RIP ARNOLD PALMER: HE GAVE US TOY GOLF TOO

Golf legend Arnold Palmer sadly passed away today at the grand old age of 87. An icon of the game of golf his influence was even felt on my childhood in remotest Lancashire during the Sixties, when one Christmas I received a huge golf toy.

It wasn't any old thing either. It was the Arnold Palmer Pro Shot golf set by Marx. An amazing toy, it has a miniature Arnold at the end of a golf club contraption. By turning the handle you could get mini Arnold to play shots for you! It was a stroke of genius.

You can get an idea of what it was like to use on this You Tube clip.

Did you have this set readers?

Arnold Palmer RIP.

i wanna be ejected: the space 1999 para toy by helm toys

I do love coming across toys new to me.

This is just such a one. Now I'm not a Space 1999 fan. Alas, the TV series completely passed me by. But I'm aware of many of the toys - but this one is definitely new to me:

the Space 1999 Eagle Para Toy by Helm Toys of the USA released in 1976!

This is an old photo from an Ebay auction. 

I just love those garish bright colours. At first I couldn't fathom what it did but on googling further I found a carded example on the fabulous Catacombs Space 1999 site here.

Its a parachute toy and Commander Koenig himself gets ejected into sky, whereupon he floats down to the ground on his red and white plastic chute.

How neat is that!

Anyone got one of these beauties?

The Fastest Guy Alive

Well it took a while to find it, but here's my response to The Stars for a Shilling - me at Southport fair in the mid sixties, grudgingly riding a 'super-thunder-sting-car' on a carousel time ride with hydraulic arms. Having been terrified by the Caterpillar ride some years earlier, when a racing coaster unexpectedly folded over a green canvas cover across the cars to make a caterpillar shape, leaving me howling in terror in the dark, I was never keen on rides after that.

Still, this was a nice green Nuclear Freighter shaped ship, so I gritted my teeth and thoughtof Spacex!

thunderbirds tv21 monster okuropachi toy surfaces from the depths!

Cancelled before it was released for sale, this handsome plastic devil which featured on the covers of TV21 and known in Japan as the Okuropachi or Okloparchi has surfaced on the Japanese online site Mandarake.

I've blogged this toy before complete with its header and baggy in a post in 2014 and Scoop has covered the TV21 appearances too in his post in 2015.

Thanks to Rev. Orsonzilla for the Mandarake link.

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The Okuropachi also graces this masthead of a Facebook page too!

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For some reason it's mouth always reminded me of the toothy Morlocks in George Pal's brilliant Time Machine movie.

AURORA 'SPINDRIFT' RESTORATION

Spurred on by the re-showing of Land of the Giants on TV , I thought I'd have a go at restoring my old Aurora 'Spindrift' kit, which I've had since the early seventies. 

I got it second hand from a friend at school who'd painted it bright yellow for some reason. 

I set to work hand painting it a deep red. And that's how it's stayed for the past forty odd years, until now.

This week I carefully took it all apart and and left it overnight in a 50/50 solution of 'Dettol' antiseptic disinfectent. This works fine with plastic and doesn't make it brittle.This broke down most of the old paint, Leaving it for a further 24 hours in the solution did the trick.

 The only paint left on it now is mixed with the original plastic cement, which will need to be removed by scraping and sanding.

There's still a lot of fiddly work to do, trying to make the parts fit back together with all the old glue needing to be removed. The base is in pretty bad shape as it has an indentation and crack caused by an excessive amount of glue when it was originally put together, and as well as that both the two  top sections have large cracks in the plastic.

Even so, I'm looking forward to completing the project. I'm obviously not expecting the restoration to produce something mint, but if I can cheer it up and make it reasonably decent I'll be happy. 

pesto from goodfeathers: the original angry bird!

Way back in 1990 Martin Scorsese directed his searing cinematic canvas of American mafiosi, Goodfellas. 

It became one of the definitive mobster movies and contained one of the most electrically charged scenes of psychopathic conversation ever put on film, the Joe Pesci tirade known universally as 'Funny How?'.

So it always amazed me that from this violent cauldren of adult vice there came one of the funniest kids' cartoons I ever saw, the Goodfellas parody Goodfeathers.

Part of the Animaniacs brand, Goodfeathers aired in 1993 and starred Squit, Bobby and the the Joe Pesci clone Pesto. 

Here's a fabulous You Tube medley I found showing scenes involving Pesto's incredibly short fuse delivered in that unmistakable Pesci Funny How style. 

Funny how? hilarious!

That's it!

Do you like Goodfeathers readers?

VULCAN

The Vulcan's final flying display at Southport Air Show. last year.

 

MYSTERY BEARDED CARTOON CHARACTER

I recently had to watch Macbeth The Animated Tale at work.

This is he, the dark tormented Macbeth.

His swarthy bearded looks reminded me of another villain in an old cartoon I saw as a kid. But who?

Maybe someone in the brilliant Rocket Robin Hood?  Can't find anyone like it.

Maybe Theyer David in the film Journey to the Centre of the Earth? 

I don't think so.

The character is in an old cartoon I'm sure but I'm at a loss as to which.

Anyone help?

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Postscript:

Mr. Iguana was right. I WAS thinking of Prince John from Rocket Robin Hood after all!