vintage car coasters

Vintage cars were everywhere when I was a kid in the Sixties.

When I say vintage cars I mean antique old timers.

They were pictured on lots of household items.

I remember round plastic coasters in our house which had an image of a vintage car in the middle. they were like little white plastic saucers which could be stacked. There may have been raised spikelets like a small bed of nails where a glass would stand.

I also recall large plastic pictures which hung on the wall. There was an outline of a vintage car in the middle coloured in gold. I also remember these with racehorses on too I think.

We also had a pen holder with what I'm sure was a Matchbox Model of Yesteryear stuck onto the resin base.

Did you have any vintage cars pictured in your house?

did you have a roladex?

Continuing the toy-like theme of vintage office equipment, does anyone recall the Roladex?

I never had one myself but the ones I saw looked so nifty, straight out of an episode of Marlowe or Department S. I remember it basically being a huge circular stack of cards impaled onto a carousel stand creating a sort of O-shaped mouse treadmill look. Presumably you could easily see the letter of the alphabet for that card but I never had chance to have a go worst luck. I just wasn't cool enough for a Roladex. Why gravity didn't just let all the cards fall to the bottom of the circle I don't know! Like Blackpool's Big Wheel they just kept on turnin'! I like to imagine some Roladex's having contacts like Elvis Presley, Jimmy Dean and Mamie Van Doren in them and finding one at a car boot sale!

What I did have in several of my many 'positions' since starting office work when I was 17 in 1978 was a boring old pack of index cards in a box on my desk. These were alphabetical and not a million miles away from the spring-loaded cassette full of contact cards my parents had had next to the telephone in the Sixties and early Seventies. Every conceivable contact I had with a particular initial was scribbled onto a blank index card including both postal address and phone numbers. With the dawn of email in the 1990's I may have even wrote email addresses out by hand on index cards! Old habits die hard!

Index cards were also popular with birdwatchers and naturalists for archiving sightings of specific birds, plants and animals. Names, dates, locations were all added to a card for that species and gradually building up a picture of it over time [my nephew Steve published a bird book of these very things!] I have several of these boxed index sets in the attic from my naturalist days and even considered it as a way of collating info on vintage toys back in the Nineties. It would have been ideal really: name of toy, year of manufacture, where last seen, cross- references etc. A Roladex would have been even snazzier but the heyday of the index card sadly came and went with the onset of the home computer and the unfathomable storage power of the floppy disk.

Did you have index cards or the cooler Roladex?

the fax of life

I used to love fax machines. My old career in charity management relied on it. I faxed everyday.

I was always impressed with the simplicity of the idea, sending pictures through a telephone, which I suppose is a forerunner of the internet.

The whole world of faxing was fascinating. It had its own telephone number on letterheads so it must have been important. If you rang a fax number you would hear that crazy screeching noise like a bad day at NASA.

You could send handwritten notes and sketches by fax, which was always fun to do and receive. I only sent black and white stuff though. No idea if colour was possible.

I used to use my fax as a lazy copier too. It would easily photocopy a couple of sheets and never seemed to have the catastrophic melt-downs the xerox had.

Some companies had Telex when I first started work. Like Fax, the Telex number was printed on a letterhead. To this day I'm still unsure what Telex was or whether Fax grew out of it. I only actually found out years later when I saw the phrase Facsimile Machines on a bridge billboard that Fax was short for facsimile, which is obvious really!

I bet in its heyday the Fax even came in toy form for young 'uns. I had a toy Casdon cash till and plastic telephone set when I was a kid so why not.

I wonder just how far real fax machines came before email booted them out of the nest? Did they have video screens for instance where you could see who was faxing you? Could you talk to your faxer at the same time? Just how big could a fax be? A0? I used to wonder if eventually we would fax things like moving images like video footage or even physical objects, a nod towards Star Trek beaming-up and 3D printing perhaps?

Yep, I miss my fax. Do you?

Barry norman and bill paxton: both sadly missed

Reading Martin Landau's obituary I couldn't help noticing other notices of deaths among actors and TV personalities this year.

I was saddened to see that Barry Norman has also passed away this month as well. Like the old cinema magazine Film Review, for me Barry is synonymous with  the cinema and especially his TV show Film ... I always loved his film show and watched it religiously for years and years, hanging on his every word and taking his advice about what to see seriously. 

Naturally being a horror and sci-fi fan I was always the most interested in these and what Barry had to say. I can also add Kung Fu films as he began the show with Film 1972 just as the martial arts craze was kicking its way onto our screens. He may have even told me about Enter the Dragon that year, one of my favourite flicks of all time.

RIP Barry. Hope you got the best seat.

I was also saddened ... and shocked ... to read of the death of Bill Paxton in February. He was just 61, barely five years older than me. I thought Bill was great and I shall forever associate him with playing Hudson in ALIENS, a role he truly made his own and brought welcome humour and humanity to the unfolding carnage. 

I also loved Bill's role as the new recruit in Danny Glover's precinct from hell in Predator 2. Bill's comic feel was perfect in bringing light relief to the grim proceedings and made him the ideal foil for Glover's highly-strung Harrigan and Gary Busey's menacing Government man.

RIP Bill Paxton. Hope you fly home.

golden astronaut cake toppers

I love the idea of space cakes.

Don't think I ever got one!

It was obviously popular in the Sixties and Seventies judging by the number of space cake toppers there were.

Above is a catalogue page for space toppers I saw online including a neat Gemini spacecraft.

Also online was this packet of LP/ SpaceX style golden astronauts with cake skewers that I've not seen before. The little yellow alien looks familiar but can't think why! You?

Anyone got any space cake decorations?

MARTIN LANDAU R.I.P.

A sad time for British TV Sci-fi fans over the weekend, no I don't mean the controversial choice for who was chosen to play the 13th Doctor (Good luck to Josie Whittaker, by the way, I think she'll need it ), I'm talking about the sad passing of actor, Martin Landau, our very own Comr. John Koenig from Space 1999.

Our sincere condolences to his family.

kevin d's Deodorant engine

Here is the back end of my Project SWORD Probe Force 2. The engine was missing so I replaced it with part of a roll on deodorant lid. The small tubes were pieces of cotton bud stalk. Kevin.

astro sniks rocket anyone?

I thought this was unusual.

I saw it on Etsy.

Its a Snik Rakete.

Described as a Astro Sniks rocket, it was made in 1983 by Bully.

I'm assuming its from Germany as Rakete means Rocket in German.

The Astro Sniks are pictured on the rear. They remind me of Schlumpfies  or Smurfs by Schleich. My daughter had some Smurfs and some very similar space figures from Ferraro chocolate from the 90's, little guys with helmets on. They could still be breathing attic air upstairs!

Anyone know about Astro Sniks?