MOONBASE CENTRAL

Sunday, 20 November 2016

bored with board games?

I've always been rubbish at Board Games.

I did love the box art and the game parts but never enjoyed playing the games, worst luck for me especially at Christmas when families traditionally play.

I did play crazy plastic games like Mouse Trap, Cascade, Ker-Plunk and Buckaroo but these were lore like toys than games. Normal games played with dice and boards sent me running for the hills.

It's my brain. I get bored almost immediately, no pun intended and fidget and twitch. Then I give up.

Lots of games filled our family home when I was a kid in the Sixties: Blast Off, Formula 1, Go for Broke, the tiresome Monopoly, Backgammon and of course various chess sets - plastic, magnetic, wooden - and the game of geeks, Space Lines [which I tried to play] to name but a few.

So when I met my Missus on the Continent in the late Seventies I was amazed to find that she loved board games and unbelievably, strategic games.

She played Go, a sort of Japanese draughts that looked like a large square board covered with sweets. O'd never seen it before in 1978.

She also loved [and still does] Halma [Ludo], Mensch Aerger Dich Nicht, Monopoly, Mastermind, Muhle [Nine Mens Morris], Floh Spiel [Tiddlywinks], Spitz Pass Auf [Mousy Mousy] and Mikado [Pick up Straws].

The only game she didn't play was Mah Jong, a Chinese game involving cream tiles adorned with classical Chinese imagery like Cranes and Bamboos. I've never played it either but have regularly seen it for sale at flea markets, usually in a nice leather case. Anyone played it?

So despite living with an acute inability to play board games I do love the box art and the contents. I have collected them as works of art for many years and have some beautiful games in my loft.

I also now regret selling many fine vintage games as well, in my toy dealer days, like Mine a Million and Air Charter. You can't keep everything though can you?

Do you collect board games readers? Do you play them? Do you like strategic games?

Saturday, 19 November 2016

is this the ugliest space toy in history?

Just as there are beautiful space toys there are also ugly ones and this has to be one of the ugliest!

A complete hash of a thing, its the Space Search B2 [or 82?] by Chinese outfit Hong Da.

I see this chimera every now and then online and more often than not its described in glowing terms like Super Super Rare. Super Super is OK but I can think of other words to replace Rare!

I even saw it linked to the film Fantastic Voyage!

What exactly have they mashed up to create this thing readers?

Do you think its ugly?

Any other ugly toys you know of?

Postscript

Kevin's comment about Proteus has encouraged me to take a second look at this toy!

It does indeed look like the ship from Lost in Space [does it?]

But is the ship pictured below the Proteus from Fantastic Voyage?

and below Proteus, the ship from Fantastic Voyage!

Whats the connection between these two craft readers? Anyone know?

Postscript 2

Further browsing of auction sites has revealed more Proteus lookalikes!

Seaview sub from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea [this is the Remco version]

Ovni TH003 by Madel of Spain

Ovni ZE 001 by Madel of Spain

Astronave M7X for Madelman figures by Madel of Spain [thanks Bill]

toy moonscape on friends magazine now!

There's a cool plastic moonscape toy available as a free gift with the Fun To Learn Friends kids magazine here in the UK at the mo.

The plastic half-dome is stuck to the cover as part of a space set. Its about 2 inches across. It might go well with SpaceX or Apollo Moon Exploring☺

I can't find a picture of the particular issue but its in the shops now. Here's a picture of what the magazine looks like generally.

geek salad with jamborees

Well its Saturday morning here in the north eastern stretch of England. Its cold but the sky is bright blue with long streaky clouds. It looks like toothpaste.

I've often wondered about toothpaste. It holds that special place in TV history over here as it was the very first thing to be advertised on commercial television. Gibbs SR I seem to recall being told. I didn't see it. I was still being designed.

With such credentials toothpaste could well be more than it seems. For instance, on a desert island with nothing but two crates of Colgate, could it be eaten as food? Its unlikely we will have a toothbrush on the island so cleaning your teeth is out.

A most special item which is certainly food us the Jamboree. I know because I am currently eating five of them with my coffee. Its the breakfast of champions and for those who haven't been shopping properly for days.

In case you don't know a Jamboree is a biscuit. It could even be a cake, it's hard to say. A small biscuit base is covered with two lines of marshmallow, which in turn are sprinkled with desiccated coconut. A line of strawberry jam finds its way in there too. It is simply quite scrumptious.

The Jamboree comes in packets of about 12, which would last me about 3 cups of tea or coffee. It was once even catapulted to the centre of our Christmas table [not literally!] in 1984, when Missus Moonbase and I were young penniless parents. That freezing Welsh Christmas Day we had nothing but our newborn and a bag of precious food from the Co-op, which included a packet of Jamborees.

They do go under different names. Jamboree is a brand I think and as with all success come knockoffs and clones, which my Daughter informs me are called 'me too's' in the food industry. Jamborees were also known as Fiesta in some quarters [probably the car industry] and the ones I'm eating now from our local mini-market are called Bobby's Mallows! Now that's a name straight out of Viz!

The question of whether its a biscuit or a cake is one which has made grown men weep into strong Yorkshire tea. As perplexing as whether tomatoes could be placed in the fruit bowl, the sheer extravagance of the Jamboree surely raises it above the mere rabble of everyday biscuits? Or is it simply mutton dressed as lamb? Or Mallow dressed as jam?

Joining similar delicacies like Viscounts, Tunnock's Wafers and Wagon Wheels, the vexing puzzle 'is it a biscuit or a cake?' is one The Riddler would have been proud of and one we can only ever hope to answer of we keep on sampling the goods!

What do you think readers?