Sundae Sundae

When I was a kid there was a particular dessert called a Sundae. Its hard to be exact about exactly what one was but we had them on holiday, and, well, on a Sunday too. It really was quite confusing as a nipper, what with two different spellings of a word that sounded the same!

So, Sundaes. Yes. Basically I think they were  [ and are ] ice-cream with fruit or sauce or often both. The Sundaes I remember the most are Peach Melba, Banana Split and the daddy of them all, Knickerbocker Glory. With a name like that you could build empires!

Peach Melba was vanilla ice cream with peaches and some of that delicious peachy syrup from the can. It came in a half globe glass bowl on a stem. Heaven.

Banana Split was a big boat of a thing with a mountain of ice cream and whipped cream flanked by two halves of banana like two subs circling an ice berg. The whole heap was drizzled with chocolate sauce and sprinkled with chopped nuts. The entire shabang was served on a cigar shaped dish or glass bowl. Bliss.

Knickerbocker Glory, the mothership of Sundaes, came in a tall thick cut glass vase at least a foot tall. You paid handsomely for this bad boy but the pain was worth it. The Glory was layer upon layer of ice cream alternated with tinned fruit like peaches, strawberries, grapes and pear. 

The vast column was crowned with a mop of whipped cream and pomaded with nuts and raspberry sauce. A long spoon unique to the Knickerbocker was the final bit of kit. The dessert of choice at our own wedding, the Glory is quite simply the Nuclear Ferry of sweets.

All of the above concoctions of delight were liberally peppered with garnish like chopped nuts, chocolate sauce, raspberry sauce, chocolate sprinkles and hundreds and thousands in various amounts and combinations. Tinned fruit was critical and without a cut glass stemmed bowl it just wasn't a Sundae.

Great pretenders came along now and then like ice-cream floats, mixed ice, Bird's dream topping with strawberries and fools of various types, but they were misguided and everyday. Compared to Sundaes, they were, well, just fools!

What was or is your favourite Sundae or ice-cream dessert readers?

MORE ANDERCON PUPPETS

A few more photos of the many puppets that could be seen at Andercon.

Finally, a test head of the Sam Scott character from FireStorm. The finished puppet will have real hair.

SPACE ANTI-TANK GUN-TYPE TOYS

I do love this toy of Bill's, the hilariously named LUNAR DUMP. Its on of a quartet by Parks. What interest's me here is it's rear 'turret'. There's something wholly futuristic about angled turrets pointing to the sky. I suppose as well they remind me of ant-aircraft guns from WWII [is that the same as a flak gun?]. Maybe I mean retro-futuristic? Anyways. in this case the turret is actually a telescopic crane.

Another fine turret is the SpaceX LAMA or Lunar Anti-Meteorite Attacker. Based originally on Ed Valigursky's book cover for Sinister Barrier, the LAMA fires satellites for detecting meteorites.

Can you think of any more angled turrets like this readers?

ANDERCON PUPPETEERING

Unsurprisingly, there was plenty of puppets at Andercon, mainly replicas, and many with heads cast from moulds taken from original  props.

As the Athena venue had plenty of open space many of the puppets had their own  replica sets.

This highly detailed set shows Brains in a scene from Thunderbirds episode, The Cham-Cham, and was built by Andy Grishaw and Jeff Gaskell.

Another lovely recreation. Here's 'Nosey' Parker with Light-Fingered Fred doing porridge! 

This photo of Joe McClaine with the Rat Trap in the background is a set up recreating a 1993/94  Brighton display restoration courtesy of Chris Carter.

Puppeteers Judy Preece and Richard Gregory appeared on stage, showing the tricks of the trade with their puppetry demonstrations.

The highlight was a practical demonstration of the state-of-the-art puppet of Sam Scott from Anderson Entertainment's proposed new series, Fire Storm.

This remarkable puppet looks fantastic, and takes puppeteering to a whole new level.

PLASTIC SEA BIRD VARIATIONS

Plastic Sea Bird made in Hong Kong.

Colour variations in the Ferryman collection.

LEAF CENTURIES GUM CAPTION COMPETITION!

I love this old American wrapper for Centuries gum. Given that there's a rocket heading straight for them, the grins on the faces of the boy and dinosaur are hilarious!

So, who can come up with the best caption or speech bubble for it! The funnier the better of course!

DO YOU LIVE IN THE PAST?

It's an odd phrase 'Living in the Past'. Someone I know thinks that I do - live in the past. 

But don't we all? After all, the past was when I started this paragraph!

Where does the past end and the present begin? Or indeed the future for that matter. None of them have definite boundaries like fossil layers or the sound barrier. Surely our past is more like the youngest course of a river, a river of time in which we were born and currently swim upstream, eventually bringing us to the open sea of the future. 

In this sense we are always connected to all three temporal states aren't we?

Perhaps I'm just nostalgic as, I suspect, most vintage toy collectors are? I had to look up Nostalgia to be sure of what I meant. It is, according to Wiki, a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. It is a formation of a Greek compound, consisting of nóstos meaning "homecoming" and álgos meaning "pain, ache".

So, Nostalgia is like homesickness by the looks of it. I cannot deny that I loved my Sixties and Seventies childhood and think about it often. I wouldn't have a blog like this if I didn't. Vintage toys are like companions from that special time, inanimate travelers who, like me, have survived, bobbing along in that river again. 

I suppose collecting them and writing about them is like being a salvage merchant, rescuing them from smashing on the rocks.

But do I live in the past? The modern usage of this term seems wholly negative, an assertion that someone is in someway not here in the present, when they clearly are. Surely a concern for the past is a good thing, a reflective state that allows us to take stock of the current and indeed plan for the years to come. 

I cannot live in the future and I'm not sure if such a phrase exists in English. Perhaps some people live for the future, for a distant realm somewhere else and anywhere but here. Germans call it Fernweh, the opposite of Heimweh. That's not me I have to admit, although I adore the futuristic visions of Gerry Anderson, Stanley Kubrick et al.

For those of us who were lucky enough to have happy childhoods I cannot imagine anyone not being nostalgic. There is simply something care-free, worry-free, stress-free and pain-free about being a happy child. In a word, yes, free. 

If living in the past is recalling those halcyon days and somehow preserving some of that sense of freedom whilst we busy ourselves in our modern adult lives then yes, I suppose I do live in the past.

How do you feel about this expression readers?

ANDERCON PHOTOBOMB

 I thought I'd share a few shots that I don't usually bother posting as I always feel they come across as a little self indulgent, but as they show one of the real fun aspects of going to a convention that is easier to get across by snap shots, I thought why not!

As many of you folk who attend conventions and Autographica events will be aware, guests are always more than happy to have their photo taken with you, like this one showing the affable Shane Rimmer with yours truly, which was taken by my pal, Andy Kerr.

Andy took this shot while I was having a friendly chat with David Graham and David Elliot.

However, things can go in any direction when mischievous Matt Zimmerman gets involved.

He's just so full of fun. He couldn't resist photo-bombing a picture of Jeremy Wilkin and me.

I just had to have photo of me and Matt together!