PAUL KAIJU'S MACHINE GUN GHOST TOY FIGURE

Just preparing for our yearly SDCC pop-up shop "Summer Slime II".

Here are pics of my new fig "Machinegun Ghost".

Paul Kaiju
USA

DINKY MRCA BY KEV

Hi,

Picked this up at an antiques fair recently just because I liked it! The Dinky MRCA (multi role combat aircraft?). It became the Tornado I believe.

Kevin D

UK

THE WORKS LEAVING DO: CORPORATE EMOTION

I happen to have always worked in large teams.

Having had many jobs, some short, some very long, I have experienced many leaving ceremonies - or do's as they are called in Northern England. Leaving Do's.

I'm currently part of a large organisation going through a great deal of change. As a result many people from many different teams, including the one I'm in, are leaving for pastures new. I am staying put this time round.

I've been to two leaving do's in the past month and witnessed many smaller present-givings in the office as well.

Its a strange thing a leaving do. Emotion, usually held in check in the work setting, overflows and people hug each other with tears in their eyes. Speeches are made and cards filled with countless well wishes are handed over, together with a bottle of this or a box of that. Sometimes the gaffer even makes an appearance.

I personally dread leaving a job because I know I'll blub like a baby during the obligatory speech you have to give, especially after a few years service. Consequently I've stopped leaving jobs so often and tend to stick around nowadays, putting off the inevitable ordeal!

Work colleagues are an unusual thing too. Neither friends in the normal sense nor family either, they become a bit of both and as such are difficult to tear yourself away from. We probably see more of them than our own kith and kin!

With more gift presentations and hugging sessions looming this week I am already steeling myself for the coming waterworks as I say goodbye to workmates I've had for nearly 10 years.

It is a wind of change and one day I shall be also in the wind.

What's your experience of leaving work, do's presentations and leaving speeches readers?

TV21: THE FLYING CRATE

TV21 appears to be stuffed with cool vessels and ships.

Case in point is the cool spacecraft above the words Into The Drink.

It looks sort of familiar.

BADLY PARKED KIDS BIKES, BATH SHELVES AND OTHER HOUSEHOLD STRANGENESS

I've noticed that I moan when I dry my face after washing it. In other words I groan involuntarily when I'm rubbing a towel over my face, especially my eyes! Do you towel moan?

*

Do you take your shoes off as soon as you get through the door? I do if they're gardening shoes. There's a small row of them in what would be our porch in a different house. Street shoes get taken off in the hall and piled up. We used to have a shoe cupboard but it never got used! Sometimes the rebel in me lets my shoes fall off in the TV room! What do you do?

*

I've noticed kids parking their bikes outside the local sweet shop. They're left flat on the ground sometimes in the way of pedestrians. Most rebellious! I'm not sure I was street-wise enough to do this. I think I parked my bike neatly against a shop wall or I may even have stood it up on the bike stand that most bikes had back in the Sixties. My chopper had one I'm certain. It made a most satisfactory sprung clicking sound. What did you do?

*

A bathroom item recently found itself obsolete and upcycled in the garden as a flower pot base. I'm not even sure what its called but its function was to act as a shelf across the bath. Like a wooden Golden Gate bridge, it spanned the width of the tub offering sanctuary to such oddments as soap, loofer and nailbrush. The loofer and nailbrush went years ago so like the household phone the bath bridge has seen less and less action of late. Increasingly difficult to limbo under and irksome in the extreme when showering the slatted plank has sadly felt the spray of bubble bath for the last time. Have you a bath shelf?

*

More domestic folk tales to come. What concerns you readers?

FORBIDDEN FROM KNOCKING-OFF ANY MORE SCI-FI FILMS

In a bid to make the most of my remaining couple of weeks on Amazon Prime last night I re-watched a film I've mentioned before on MC, Forbidden World from 1982.

The thing that really drew me in on Prime was the film's vintage poster art, which is strikingly good.

Alas, not so the film itself, which turned out once again to be far less interesting than its poster.

The main interest for me lies in its unashamed ripping-off of ALIEN and in particular Star Wars.

In Forbidden World we have:

Stormtroopers

ALIEN style reflected lettering

and Tuskan Raiders!

Despite a side-portion of soft porn and lashings of gore, not even the ALIEN-style creature could save this movie from facehugging its own wampa.

I'm glad I've seen it twice but will resist a third encounter!

Have you been Forbidden?

TED RIVERS MOONBASE ALPHA MOVIE SHORT

Hi Woodsy‎,

This just popped up on my YouTube feed, Ted Rivers' Realising Moonbase Alpha CGI film.

It reminds me of the graphics that you'd see on a promotional video before something is actually built!

Anyway, enjoy all!

Mark J

Southcoast Base

TRI-ANG WATNEYS BEER DRAY

Hello Woodsy

Re. today's post with the Beer Delivery pictures from 1968,

the photo of the Watney Dray was used as reference for the model here. It was a gyro, Hong Kong model of an Austin 200 that became the prototype for a number of similar toys that I motorised with Scalex transmissions. 

They would shoot round the race track shedding barrels and crates of bottles to the enjoyment of the kids playing with them. The Britains tractor driver is there for scale. 

The whole thing being 1/32 scale. The red barrel was from a keyring like yours! This one will be restored soon as it had been damaged in storage.

The Tri-ang Minic Watneys lorry is based on a real tanker that Watneys used clad in wood to look like a barrel. 

I used to see the real one making deliveries and really wanted this toy having seen it in the Minic catalogue. Fifteen years later I told this to a friend when in college and they gave me this sample for my 21st birthday. 

It was the inspiration for the racing version.

Another of the Minic range of clockwork tinplate toys was the same cab unit without the red barrel with an open trailer full of wooden barrels marked as TOYTOWN BREWERY. Very enlightened.

Terranova47
NYC
USA