THE ASTRONAUT TERRARIUM

Like my Zombie Dome, this is a neat Christmas idea, the Astronaut Terrarium!

I'm not keen on the jarring price set by Conran Shop, £150, but I appreciate the effort that's gone into this miniaturization.

It could be possible to make this kind of cosmic bonsai yourself.

Is it something you would do?

ON MANEUVERS

This MANEUVER is a cool lunar mover!

This one crawled onto Ebay earlier in the year so I saved a snap.

I think its ASAHI or Cragstan.

What do you think readers?

LITE BRITE CHRISTMAS

I saw this lovely festive design by MVerive online.

It took me right back to messing with my beloved Lite Brite toy back in the Sixties.

What a wonderful toy.

Did you like Lite Brite?

OLD YELLERS

Not sure if I've seen yellow LP-types before but here's a whole academy.

I clocked the piccy on Ebay or Etsy ages ago. They may be Greek.

Have you any old yellers like this?

ESTRELA FOGUETE SUPERSONICO ROCKET PLANE

I do like this old Brazilian space toy I saw online.

Its by Estrela.

There's something Project SWORD-like about this supersonic rocket.

What do you think? Do you like it?

*

UPDATE

I think its a version of this Turbo Jet Car by Ideal. Do you agree?

FLAGGING IT UP

I've seen a lot of LP astronauts online over the years but never one holding a flag like this fella on the left.

Have you?

MERGING MOVIES

Its coming on Christmas and sci-fi films will be on the telly.

Some Sci-Fi films I've seen once but I'm unsure if I would watch them again. 

As a result of a single viewing they are starting to merge in my percolated mind.

Stargate is such a flick. I remember pharaohs and ancient Egypt and golden superbeings rocketing in on curved spacecraft. Kurt Russel is in there too dressed as a groomed Pentagonned Snake Plissken. There's lots of sand and sandstone and long zapping lances. I think the gate in the title was a spinning portal of some sort. The toy line in the shops included strange large animals like woolly rhinoceros but I don't recall them in the film. I wonder if the toys sold well?

Another fading film is The Fifth Element, which I may have seen twice over the years. I do remember more about it than Stargate. It involves a superbeing and much zooming round in a rocket taxi-cab driven by a disgruntled grizzled John McLane drafted in from Die Hard. There's a floating galleon called the Floss Plissken or something with a singer who looks like the Bib Fortuna Star Wars figure graced with the singing voice of an angel. An immensely annoying pop host cavorts around the space galleon as do huge lizard headed troopers doing dodgy cosmic deals with Gary Oldman. A slimy slithery creature is his oft-stroked pet I think. There's sand too.

Some Sci-Fi flicks remain stubbornly missing from my viewing pleasure despite having some of them on VHS. Dark Star, 12 Monkeys, Dark City and City of Lost Children.

Do you have merging flicks and missing films?

THE MAGPIE IN US ALL

There was always someone in my family collecting something when I was a kid. 

My brother collected beer bottle tops. Mackeson, Guinness, Pale Ale, Watneys, Newcastle Brown, I can still see them all now in his box of tops. they were great to put your hands in and swish about. I wonder if anyone still collects bottle tops?

My other brother collected beer mats [there's a theme developing here!] but I remember less well as I do the tops. I do recall beer mat games though when I was old enough to visit pubs as a teenager!

Probably the collection I recall the most fondly of my two brothers were matchboxes. There were so many classics like Vesta and Bryant May but also loads of others too. I used to adore looking at those little boxes and books of matches as the designs were so appealing.

My late Mother in Law collected sugar cubes from cafes. She had hundreds from allover Europe. They were usually two cubes wrapped in a small paper packet. Very quaint and evocative of the times. She kept them in a big glass jar.

My own collection as a kid were key rings. These were everywhere in the Sixties and early Seventies and I can still see some of them quite vividly on my mind: the articulated metal fish, the tyre with a compass inside, the small toilet, the skull, the skeleton, the globe, the Esso Blue man, the clasped metal book and the small roulette bowl. I always look out for old key rings in Charity shops to see if they jog my memory.

I also had a go at stamp collecting but wasn't very good at it. I loved the stamps if the late Sixties and early Seventies though and had a couple of albums on the go. I can see many of them still in my mind and they always give me a buzz when I think of names like Magyar Polska [is that right?], Helvetica and CCCP that were written on foreign stamps. I remember getting the Stanley Gibbons guide to stamp collecting one Christmas and probably remember every page, especially the dinosaurs.

I'd love to see that book again!

Were you a collector as a kid readers or someone in your family?