blade runner 2049

Have you seen the new Blade Runner 2049 movie yet?

I've seen things and loved it.

I ADORE the new noisy spinner car!

2049? Its just 31 years off! I might still be able to get one!

manley quest stretch screamers pop their brains

I love Screamers.

These were the soft Stretch Screamers as seen on TV by Character.

It is a quite hilarious ad especially the teenagers' eager face hugging and brain popping!

There were also electronic versions with hard torsos and squeezable ooze heads.

They were made Manley Quest of New York.

I used to find these electronic versions at car boot sales in the early 2000's like Frankenstein and Werewolf.

Great Halloween props!

When I found them without brains I simply replaced them with a squidgy ooze ball that were for sale in toy shops at the time. Voila!

I've often wondered if they are related to the more famous Stretch Armstrong line. Anyone know?

Did you have any Screamers?

texan chocolate bar: a mighty chew

The 1970's British TV commercial for one of my old fave and now non-existent chocolate bars, TEXAN.

Not sure the commercial is PC enough for today's TV audiences.

I like the animation though. There are very few animated TV ads these days.

Did you like a Texan?

building the bonfires: the weeks before Halloween and Bommy Night when I was a child

The gloomy misty evenings of Autumn remind me of those distant darkening nights before the start of Winter when I was a kid, that fuzzy foggy Autumnal month before Halloween and Bonfire Night,

Primary School was an austere sort of place back then as the days got colder and shorter, a huge glowering Victorian pile of red bricks bristling with towers and gables like the Adams Family mansion. The classroom windows were huge and it felt like being in a church, a feeling strengthened by the floating nuns who taught some of the classes.

There were no trees outside, just vast walled playgrounds made of tar, bricks and concrete, one at either end of the school for boys and girls. Yes, we were separated at break and dinner like toxic cells in a petri dish.

Home life was completely different to school. Gone were the walls and the gates. Instead there were flower beds, trees and hedges in our garden. Even in the Autumn it was always fun to be there as All Hallows Eve and November the Fifth grew nearer. Spirits were abroad and I loved it.

I get my childhood Halloweens and Bonfire Nights mixed up nowadays. Being just five days apart they have merged into one murky feast of fear and fire. Their popularity has reversed as well. Bonfire Night was far bigger than Halloween where I lived in Preston back in the Sixties.

I picture huge heaps of sticks and timbers appearing mysteriously allover the city; piles of of wooden chairs, crates and pallettes towering like jengas on wasteland everywhere. Mucky kids came along and chucked ever more armfuls of branches and planks onto them in the weeks leading up to early November, when at last on the night of the Fifth they would be finally lit.

In October floppy scarecrows called Guys popped up in prams and sat on dark street corners, all requiring a shiny penny to give to the shivering but hopeful urchins gathered round like pickets dreaming of buying more roman candles and snowstorms.

In my wispy recollections I also see red apples dunked in tubs of cold water for biting, a fun rite known as bobbing; I see bags of sticky bonfire toffee, the king of all treacles without doubt; I see plates of hot pork pie and steaming mushy peas crowned with pickled rings of raw onion: I see bowls of delicious Lancashire lamb hot-pot with its traditional roof of angled potato slices garnished with a generous dollop of chunky yellow piccalilli on the side.

To wash down this hearty Autumn fare were thick glass bottles of fizzy Dandelion and Burdock, Cream Soda and Sarsaparilla as well as the ubiquitous Tizer and Lemonade. Further back on the trestle table were regiments of Mackeson, Newcy Brown and Pale Ale for the adults running the proceedings.

Trick or Treating wasn't big back then I don't think in the UK, although I did enjoy a good mask or prop on Halloween. Perhaps a Werewolf mask or a severed rubber hand to scare my friends with or my favourite laughing rubber skull, which I still have!

Ghoulish entertainment came in the form of Warren's Creepy and Eerie comics as well as Skywald's Psycho and Nightmare. TV provided An Appointment with Fear, a run of classic monster films that appeared on late night television like Curse of the Werewolf, The Trollemberg Terror, Night Must Fall and The Gorgon.

Scary stories abounded at the time as well as is traditional during the fading days of October. My friends and I all believed that there was a vampire asleep in a coffin in the annex to an abandoned church near us. An intrepid expedition to prove it ended unsuccessfully as we bottled it before we even got through the annex door and ran screaming up the road!

This year I hope to repeat at least a few of these Autumnal customs from my youth as I have done each year since. Maybe some pie and peas, a bag of toffee and good monster flick would do the trick ... or treat! Oh yes, and babysitting for my Grandson on Halloween too!

Do you like the misty nights of Autumn readers? What were and are they like?

MLP ROLL OUT

After a long wait, the Davies Spacex Shipyards have revealed the latest in the series of reimagined models based on the original Triang Spacex line. 

Having completed the smaller standard toys, Kevin has moved on to Spacex Major in the form of Earth Base Mobile Launch Pad. To ensure we all get the full benefit of Kevins modelmaking expertise, I asked him to document the main steps in the construction. The first shot shows the main plasticard base unit and some of the model parts and plastic fencing used to decorate the bulky unit.

 With the base complete, Kev moves on to the launch gantry, with its intricate network of braces and support beams, again fashioned from model scrap and fencing panels.At this point, I remarked that the build reminded me of Revell's 'Everything is GO!' model, which featured a Mercury Atlas on the gantry. Kevin told me he had used the kit often in his builds, as it was a staple of the Gerry Anderson modelmakers and as he had some of the tanker parts left over, he incorporated them into the crane atop the MLP!

A little weathering and some surface detail brings the crane to life, before moving on to the star of the show, the Interplantetary 1. 

Using a photograph of the toy, Kevin scaled up a print and cut out a template for the plasticard core of the rocket. This was then filled with body putty and then laboriously hand sanded down to the template shape. With the core polished and shaped, detail and exterior parts are added. 

 To top off the model a quick shuttle made from aircraft kit parts from the spares box.

Further painting and weathering on the whole model and its ready for lift off!

 Kevin went for a more realistic NASA style livery, bridging the gap between the toy and the white Golden Astronaut version of the toy.

brian's king kongs

Brian's getting in the mood for Halloween in New jersey.

His King Kongs are coming out:

Books, records, a lunch box, even a Kong Troll!

chibi? bichi, bichi? chibi

Hi, my name is Marcos from Buenos Aires, Argentina. A while ago I started a commercial project of collecting: Cosas Elegidas . 

Besides being a source of income is an excuse to buy, sell and investigate things that I like. 

In this extensive and capricious list, toys play an important role. Few days ago I bought a lunar explorer Gorgo brand and looking at the web found your blog. 

I found it amazing that Argentina occupy a place in such an important high benchmark for toy collectors. 

Exploring your blog I met an article about the company CHIBI. I recently bought a fire camión MIB that brand. 

I pass the link to my blog with this entry,

http://cosaselegidas.blogspot.com.ar/2014/10/chibi-bichi-atentoscoleccionistas-y.html 

and also scanned the Argentine dictionary entry for toys Bichi company that later became Chibi.

Fecicitaciones and thank you very much for your BLOG.

Greetings from the South,

Marcos

Rat Bat Spider Spotted in New Jersey

Couldn't resist!

Brian