UFO BLUES

I had some disappointing news this morning. A book I had ordered is no longer available. It's strange but I had a feeling that the offer was too good to be true: cheap price and free shipping. The book concerned is the UFO Chronicles from Japan. I was responding to this online advert [before it said out of stock!].

Alas, Yes Asia are unable to find a copy from their suppliers, which is a shame. Annoyingly they wish to charge me $14.99 for the privilege of not getting my book.

The UFO Chronicles is the only book I know of which takes the trouble to compare Project SWORD Imai box art with the illustrations in the Project SWORD Annual, so,  its right up my street.

If anyone knows a way of getting hold of a copy of this book without me needing a second mortgage I would be grateful to hear from you readers. Here it is close up.

AURORA MODEL DREAMING

Aurora models were as much a part of a late Sixties and early Seventies childhood as a Chopper Bike and chocolate brazils.

King Kong, Godzilla, Phantom of the Opera, Wolf Man, Dracula and my personal favourite the Addams Family House, to name but a few, were all important models on any Aurora monster display worth its salt, never mind all the super heroes and everything else they produced.

Playing Mantis-Polar Lights / Meobius recycled many of these models for a modern generation and added a few more monsters.

Personally I'd love to see an Aurora Night of the Demon kit and one of the Poe tale The Cask of Armontilado.

If you had control of new Aurora models. which would you add readers?

DALEKS INVADE LONDON

Well, sort of. After the discovery of a Post Office Tower model and a Denys Fisher War of the Daleks game figure at Doncaster toy fair, last week, I picked up the red version of the Dalek on ebay.

Roughly the size of the Marx Rolykins,these neat little toys have been in my sights for a while. The game features 4 (?) of each, silver/red and blue/gold and has some lovely graphics. I don't have the game, but these two were welcomed into my smal Skaro expeditionary force with open arm.

ARE FEWER PEOPLE LEAVING FEEDBACK ON EBAY?

Do you leave feedback on Ebay readers? 

I've noticed a drop in the number of people leaving feedback of late. I for one use feedback scores as a index of customer service and experience.

Is Ebay feedback important to you readers?

KICK OUT THE JAMS WITH JACK AND MEG WHITE

Last weekend's Blogstock here at Moonbase had Bill, Scoop and me rocking to some mighty tracks by the likes of Budgie, Rush and Talking Heads.

So tonight I'm blowing away the last of the Winter's cobwebs with a hefty slice of solid rock, White Stripes style. This is their second album Elephant from 2003. Raucous as hell, its stripped-down garage rock at its finest. The album includes the iconic Seven Nation Army but for me the stand-out track is Ball and a Biscuit. Kapow!

Its a You Tube affair so excuse the pesky adverts. For best results buy the LP like I did way back in 2003. Here's ELEPHANT.

Enjoy!

THE INVESTIGATOR: WHERE IS THE ARMOURED COMMAND VEHICLE PROP?

The next few weeks promise to be an exciting time at Moonbase. Me, Bill and Scoop will be bringing you some fabulous new posts about an obscure Gerry Anderson TV series pilot called The Investigator. It never made it onto the telly but left a legacy of fantastic vehicles in the true Anderson style.

As a prelude to all this I wanted to ask readers if they might help solve a mystery related to The Investigator. In 2013 I saw a daytime antiques TV show here in the UK. It will have been Flog It or something like it. On the show was a British toy museum, which was displaying what appeared to be the original Investigator Armoured Command Vehicle from the show as pictured below and some footage courtesy of You Tube.

Does anyone know which toy museum it is?

EVEN MORE CHROMED OFF

Despite Google Chrome allowing me to solve one set of huge blogging problems this year, it has brought with it a whole set of new ones.

The latest irksome development is the sudden appearance of random and unnecessary hyperlinks in both my posts and any comments that are left. These links are for the most random of words like Christmas, but or and. The links appear as small circular arrows and are incredibly annoying.

Despite never agreeing to any monetisation of the blog or indeed any adverts, I now appear to be plagued by this unwelcome rash of ridiculous links from a cynical operating system. I only hope it doesn't detract from the readers' blog experience too much until I can figure out how to get rid of these uninvited pests, which will no doubt ruin this very post!

"BLUE-BOX" SPACE VEHICLES

This set of “BLUE-BOX” space vehicles are always making welcome appearances on the blog, and I must admit I'm always happy to see them.

Although they’re not SWORD, my original set would regularly rub shoulders with my SWORD Scout Force set during carpet wars, as they seemed to be of a similar scale.

My favourite was always the pink Space Disc. I don’t think this pretender looked out of place amongst  the SWORD toys.

Second favourite is the green Space Car. We've seen this one in several different guises, haven't we, including the smaller red Apollo Exploring  blog favourite.

Next, the Space Rocket.  I like the classic rocket shape of this toy  but that big wheel housing doesn't help it’s looks from the side.

Finally the Space Jet and my least favourite.  It’s just far too stumpy, and coupled with the cumbersome wheel housing it’s not got a lot going for it, but I suppose it's still  got it's nostalgic charm. 

As we know there are several different variations cast in different coloured plastic with different stickers.  But for me this is the set I remember, so for now I’ll stick with this selection.