May the fourth be with you!

Happy Star Wars Day readers.

What are you doing today?

fish and chips at moonbase

We've just enjoyed a portion of fish and chips here at Moonbase delivered by Thunderbird 3.

It reminded me of being a kid in the Sixties when we had a chippy tea every week, whilst watching something fab in the telly, which I expect you did too!

With lashings of salt and vineger, fish and chips is often cited as the national dish here in the UK.

There is some competition for the title though, namely the Sunday Roast and Chicken Tikka Masala.

Personally I'm not bothered about national dishes as long as the food's tasty, but it is important to some.

What would you say your national dish is in your neck of the woods?

gmail conversations

My new GMAIL is driving me round the twist.

It calls emails Conversations and bundles them up into, well, conversations!

What happened to straight emails shown individually for God's sake!

Is this the future or am I simply out of the loop yet to be bundled?

gumball mystery toys

I love old gumball vending cards like this. There like pizzas with a toy topping!

This is one I saw online this year and its a cracker.

I can see what I think is a pink MUSCLEMEN figure bottom centre, an orange ASTRO 1 die cast car Playart style and of course the HULK.

But what are these?: the  two Kung Fu figures bottom left, the black object with string bottom right, the rifle at the top, the green car top left and the yellow P ring - could it be Lady Penelope? Anything else?

Any guesses readers?

I rented the quatermass experiment

I rented Hammer's Quatermass Experiment movie last night.

2.49 pounds on You Tube [for some reason I can't get the pound sign to work on my new Lenovo laptop!]

This will be controversial but I preferred X The Unknown, which I saw last week.

Don't get me wrong, Quatermass Experiment aka The Creeping Flesh is a fabulous black and white sci-fi epic.

I found the acting a little stiff though and maybe a bit stereotyped. Did Jack Warner's copper really have to whistle when he walked to the phone - at home?

But I'm nit-picking. I doubt if this sort of brilliant eco-astro-radioactive sci fi could even be attempted anymore.

As a final point I loved the space rocket at the start. It reminded me of the Project SWORD Task Force 2!

Hammer's Quatermass II will be rented later in the week. Am I in for a treat?

its all alien to me and alan dean foster

I've started reading A L I E N by Alan Dean Foster.

I must say I'm very disappointed so far.

Its completely unlike the dialogue in the film. There are no lines I recognise at all.

OK, I'm not after the exact screenplay in a film novelisation but I am after plenty of familiar landmarks and speech in there.

Foster did such a great job with the Star Wars' novelisation, so much so that half the fun was spotting what he'd changed.

Not so A L I E N. 

The introduction about pro-dreamers is clumsy and overly long and the conversations during the wake-up meal and descent to the planet are unrecognisable.

Did Foster set out to exclude all dialogue featured in the actual film?

I'm not very far into this book but already feel my chest bursting with frustration!

What's your experience readers?

marx on the table

I picked up these large scale plastic soldiers in a discount shop somewhere.

I had a feeling I'd seen the range before.

They reminded me of large Marx soldiers like these I've seen online and at toy fairs.

But all I have at Moonbase are three old Marx Warriors of the World.

Mixing the two groups together could have lead to trouble ...

but they were well behaved!

The bases look similar but  without the proper Marx soldiers I can't say if I have bought modern re-issues. 

So until I have further proof ...

Over and out!

a herculean task

I've for some time considered the USAF Nike Hercules to have been the inspiration for the Project SWORD Probe Force 1 in 1967.

To test this theory a little more I decided today to simulate Nikes with Probe Force 1 toys.

This is the USAF Nike Hercules online picture I chose to simulate.

I then set up my two Probe Force 1 toys in the bedroom window to give me access to a sky blue background.

Not being a naturally talented photographer I battled with the brightness of the sunlit sky

But eventually, with the USAF shot in mind..

I got this silhouette

OK, they are at different angles but it was the overall shape I was after.

What do you think?