OUR RADIO SHOW TONIGHT

DECEMBER'S

OPERATION

SWORDCAST

TWENTY MINUTES OF TOYS, NOSTALGIA AND TALL TALES

ON

THE RADIO

NOW!

Celtica Radio

were on the radio tonight!

New SWORDcast on Celtica Radio

Tonight

6PM

UK Time

Toy chatter, vintage banter, Mystery action!

Its all there!

Will you be?

*

Link to be posted asap.

FOCUS ON THE HEROCLIX BATMOBILE

My good friend and fellow Batman fan, Will Schwartz was kind enough to send me this Batgift for Christmas this year.

As you can see it's a super looking model of the sixties Batmobile, similar in size to the Corgi or Eaglemoss versions.

Although it's a great looking display item, its primary function is to be used as part of a game, using other characters in the range.

The display stand has a dials at either end showing what powers can be used, depending what character cards you've got, and what you get on the throw of a dice!?

Actually, I'm not really one for board games to be honest, so I'll leave that side of things to those who are.

The model itself is static, with the wheels moulded into the base. It does afford a fair amount of detail though, considering it's just a playing piece.  

And it does look good on my display shelf.

project sword and spacex christmas presents we dream of.....

boxed gift sets:

BRUT Scout 2 and BRAUN Cricket 1

Moon Explorer Day Cream, Task Force Night Cream, BRUT Radar Aftershave and Astronaut Aerosol

SpaceX Moonbase Crackers

Which prezzies do you dream of?

FOCUS ON THE TIME TUNNEL

Continuing my look at Irwin Allen’s TV series from the sixties, I’ve been re-visiting The Time Tunnel which I haven’t seen for quite some time.

The Time Tunnel is Irwin Allen’s third television series following on from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. It comprised of 30 episodes, and was produced between 1966 and 67. It stars James Darren as Dr Tony Newman and James Colbert as Dr Doug Phillips.

Tony and Doug are directors of a secret government time travel experiment, code named Project Tic-Toc, which is housed beneath a vast underground complex, 800 floors deep, and situated in Arizona. Their fellow director is Lt General  Heywood Kirk ( played by Whit Bissell), who is assisted by electronics expert, Dr Raymond Swain (played by John Zaremba) and electro-biologist , Dr Ann MacGregor (played by Lee Meriwether).

At the heart of Project Tic-Toc is The Time Tunnel, a huge receding elliptical tube which creates a pathway to anywhere in time, although, it does seem to be quite a temperamental device. (As seen in all of Irwin Allen’s TV series, the futuristic hardware which is used is prone to spectacularly shorting out at inopportune times during the action. It would appear that the submarine Seaview, the space ships, Jupiter 2 and Spindrift and the Time Tunnel don’t appear to use fuses)

 At the point the audience catches up with Time Tunnel, Project Tic-Toc has been in development for ten years, and has cost $7.5 billion dollars. The opening episode, ‘Rendezvous with Yesterday’, which is set in the future year of 1968, shows the giant complex with  800 floors deep, joined by walkways and staffed by 36.000 employees. The design of  some of these miniatures are direct homages’ to the underground Krel machines seen in the 1956 film ‘Forbidden Planet’.

The Time Tunnel idea itself was inspired by the 1964 film, ‘The Time Travelers’, in which two scientists, their female assistant, and an electrician are transported though a 3-dimensional time portal over a hundred years into an intriguing but ultimately bleak future.

Tony and Doug, spend most, although not all of their adventures in the past, beginning with their first in which they both end up on the ill-fated Titanic ocean liner, shortly before the Time Tunnel transports them into the future and the hold of a spacecraft about to take off to Mars.(This was the ‘teaser’ for the following week’s episode, however the ‘teaser’ at the end of the final episode, ‘Town of Terror’, shows Tony and Doug landing on the deck of the Titanic once again, implying that both the scientists are trapped  in some sort of a time loop.

Although I watched and enjoyed the series as a youngster living in the UK, it didn’t have the same appeal for me as Irwin Allen’s other shows. The problem was there were no models kits to make of the Time Tunnel, or even an annual, which would have reprinted at least one of the two Gold Key comic stories that fans in America would have got. 

The front and rear covers of the first Gold Key comic.

The front and rear covers of the second Gold Key comic.

As far as I’m aware neither of the two paperback books, written by Murray Leinster were published in Britain, so I never saw those, and no British comics published any home grown  comic strips, unlike Voyage and Land of The Giants, which would have helped me maintain more of an interest with the series  once it was off the air.

The first paperback cover using artwork taken from a previous book 'Time Tunnel' written by Murray Leinster in 1964 which was no connection with the TV series just to confuse things. I'd imagine Irwin Allen liked the title.

I'd have been fooled!

A lot less confusion with the alternative cover on the first paperback

The cover of the second book.

Re-watching it now, like all of Irwin Allen’s series, It’s certainly still a glossy and entertaining series, although some of the historic aspects are sometimes a bit dubious, but I am looking forward to re watching the whole series again after such a long time.

Cue the opening narration (voiced by Dick Tufeld) that can be heard at the beginning of most of the episodes;

"Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages, during the first experiments on America's greatest and most secret project, the Time Tunnel. Tony Newman and Doug Phillips now tumble helplessly toward a new fantastic adventure, somewhere along the infinite corridors of time"

xmas rocket fleet garaged again

Christmas Control

shuts down

another well-managed 

Yuletide!

THE HOLLYWOOD STAR AND THE BATMOBILE

Waking up this morning to the tragic news that the Hollywood film star Debbie Reynolds has sadly passed away, only a day after the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher.

I first remember watching Ms Reynolds in the TV series, The Debbie Reynolds Show, a sitcom which appeared in the UK during the early seventies, however it was the 1959 movie, ‘It Started with a Kiss’ that no doubt makes Debbie more notable to readers of this  blog.

Although it starred Glenn Ford as an American Air Force Sergeant and Debbie Reynolds as his wife, it is a rather unique car they win in a raffle that is the real star and makes the  film of extreme interest to fans of  classic automobiles and a certain cult TV series.

The custom built 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car, which appeared in the film with a bright red paint job and an electric  opening canopy was the same car (there was only one) customised by George Barris and used as the iconic Batmobile in the sixties TV series Batman.

Although Ms Reynolds, a prolific actress, singer, dancer and businesswoman, and humanitarian, working for the Hollywood  mental health charity, The Thalians ,will be probably best known for her breakout part in the film, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, I suspect I’ll always remember her in a little known movie starring alongside the Batmobile before it was famous.

 Rest in peace, Ms Reynolds

debbie reynolds has died

Hopefully the final celebrity passing of 2016, particularly as its a tragic one, Debbie Reynolds, the mother of Carrie Fisher, has died as well.

It was only yesterday that I said to my Wife that it must be cruelest of things to bury your daughter. Thankfully, Mrs. Reynolds won't have to go through that now.

Mother and Daughter are together once more.

RIP.