steed's toy car?

I saw this plastic toy car on an auction site and thought blimey! that's Steed's car from the old Avengers TV series.

Am I right?

mike noble's project sword zero-x

Above, Mike Noble's black and white OX artwork from the Project SWORD story SCAPEGOAT from TV21 issue no. 187

Mike Noble's colour version in the Zero-X strip in TV21 issue no. 114 

Connection made by Scoop.

s p a c e x s u m m e r t o y f l e e t

Photography: Bill Bulloch

Toys: Woodsy

Location: Moonbase Central

Summer 2014

I got pens for Christmas in the sixties

Pens were popular gifts once. Any type of pens. In fact a Christmas without a pen was like cranberry without a sauce, a pig without a blanket, a ... You get the idea!

When I was a kid in the sixties I got pens in every shape, size and type.

The larger pen gifts were the best like those huge tin trays of felt pens that contained at least ten kinds of red all with fabulous names like crimson and scarlet. Michaelangelo would have died for a tin of pens like that!

But my favourites were the toys with pens cleverly disguised. Spirograph was a staple, with all its little pins and plastic cogs. It was hypnotic.

And what about the wonderful Paint Wheels, a boxed set of plastic roller pens that printed as they rolled out different shapes onto paper, which probably came inside the set under the plastic tray. Free paper!

Best of all was a type of thick pen shaped like a witch, with a pointy hat, but I forget the name. They may have even been paint- based rather than a pen. Anyone remember witch pens?

My least favourite pen gifts were those intended to make me work harder at school. They had no place under the tree. Trojan horses masquerading as fun sent by Krampus.

The Oxford geometry set, in its cute workhouse tin, springs to mind, replete with pencil, biro, compass, protractor and other forms of torture.

Never far away from it was a boxed Parker pen, sporting the brand's familiar metal arrow clasp. No doubt a symbol of even greater ambitions, to me it pointed down and said "you're Homework's late!"

One pen which successfully spanned both fun and school was the multiple colour ballpoint. It was a thick silver thing containing about eight different coloured pens, each one able to be dispensed by sliding down its coloured button. They probably had a name but I did love those things and filled exercise book after exercise book with rainbow doodles and swirls!

What Christmas pen memories do you have?

Gerry anderson christmas cracker: The real Investigator vehicles

Hi Woodsy

Just sending you these two pics that I finally dug up from my mobile. They are of the two "The Investigator" models on display at the House on the Hill Toy Museum in Stanstead, Mountfitchet.

Arto

robin redbreast: folk horror for christmas

The Christmas tree is up. Mysterious and tall, like an ancient Druidic bough, the evergreen totem stands twinkling in the window once again. 

Despite being fake the annual rite of trimming our winter tree connects us to our rustic ancestors who did the same in the dark forests centuries, perhaps millennia, ago.

It all puts me in mind for some eerie folklore. So, I shall watch a TV play I have rented on DVD tonight. 

It's an icon of folk horror called Robin Redbreast and I have wanted to watch it for years. Made in 1970 this Play for Today has at long last become available on LoveFilm the films-by-post service I'm in.

So whilst Missus Moonbase is having a festive supper and talking Grandma with her pal in the kitchen diner I shall retire to the telly room, replete with its flickering Christmas tree, to enjoy a seasonal ale and Robin Redbreast.

I shall keep you posted folks!

david bowie's memory of a free festival and my christmas rosedal organ

One of my most musical Christmas gifts as as a kid in the Sixties was a light blue plastic Rosedale organ.

Here's one I saw on Ebay.

I managed to pick one up at a car boot sale years ago too so its back in my hands.

It produces a sort of church-like sound, which when notes and chords are combined, is quite beautiful. I loved messing with it as a young Rick Wakeman.

Probably its most famous public airing was when David Bowie no less, played it on the song Memory of a Free Festival on his early Space Oddity album. This is the Wikipedia entry about the song.

You can listen to it on You Tube.

Did you have a Rosedale organ?

RiP John Glenn 1921 - 2016

A real space hero!