Some things I just can't remember. In fact I'm not even sure if they are real at all. There are some things which loiter in the very borders of my memory like phantoms.
For instance I seem to recall a TV programme in the Sixties where people were hanging out of windows taking to each other. It was like a large wall full of windows or shutters, which opened.
Another one is some sort of recollection that I had a plastic shaver set. Everything was there: razor blade, plastic razor, the lot. It all clipped together I think.
Another faint memory were some sort of small blocks made of compressed powder. They were coloured in pastel colours and were very light. They clinked when you tapped anything with them. For some reasom the Mattel Strange Change Machine has popped in my head writing this!
This week Arto pointed out a strange label inside a Project SWORD Prospector so I thought I would pull together all the label posts we've had over the years in one place.
Taking in both Tarheel and Century 21 toys, which have featured on Ebay over the last 8 years, here you'll find inspection slips, packing labels and factory stickers.
This Tarheel Talking Rabbit Hunt set included a factory quality inspection slip - pictured above - sorry about the quality of the picture! On closer 'inspection' it doesn't actually have any reference to Tarheel on it and could be for any toy I suppose.So all in all not that significant.
Empire of Tarboro was the successor to Tarheel. I wrote to Empire in the mid-1990's but they were unable to send me anything about their history, which I've since attempted to compile on this blog. So it was with great interest that I found this pre-production Empire toy listed on Ebay US, which had the original factory tag:
"13" long, resin with plastic wheels Made by Empure, Tarboro, NC- with "Not a Production Sample" tag. Marked copyright Carolina Enterprises 1970 on the underside."
And here's the toy WORM once in production in 1973 with its box!
If only a pre-production TARHEEL SWORD toy or some paperwork would turn up! Now that would be a very enlightening!
What did turn up was this inspection slip inside this Tarheel Moon Prospector, approved by Inspector no.68! Note the lack of SWORD branding on the box and toy.
Here it is close up.
Tarheel was completely de-branded by Consorti for the Italian market. The redacted boxes had their label stuck on as you can see top right on the lid.
and close up.
This genuine article by Century 21 also had factory labels on the box. A number of these labeled toys have turned up over the last few years.
Close up we can see the label quite clearly.
Finally and most recently this mysterious slip of paper turned up inside a Century 21 Moon Prospector box. Its an address label for Ronson on the Isle of Wight. Ronson were a well-known cigarette lighter brand. Neither Arto or myself have any idea what its doing with the Prospector!
Have you come across any labels with your old toys readers?
Is your collection just starting or is it nearing completion readers? Or maybe its taken you down a side-route or into a new collection, where your'e at now?
Collecting is all about what you fancy and nothing else really. You maybe a completist, a Mint and Boxed-ist, a loose and incompletist, a sampler or maybe a bit of everything. Most of all you'll be just you and it'll be your collection whatever the rhyme and reason behind it.
I personally have nearly finished my main collection and in my case its been trying to get the toy fleet of Century 21 Project SWORD. I've accepted that I'll never own the Nuclear Ferry and the Moon Base Set. I've got everything else. Anything I take in now is the occasional knock-off, which I take a fancy to, what you might call side salad to the main dish!
It's a peculiar feeling to be nearly done, a mixture of happiness and sadness really. I'm happy that I've got there and the hard work is over but I'm really sad that that excited anticipation of finding the next must-have collectable has gone too.
I imagine its a bit like having driven around for years in a Ford Mustang or a Jenson Interceptor, every morning getting that buzz and then having to park the car up in the garage when your'e too old to drive, staring at it through the window and occasionally sitting in it again to feel the thrill of the steering wheel!
Hmmm. Anyway, at what stage are you at readers on the long road to completing your collection? It would be great to hear.
As I've said before I loved vending charms as a nipper.
Here's another good one I saw online. I can see the blue flying saucer bottom left, which I think is also another one of the UFO premiums range or similar as piccied below:
Well, another Moonbase shoreleave is over, a great weekend with Scoop and Woodsy enjoying Mr Woods boundless hospitality. Tucked away in the moonbase archives discussing toys, the blog and all stops in between. Thence to Donnington toy fair to view the trade side of toy collecting. A varied selection of brand new trucks and trains, kits, toys, dolls and books.
It was very interesting to see 80's toys making an appearance now, such as Micronauts, Aliens, Thundercats and their peers, rubbing shoulders with real vintage toys from Triang, Marx and Remco. Almost everything was competetively priced and in some cases, extravagantly. Still, there was more than enough bargains to be had across the board, so I came away happy.
But outside of the toy fair, the most fun was had in the quiet confines of Moonbase, having a damn good laugh and a beer and curry with our most engaging and genial host Woodsy.
At Doncaster Toy Fair today I saw yet another variation of one my favourite 'classic' toys, the Coffin Bank. It was called the Horror Monster as pictured.
This bank has a whole skeleton exposed so I assume that both hands grab the coin. But it wasn't this that intrigued me, it was the box art.
First up they have lifted the MONSTER lettering from the classic Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine as you can see here on issue 35:
The grave serpent on the box has been lifted too.
Its from a Patrick Woodroffe painting called the Graveyard as pictured below. The skulls have been added on the box art.
Scoop also told me something fascinating about Coffin Banks but I'll let him tell you himself. Anyone got a Coffin Bank readers?
When I was about 10 I loved David Bowie. That would be circa 1970. I followed his every move in all the pop magazines here in the UK. My unerring teenage adoration of Bowie lasted till I discovered heavy rock proper around 1976. I still have my old scrap book of those Bowie clippings.
I also bought my first LP record around 1972 - and it was Space Oddity by, yes, David Bowie. I bought it on offer through a mail order ad in the pop newspaper Disc, which may have been a forerunner of Sounds. Not sure. I still have the mail order offer cut-out!
Space Oddity was Bowie's first proper RCA LP under that name. It had been released earlier in 1969 as simply David Bowie. He had done even earlier stuff, for the Deram label, captured on the Images double album but he was with the Lower Third and others then.
Space Oddity was wrapped around the chart topping single of the same name released in 1969. Such lines as 'Ground Control to Major Tom' have made it famous and a staple of space-related adverts and jingles. The song itself was a rather poignant reflection on the rise and death of an astronaut and coincided with the worldwide euphoria after the 1969 moon landing. It was part of the zeitgeist of the time and an obvious nod to Kubrick's cinematic opus, which influenced so many things including our very own Project SWORD Annual.
The album is full of fabulously rich and surreal songs just as Bowie was waking up to his space-age talent and before he became a superstar. For me the stand-out tracks were and still are Letter to Hermione, Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud and the quite brilliant Memory of a Free Festival and his grand opus, Cygnet Committee.
Cygnet Committee, for me, set the standard on this LP and for all future Bowie albums for his other long complex tracks. On Hunky Dory he did the Bewley Brothers and on Man Who Sold The World we got The Width of a Circle. There isn't really one on Aladdin Sane - maybe Time perhaps or Lady Grinning Soul.
Memory of a Free Festival was personally relevant to me as Bowie used a particular organ on the track, an organ which I had as well as a kid and still have for that matter. It was the electronic Rosedale and mine was lime green like the one below.
With its distinctive raspy childish church sound you can clearly hear it at the start of and throughout Bowie's Memory of a Free Festival, which you can listen to below. I loved my Rosedale and thought it sounded quite beautiful! Did you have a Rosedale readers? Did you or do you still like Bowie?
The Sun Machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party!
