CRIVENS! ITS THE FANTASTIC FOUR

On the way back from Bangor earlier in the week me and the Missus had a lovely time drinking a bottle of pop [like the song!] and listening to ...... the Fantastic Four!

How did we do this?

By listening to a CD that reader and fellow blogger Kid had kindly sent me in the post!

What was the CD?

A beautifully made miniature copy of the story The way it Began released by Power Records complete with facsimile label.

Thanks Kid!

It's an excellent tale of how the four became fantastic but don't take my word for it. Reed [get it, reed!] Kid's own ace post about it on his blog Crivens!

As Ben Grimm might have said, its bloggerin' time!

https://kidr77.blogspot.com/2014/04/power-records-presents-fantastic-four.html

SIR ROGER MOORE READS ALADDIN: LANTERN RECORDS 1966

Relatively little from my early childhood has survived.

My first five or six years.

There's a First Communion Badge [no idea when that was but I assume I was very young] and an Aladdin record released by Lantern and read by a young and as yet unknighted Roger Moore no less. I was 5 years old when I got it. Fifty four years ago!

I have my original record somewhere in the attic together with an empty sleeve I found at a car boot sale. I know its my original record because I signed it as a kid. Alas, part of the record has snapped off, as if bitten!

I have a vague memory of listening to talking books like this. You know, where you follow the story with your finger in a separate printed booklet that came with it.

This was the same with Lantern's Aladdin.

You can experience this once more - or perhaps for the first time - courtesy of You Tube, as amazingly, the record, story and booklet are all there!

So, sit back and enjoy. It's 1966 again.

I'm not sure if these old talking records are collectable nowadays but obviously this particular copy is of great personal importance to me.

Did you listen to records like this readers?

SPACE RAID CAR: A CHI CHI TOY

What on Kryton is this?

The Space Raid car no less. By Chi Chi from 1985. Saw it online this year.

As Winston Wolf would say, it has character!

What are its influences readers?

What do you think?

Ugly or diamond?

BANDAI'S THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO AT THE LONDON TOY FAIR

The ever intrepid H, the Small Scale World toy website press correspondent, kindly sent MC these snaps he took at the London Toy Show of the upcoming Thunderbirds Are Go toys from Bandai. Thanks H!

As Scoop reported here in January, Bandai were named UK distributor for the toys in the trade press back in late January:

http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-thunderbirds-are-go-toyline-from.html

Its reported that the product range will be produced by Hengxin Shambala Kids Cultural Industry Development, Bandai's master toy partner in China. Distribution will be managed by Bandai UK.

According to the trade journal Toynews, "The new toy line consists of collectables, action figures and vehicles which encourage imaginative rescue roleplay and interaction between the characters and their craft".

There is also a short unrelated video by Blast Process on You Tube showing these toys at the Fair too

What do you think readers?

I RUBBED MY BEARD WITH GRIPPING HANDS

Its a face thing.

I always wanted a beard like my Action Man when I was a kid and  - maybe - even his honorable cheek scar.

It took many years of puberty to get the first sproutings on my tender chin. This was universally known as bumfluff.

Pleasingly this initial foliage quickly bloomed into a proper bush in my late teens, but by this point my real hair Action Man had gone to the barbers in the Palitoy sky and I couldn't show it off to him.

My beard was never the neat trimmed suede of Action Man, which always seemed to have had bits of cotton and dust stuck to it like a record cleaner. Mine was a large scraggy pillow of hair, which I frequently rubbed. I also had a mass of dark thicket on my head and the overall effect will have been like a walking fur-ball. Imagine Chewbacca with cords on and wearing specs!

I kept my full beard for a good couple of Prog Rock years in the late Seventies and early Eighties. It was a warm hippy friend and Palitoy would have been on a winner if they'd had not just put real hair on their fighting man but real 'growing' hair like mine! Even old soldiers go to seed!

Beards are on my mind - and on my chin - as I have grown a new one this half term break. No longer the fine Lion's mane I once sported alas but a beard nonetheless. In fact its much more like a Palitoy record cleaner this time round as I am follicly challenged in my late Fifties! Its also the colour of aluminium! If I was issued by Palitoy I'd be the Silver Fox [with slipping hands]! I never did get that scar though.

So Action Man, wherever you are in the retirement home for plastic vets, here's to you and your perfect Palitoy beard. I hope you're keeping it trimmed and fluff free! I salute you.

Was your fighting twelve inch man bearded?

MYSTERY SOLVED: ITS MACKIE 3

An anonymous reader solved the MAC vehicle mystery [above] the other day.

Its the MACKIE 3 from Ultraman.

The toy set above I saw today on Yahoo Japan could well be the toy I posted recently, except its blue rather than being white.

The model version of the vehicle is very distinctive as you can see over at Mandarake.

I know next to nothing about Ultraman or how Mackie 3 slotted into the story but there's an Andersonesque element to this spaceship I'm sure.

R IS FOR ROCKET AND TWO TOY ASTRONAUTS

Always on the lookout for vintage toys on book covers, here's one.

Two spacemen on the front of Ray Bradbury's R is for Rocket.

Are they toy figures readers?

Anyone read the book? I saw this on an auction site.

HONG KONG TOYS CATALOGUE 1986: LP AND TAI HING TOYS

Via Bill B: the complete 1986 Hong Kong Toys Catalogue available now via Google Drive [GD] as a PDF for download. It cannot be viewed online, and has to be downloaded and saved locally. Its BIG!

GD will give you warnings about file size, and GDs inability to scan it for viruses, but it's just a massive PDF of over 600 pages of toys. Feel free to save, and share again via GD.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HBN_YNr7EvnmEC06qADNj0sTgh3wDM_K

Three pages of interest to readers of Moonbase especially are the LP page and the 2 Tai Hing [T in a Circle] pages. I have copied and saved them as screengrabs.

Here's the LP page with the red devil logo very clear. The full name of the company is too: Lik Be Plastics and Metal Factory Ltd.

Its interesting to see how LP had developed by 1986 where they offer musical boxes and giftware.

Of equal interest is this, the first Tai Hing page. Many toy collectors will know them better as T in a Circle on account of their logo but here that is not used. The full Tai Hing brand is shown. All of the toys we've seen before except the flying disk copter and the soldiers, which are new to the blog.

Have you got any of these toys?

Fascinatingly, Tai Hing pop up again in the same catalogue but this time with a completely new range of toys and a new logo based on a seal balancing a ball on its nose!

Does anyone have any of these toys?