LIKE PEAS IN A ...

I'm always on the look-out for ersatz toy parts including the Landrover from the JR21 Thunderbird 2 pod.

Here's a possible green pod contender in this vintage bagged Soldier set I saw on an old online sale.

SATURDAY MORNING SPECIAL: MISH IN SPACE

Hi Woodsy.

With reference to Wotan's 60's Spaceflight books, you may remember I said I'd done a School project about spaceflight in the early 70's in felt pen and that I'd dig it out.

Well here, here are some pages from it. 

Share them if you think they're worth looking at.

Regards,

Mish

UK

EXPLORER 12 TOYS: POLE POSITION

This lovely BHS Explorer 12 Polar Set appeared on Worthpoint years ago so I'm borrowing the picture.

I was too old for Explorer 12. It was a UK toy range for a later generation in the early 80's.

But Explorer 12 has enough Supermarionation chops to excite a Sixties kid like me and I suspect many of the Gerry Anderson generation.

It seems to combine elements of Thunderbirds, SpaceX and everything we like.

The magazine advertising and tie-in book art was also done by none other than Mike Noble!

Has anyone got the polar set?

What are the four silver balls for?

A BUSTLE IN MY HEDGEROW

It's funny. I'm currently selling off old toy stall stock; vintage toys, games, puzzles, books, LP's, videos and comics. The attic is full to bursting. A long spring-clean seemed to fit Lockdown and now School's out for the summer I can't stop!

The house is choc-full as well as after 41 years together me and the Missus have assembled a whole pile of life in general.

Sometimes I wonder how we ended up with so much stuff and I'm sure this is a common experience for people like us well over 50. Working life is drawing slowly to a close and we've surrounded ourselves with a life's-worth of ornaments, books, mementos, collections, furniture, pictures, pots and pans. Its how we filled our days.

But there was a time when I had very little at all. Almost a blank page in comparison to today and I can now see that period as a base-level for the start of our current heap of things piling up!

It was when I left my home town in 1980. For a couple of years I'd had a day job to pay for amps and guitars for a local teen rock band I was in, but in the September of 1980 all the other three group members left for Uni. They were 18. I was a year older, renting a flat and with a hippy's head full of Gaia I had no thirst for more formal education. I needed 'to find myself' as we would have said back then.

So in the late winter of 1980 I quit my insurance job and with no fanfare left my home town of Preston for good. My destination, the Ouse Washes RSPB Bird Reserve in the Cambridgeshire fens, where I'd signed up as a volunteer warden for a year, something which fitted well with the 'long hair' I was as I turned 20 that December.

I took very very little to the fens. I couldn't carry much anyway on the train. A hold-all, the guitar and the clothes on my back and that was it. What  I did have left-over from my former life, my childhood, I'd left in a cupboard - electric guitar, amp, LP's, magazines, books and a a built-up Aurora Witch and a Dracula candle -  in my old flat, which my older brother now rented. I'd chucked some other stuff, some clothes and hippy posters like Jesus is Coming and Bombs for Breakfast?, which my brother wouldn't want.

Besides, the accommodation I was in on 'the Washes' was tiny, basically a large hut called Cygnus. There was a combined living space and kitchenette and two bedrooms containing two bunk-beds for four people.  There wasn't room to swing a wren round!

Probably the biggest single item in the hut was my 12-string EKO acoustic guitar, which took up far too much space in the cramped living area. I kept in on my bunk-bed when not in use. My stablemate, Dave, also there for a year on something called YTS, took up some more of the hut and I think his biggest possession was his telescope and tripod. He was a much keener 'birder' than me and very knowledgeable about wildlife. I got to know Dave really well.

The other two lower bunk-beds were for weekend volunteers, which the RSPB was well used to, unlike us year-longers, who were quite new. The weekenders - bankers, teenagers, birders and office workers all wanting to graft in a beautiful place for a while and do some birdwatching - didn't bother me. I got used to their comings and goings and enjoyed the fresh blood they injected every week. I was a vegetarian at the time and a terrible, almost useless cook, so if any of them made me a plate of grilled courgettes and cheese they'd be my friend for life!

