ARTO'S AVENGERS SHOOTING GAME BY MERIT

One of my favourite Merit agent sets, the Avengers Shooting Game, a surprise find here in Finland a couple of summers back. Missing only the correct darts.

If you know anyone with spares, please let me know!

Arto

Helsinki Base

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Woodsy adds: you can see the missing rubber sucker darts in this set I saw on Vectis. There should be two. I have seen red shafts as well.

The Trouble with Toy Cards

I've just been cruising Ed Berg's wonderful Toy Connect blog, checking out his extremely enviable collection of vintage toys. as there are so many delights to choose from, I went for space toys first and came up against our old friend, the LP brand Space Explorer. 

We've seen this on the blog before, but Ed has a rare carded version with some beautiful artwork. looking closer at it, I saw that it has a Telstar satellite from john Schoenhoerr's pulp book cover from the 'Trouble with Telstar' story by John Berryman from Analog. The card art also shows the other LP Rocket toy and a wheel shaped station.

                                    

The orginal story from Analog can be read here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30679/30679-h/30679-h.htm

Ed's marvelous conucopia of vintage toys can be seen here too:
http://toyconnect.blogspot.com/search?q=space+explorer

Box Clever

 I'm a big fan of Ikea design and their neat box frames and shelving. Here's my 'man-corner', haven't upgraded to a cave yet!

ARE CHARITY SHOPS RUNNING OUT OF VINTAGE RECORDS AND TOYS?

Do any of you collect records?

You know, vinyl?

I look out for horror soundtracks and have quite a few now.

I have noticed though that Charity Shop stocks seem depleted. I often find myself flicking through stacks of really ancient albums from the very beginnings of popular music.

I'm not knocking this stuff but it seems as if we've reached the bottom layer, the bedrock. Typical of this foundation are Nana Moskauri, Richard Clayderman, Burt Kaempfert, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Andy Williams and those LP's known as Top of the Pops.

For a record browser like me I expect to have to trawl through lots of albums I don't want but it seems to have got harder to find anything in my area of interest these days.

Maybe this is the case for vintage toys as well, which always seem to be in the glass cabinets with a whacking great price on them in Charity shops now.

What's your experience readers? 

ALIEN CREATURES VENDING TOYS: APOLLO MOON EXPLORING

I love an unusual crop of Apollo Moon Exploring toys.

Here's a great one, a vending card of lovely space and monster toys.

Flanking both top edges are a pair of minty wheeled LP saucer cars from the Apollo Moon range.

How cool is that!

I saw this on Etsy.

What else can you identify readers? the monsters?

Was Space Wars the original name for Star Wars?

SHADOW BOXING

Hello Woodsy, 

IKEA shadow boxes were great but for some reason have been unavailable in the US for a few years now. 

One picture is the larger box with a Hallmark Cards Christmas Tree ornament Nautilus in the background with Captain Nemo and his crew walking the ocean floor with a shark attacking. 

The next photo shows two smaller boxes, the left has Anastasia by Comet Miniatures floating in the background with Dan Dare and Digby floating in the foreground. 

The right hand box for background has an enlarged panel from one of my Dan Dare Original Art pages with a Comet Miniatures Mekon hovering in the foreground. 

The third photo has the latest form of Shadow box by IKEA. On the left is a 12" Dan Dare with Plastic Man from DC Comics on the right. They seem to be wondering how to escape the box. 

(Note to self: replace US flag with Space Fleet badge on Drae's sleeve.) 

Regards, 

Terranova47

NYC

IKEA WALL BOXES AND TOYS

Looking through some old prints I came across a shot of me sitting beneath three deep frame pictures at some point in the late 1990's. I've edited the picture to remove my ugly mug, although you can just see my old military prop cap.

You know the kind of frames on the wall. Wooden boxes with glass fronts. From Ikea. Small collections can be hung up and displayed quite easily.

I used to do this a lot.

The three in this poor photo of a photo are my daughter's old Mickey Mouse collection - she had some great stuff; my Secret Wars action figures painstakingly located at 90's car boot sales and finally three space toys stood up portrait style.

These three toys were an X-series X40 blue and red rocket [yes, I had one before I even knew what it was!], a Masudaya plastic wind-up Robbie the Robot and a red mini Robot given to me by a close friend for safe keeping.

Only the mini-Bot remains of this lot I think as I flogged everything else when I had a toy stall and Ebay shop years ago.

Do you have small collections on the wall readers?

Have you less stuff than you used to have?

DO ASTRONAUTS EAT BOILED EGGS?

I love boiled eggs. With a pinch of salt. I remember when I was a kid and a budding NASA astronaut there was a TV ad that said 'Go to work on an egg!'

Not sure the after-effects of egg eating would be that popular in the space capsule!

As it happens I like all variations of eggs and I'm pretty sure if I lived on Mars I'd take a few hens for laying the breakfast.

In order of laying I prefer:

1. Boiled - soft for brekkers and hard for work
2. Scrambled
3. Poached
4. Omelette

Never had Mexican eggs or a souffle.

So how do you like your eggs in the morning fellow moonbasers?

Did eggs ever feature in a sci fi film or TV series?