictured here?