The weekenders, on the other hand, drove Dave wild and to be fair he worked much harder than me on the reserve - I did a lot of writing in the bustling reeds when I should have been grafting! - and needed his own space. We coped though and got through the winter nights all together listening to the radio - the BBC aired Lord of the Rings - and I played songs on the 12-string. I remember a young punk rocker birder listening to me play and sing Space Oddity by Bowie. At the end he said 'not bad Hippy!'. It was like the peace-making of rival tribes in the shifting sands of rock!

Even though I owned hardly anything that year and lived on the dole [volunteering was aloud back then] it was without doubt one of the happiest years of my life. A stand-out year unlike any other before or after and marked a clear watershed between my former self and what was to come. I'm glad I had nothing except my guitar. I have to admit I miss those days a lot. 

I left the fens in the Autumn of 1981 on the back of a friend's motorbike. All I had was my old hold-all. My guitar was left behind as I plumb forgot to take it. I hope someone somewhere is strumming Space Oddity to the applause of punks!

Did you have very little when you left home readers?

A Sting in the Tale

Seeing all the giant Scorpions running around Moonbase recently, here's a few of my own. First up the Tomy Zevle 'Zargam' or Deathpion. A 1/24 scale Zoid-like beast, the Zevle line was briefly released in 1992 and featured articulated 3" figures, rather than the tiny golden pilots. It may not have been a huge success, but the Deathpion is an amazing piece of robotic design. Battery powered, it scuttles forward, claws snapping and tail tail twitching.

At around 14" long, its well detailed and as with all Zoids models, extremely well made. This model has been built as a kit and painted professionally. (not by me, I hasten to add).

The resurgence of the Zoids line in the mid 2000's brought new life to the series and a wave of new models. One of the best must be the sea scorpion 'Death Stinger'. In standard Zoid scale, it is piloted by the gold android figure, but is roughly the same size as the Deathpion.

It has similar action, walking forward with claws snapping and tail moving. There are multiple folding fins and blades and the battery pack is disguised as a heavy dual gauss cannon on the back.

The head armour flips back to allow access to the cockpit and shows the red eyes and scissor jaws more clearly.

Finally from the Transformers film comes the Scorponok, as seen whizzing around the desert, giving the hapless Marines a hard time. Unlike most modern Transformer toys, it does not convert to a robot, but does have a complex gear arrangement, which causes the claws to spin as it is pushed along. The tail fires a harpoon too.

Although not strictly a scorpion, and more akin to a lobster, the Mattel Atlantis 'Leviathan' from the Disney cartoon is a modular toy which can break down into smaller vehicles too.

IMAI THUNDERBIRD MARS EXPLORER ZERO-X

Pic courtesy of Swordgrasshopper

You got one of these? I have, in my dreams!

ROGER PERRY AND CENTURY 21 PUBLISHING ON BEAR ALLEY

For the real background on Century 21 publishing read the brilliant series of Perry's Picture Posts on the superb Bear Alley blog: here's just a few few but read them all on Bear Alley.

https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2016/05/perrys-picture-post-part-4.html

https://bearalley.blogspot.com/search/label/Perry%27s%20Picture%20Post?updated-max=2016-05-28T05:03:00%2B01:00&max-results=20&start=12&by-date=false

https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2016/06/perrys-picture-post-part-13.html

https://bearalley.blogspot.com/search/label/Perry%27s%20Picture%20Post?updated-max=2016-06-11T05:03:00%2B01:00&max-results=20&start=6&by-date=false

Towards A Red Planet

I love soviet era hardware, the massive rockets, ungainly spacesuits and downright ugly space probes. The russian aesthetic is much more practical and industrial, rather than the western approach to space design, there's no attempt at delicacy, its all about doing the job. With this in mind, I got the idea to knock up a quick model of a soviet-style probe, with no clear design in mind, just using bits from the scrap box.

The front is a lid from shampoo or something and always put me in mind of the Russian 'Venera' Venus Probe, so I took that and worked backwards from there.

A pair of solar panels from a speaker grille, the lid off a pill box and a handful of kit parts and voila! Rather than send it off to Venus, I felt Mars might be a suitable destination, as its currently in the news again with three separate probes headed towards it in the next few weeks.

The Mars Probe is significantly larger than my earlier space probe scratchbuilds, the Ranger 5 Moon Probe and the circumlunar Sputnik 7, which I knocked out a few months back. I think I might have to make the Mars Lander now, to go with it! Watch this space!