LAZY SUNDAY?

What you doing today readers?

I've been to a car boot sale as usual. Got nothing today.

MADELMAN BLOG SHOW 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY

Check out this neat Spanish Madelman blog.

There's the Gemini Project figure and then there's this...

the 2001 Pan Am Stewardess!

What do you think?

https://juanmadelman.blogspot.com/2011/09/2001-space-odyssey-pan-am-stewardess.html

GEEK SALAD: THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Its been a funny old week. Not the best. I get home from work and just can't be bothered to do anything. I wonder if you ever feel like that readers?

What I have done is watch films on Now TV, which I joined for a free week's trial. Its a great package of blockbusters so I have to admit to binging.

Some of the flicks I've watched are:

Justice League - DC super group. Superb!
A Quiet Place - silence and monsters. Too tense. I jacked it.
The Shape of Water - art deco fairy tale starring Hell Boy's Abe.
Equaliser 2 - wrath Denzel-style.
Deadpool 2 - second outing I've seen of the Juggernaut in a movie. 
IT - modern remake of the King classic. Pennywise has more teeth this time.
Rampage - the Rock's Kong.

I'll offer a few observations if I may. The Shape of Water: is it just me or is the manphibian in it the same as Abe in Del Toro's Hellboy films? They sure look the same and both of them eat eggs? If this is the case are the two story arcs connected? They are certainly set initially in World War II. 

Beyond Abe I see the Creature from the Black Lagoon in the beasty at the heart of Shape of Water. OK its a better suit these days but essentially its the same gill-man. Maybe all the Creature movies, Shape and Hell Boy could be shown as a all-nighter in a local cinema. Now there's an idea!

Justice League threw up another strange thing. Superman's mouth. Now I've seen some bad CGI; Beowulf at the start of the technique and even worse, the human Flynn in Tron Legacy, but Supe's gob takes the biscuit. It was terrible. I've read that they had a moustache to deal with but c'mon. This is Justice League and his re-incarnation!

As for Deadpool 2, away from the wise cracks and Marvel-references, I loved the Juggernaut back on the screen. And this time the biog fella's pumped up to the max compared to his slimmer version in X Men courtesy of Lock Stock gangster Vinnie Jones. 

Appearances of rare super villains and hero's like Juggernaut always reminds me of the Slurpee cups in the US. They're featured in several books I have on comics collectables. Slurpee cups gave many lesser known characters their day in the sun, characters that most of us will never have heard of.

Maybe Juggernaut will get his own film one day. After all, he is unstoppable!

That's all for now.

PS. Emails and comments I haven't answered will be answered sometime this weekend. Apologies!

CAKE CAPSULE CAPTIONS NEEDED

I had to chuckle when I saw these two old Wilton Gemini cake topper astronauts sat outside their capsule.

What are they saying to each other readers?

*

PS. You got one of these?

MOR MORTOYS

These were all released by Mortoys.

They also released the fabulous Six in One Gerry Anderson/ SpaceX inspired motorised vehicle set we've covered before. See the labels below.

You got a Mortoy?

Space School

A while bacj I stumbled upon a lovely series of booklets, published in the early sixties by Nelson Doubleday. Called the American Science Service, the booklets appear to be educational resources, printed on cheap stock with separate sheets of colour litho printed stickers to insert into the booklets, in specified parts of the text.

The Science Series covers a wide variety of general subects, but also catches the space race zeitgeist with a number of themed booklets. Each one is roughly A5 size and runs to about 68 pages, with a separate four page insert of stickers. 

Each book is thorough and informative, with the Rockets one being written by renowned expert Willy Ley. As they are mostly pre-apollo launch era, they feature some great shots of the earlier space programme, such as Thor Agena, Atlas and Titan. An early Saturn 1A graces the cover of one.

Considering their age, all of the copies I have found have been remarkably well preserved, with all the stickers present. I have another issue on Submarines which has had the stickers applied, but its still in great condition. There are a couple of other space titles available, which I am looking out for.

'Moon' is a good astronomical text, with some beautiful painted illustrations which look like the work of Chesley Bonestell, showing pre-landing speculations about the lunar surface.

 Rockets and Satellites give a good background on early sixties research vehicles, with an informative text and illustrations, but where the series really jumps out for me is the two sheets of stickers from Satellites.(top of page)

The photographs for the satellite stickers show what appear to be high end prototype models, probably made by the individual companies touting for the contract to build the early satellites and show wonderful colour images of Ranger, Early Bird, Tiros and Relay - all shot in a nice creative fashion.

 The stickers for Rockets are great too, with large half page images of missiles and launch vehicles.

THE DEMISE OF THE BATTERY HOME?

I have been testing a few toys for the Grandson and me of late and I've realised that finding batteries in our house is not easy anymore!

Hardly any of our gizmos have batteries in them.

I remember a time in my tender youth when batteries ruled the home. They were everywhere and if you couldn't find a pack of the big ones in the kitchen cupboards there was something wrong.

Batteries were not included with toys and gadgets but they were certainly to hand back then, thanks to my battery-loving parents!

Now I'm reduced to scratting round for old batteries in drawers.

The one sure place, the final sanctuary is .... the torch. Yep, the faithful torch holds the home's last batteries!

Is this your experience readers? Are batteries old tech?

SCRAPPED SHADO JEEP 2014

Something from my Bookmarks before I delete them. This is a 2014 online article about the discovery of a SHADO Jeep in a scrapyard!

Its a story many of you will know and have followed since but here's the very start of it.

http://maximummini.blogspot.com/2014/03/shado-jeep-found-in-scrap-yard.html