thank god its friday!

There's a cold beer with my name on it in the fridge. I just need to go to work, do my irksome job and come home to drink it in the garden!

Can't wait!

What are you up to today readers?

saucers at dawn: mattel v colourforms

There were two alien toy contempories who enjoyed a flying disk ride.

Back in the late Sixties flying disks were all the rage.

Mattel gave Major Mason a disk launcher but more intriguingly furnished their cute blue alien Or with the mythical yellow Orbitor in their 1970 catalogue.

Over at rivals Colorforms the Outer Space Men range of figures tantalizingly pictured Alpha 7 with a neat space saucer on its superb backing card.

I had wondered if Mel Birnkrant, Outer Space Men creator over at Colorforms might have admired the diminutive Or and its Orbitor despite it never being produced.

However reading an interview with Mr. Birnkrant about his thoughts on Mattel's Callisto I doubt it!

You can read the interview yourself on Mel's own fabulous website. It starts at the top of Page 3 complete with satirical gif!

http://melbirnkrant.com/osminterviews/page2.html#

I do have a little green man on a saucer in the attic. Well actually he's a money box or bank made by Ever Last toys. Wonder if there's any money in it?

What are your favourite flying disk and saucer toys readers?

zoltar speaks on moonbase

During the Midsummer weekend visit my daughter, Miss Moonbase, left this fortune card, which she'd been vended [is that a verb?].

As soon as I saw it I recognised it as similar to the the card Tom Hanks gets in the film BIG from the Zoltar Speaks machine. which I think was on Coney Island [maybe it's still there?]

The Zoltar Speaks fortune cards were and still are issued by Characters Unlimited of Boulder City in Nevada, USA, as are the machines themselves!

You can read all about their Zoltar here...

https://www.charactersunlimited.com/characters/zoltar/

and watch their neat video...

It reminds me of an uber-cool vintage Japanese toy from the Sixties called the Gypsy Fortune Teller by Ichida. 

A fabulous companion to the battery-operated Mod Monster, I first came across this beautiful toy in one of the very first books on vintage toys I ever got, in 1990:

Yesterday's Toys 3: Robots, Spaceships, and Monsters Paperback, 1989, by Teruhisa Kitahara (Author), Masashi Kudo (Photographer)

[have you got this book too?]

The Ichida Fortune Teller is in action on several You Tube clips. Here's one showing the card being palmed. 

You can even get a repro pack of the Ichida cards from repro specialists Toy Tent on Etsy!

Have you ever owned this or another firtune telling toy or game readers or maybe you've actually been to the Zoltar Speaks vendor in Coney Island?

japanese history of model tanks like the moon ranger

This is a neat Japanese site explaining the history of Japanese model tanks. It includes the Nichimo Ranger, the source of the Century 21 Project SWORD Moon Ranger.

http://home.s00.itscom.net/nekonii/uma/mizu/2006king.htm

STAND BY FOR SUMMER

All this lovely sunshine that the UK is enjoying at the moment has put me in mind of my fast approaching summer hols abroad, a few days snorkelling, and Stingray!

The Amber Lagoon.

Prepare to fire sting missiles.

'Flood Q'

toy ice cream van: two please!

Above: Century 21 Topo Gigio Ice Cream Van

Below: Multiple Toymakers Mickey Mouse Ice Cream Van

Do you have anything like this readers?

hey, its midsummer's day!

Its the longest day and the shortest night of the year.

The old hippy in me yearns to celebrate on an ancient site like Glastonbury Tor.

As I can't be there here's a model I made way back in 1981 showing the Tor, a beast and a wizard! All very Arthurian! Underneath I inscribed the words 'be banished thou thing of darkness'!

Have you got any Arthurian - Middle Earth models and toys?

To commemorate Midsummer on the Tor vicariously we can enjoy this Wiki picture and listen to the essential Summer Solstice track, Leylines to Glassdom by Steve Hillage.

Just click here https://youtu.be/Xwt_5yyWiK4

Happy Summer Solstice readers.

How will you mark Midsummer?

the ellisdons pocket magic brain calculating machine

When I was a kid I used to buy stuff mail order from Ellisdons in Liverpool.

They were a joke and novelty outfit and the kings of mail order fun, a bit like a British version of the Cap'n Company at the back of American monster comics.

I could write a whole blog about what I loved about Ellisdons but one of the items that came through the post was a mechanical calculator called the Chadwick Magic Brain.

Like a pocket sized version of Alan Turings famous machine, this red-plastic edge metal-faced apparatus felt and looked like a mobile phone.

The calculating came from a series of toothed recesses, in which you slotted a metal pen at the numbers you wanted to add, subtract or times and away you went. With the pen tip inserted into a tooth you drew it up or down to make the calculation, which appeared in small windows by way of cogs and dials.

It was quite magical really, in the same way the Magic Robot was magical in the way it answered questions without us really understanding how.

I'm surprised its not still with me really. Being small and slim it was easily portable through time. Maybe one of my older brothers still has it. 

Do you remember this device readers? Did you have any other early calculators?