A LOOK AT THE SIXTEEN 12 SHADOMOBILES

As one who follows Sixteen 12 Collectables and their growing product range I thought I'd share some of their own images of their upgraded SHADO Mobile range that were formally part of the Product Enterprise range. 

Shado Mobile 1 has an additional rear aerial, a retractable depth charge launcher and machine gun. It now has additional decals, and it's own diorama which includes a smaller scale Sky 1.

Note the addition of this track guide for a more accurate look.

Shado Mobile 2 has a different diorama which includes a UFO.

Shado Control has a diorama featuring a Lexfield Air Force Base sign. A friend did point out to me that Sixteen 12 have used one of their early examples of the model which carried the excessive weathering. I would imagine for the finished product they'll use the later version.

Below is a photo of the later, less weathered P.E. Shado Control.

Here's a reminder of the other two original Product Enterprise Shado Mobiles.

Last, but not least is a look at their 'Retro' version of the Shado Mobile, using a colour scheme inspired by one of the later Dinky toys. Nice to see it as a Shado Conrol which Dinky never released as a commercially available version at the time. This comes with a 'retro' display plinth and clear cover. 

THROUGH A GLASS, CLEARLY

I have some of my very fondest memories from my primary school days, playing with Sword toys on a toy day, xmas panto, first girlfriend and a multitude of exciting educational toys that you could never buy in department stores. In those heady first days of school way back in the mid sixties, I discovered all kinds of construction, counting and creating toys. 

Playplax - clearly brilliant

One that always stuck in my memory was Playplax. Probably because of its utter simplicity and beauty - basically there were two different parts - it stuck with me. One day, while cruising ebay, I managed to score a large boxed set of the two main elements. When I got it at home, the memories flooded back as I handled the perspex squares and tubes and I soon had a beautiful coloured sculpture before me. More importantly, the box held more surprises, as it was clearly marked as a Trendon Toy and designed by one Patrick Rylands. Also it had a Design Centre sticker on it, which revealed that it had won several awards and was obviously a toy design milestone. At the time I found the set, I had been in touch with the Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood, trying to arrange a visit to their archives. So I looked in on their website and after a brief redirection, found an online copy of the 1970 Design Journal, detailing the launch of Playplax.

The article showed several other toy creations by Patrick Rylands, plus several other similar toys. I hit ebay once more armed with the new information and was amazed to discover another rare toy - the Gyrosphere. This was a simple perspex globe enclosing an equally simple perspex spinning top, which when you shook the globe, spun inside the globe. The Gyrosphere was contained in a simple clear tube with cardboard ends and had obviously spent some time on a dusty shop shelf. I contacted the V & A directly and asked the curator about Playplax and Mr Rylands designs. To my complete surprise, it turned out that he was a member of the museum board and I was able to contact him directly to ask about the design of the toys. After a brief exchange, he told me that he was very surprised that anyone might discover a Gyrosphere nowdays as once it is taken out of the packaging, there is no way to identify it by means of makers marks. He then went on to describe the production and development of the toy and the fact that he used 'powder compacts' as the lids for the packaging during conceptual design.

1970 edition of Design Journal

The Amazing Gyrosphere

After I had found out all I could discern from the V & A Design Journals and conversations with Mr Rylands, I went in search of other Trendon Toys and contemporary designs. Within the journal, I saw another simple construction toy called Hex Upon. Consisting of a set of  19 plastic rings, Hex Upon proceeded from a similar premise as Playplax, allowing small hands to link the rings together to make various shapes. The outer rim of each ring has two opposing slots on each hexagonal facet, making it possible to join the rings together in planes of 90 degrees. Once more ebay provided me with a boxed set, some years later. Again the box was dusty and dirty, showing signs of a long and unhappy shelflife. Looking at the toy now, it is easy to see that a child might tire quickly of the limited possibilities of the toy. Also, when the box is removed and the toy stands alone, it could easily be mistaken for a set of space age napkin rings, as used by all those 70's dinner parties!

A Hex Upon You

 Finally, to round off this little look at space age toy design, I came across a rare game by Airfix. Spectra is a multilevel variation on draughts, with a board and counters that might not look out of place on Ed Strakers desk or on his office wall. The idea being the translucent counters could be overlaid to change the three base colours into secondary shades making a line of matching colour. Again, a pretty looking toy, but not great in the playability department!

Nice try but stick to planes in future

PRODUCT ENTERPRISE TALKING DR WHO

For a while in the nineties and the early noughties, Product Enterprise produced some excellent classic Doctor Who electronic action figures.

I tended to collect examples of their Dalek range which included micro Daleks, movie Daleks, and talking Daleks to name but a few.

While I do have an obvious fondness for classic Daleks , my favourite incarnations of the Doctor were played by Jon Pertwee and later, Tom Baker.  So when I found a reasonably priced boxed example of a Talking Dr Who Tom Baker doll, which comes with his trusty electronic dog, K-9, I thought I’d add it to the collection.

It went on general sale in 2004, although some specially shipped- in examples could be found at the 2003 Birmingham Memorabilia collectors fair in November to coincide with the series’ 40th anniversary.

As with all of Product Enterprise’s products a lot of attention is paid to the packaging, and the wonderful retro styling that goes into it.

The box is unsurprisingly in the shape of a TARDIS with opening doors that reveal the fourth Doctor and K-9.

There’s a standee on top of the box showing a vibrant rendition of Tom’s Doctor, which I believe was painted by artist, Graham Humphreys.

The doll’s likeness is pretty good from certain angles, with a typical toothy Tom Baker grin. 

It has some limited articulation. The head moves left to right, and each arm moves up and down from the shoulder, and the gripping hands can swivel.

The knitted scarf is very good too, and looks very authentic to me. The nit-pickers would probably note it’s not long enough for them, though.

The figure also comes with additional accessories; a sonic screwdriver, and bag of jelly babies.

There’s a circular cut-out at the back so prospective buyers can hear the doll ‘talk’.

Sadly, my doll has long since given up talking for some reason, so the six authentic phrases using Tom Baker’s unmistakable voice is lost.

K-9, however does still talk, but the years must have taken their toll on the sound card, and actor, John Leeson’s K-9 phrases sound pretty much garbled to me now.

Not to worry though, K-9 still has a working pull-back and go mechanism, and his ear antennas’ and tail is still intact.

All in all, a pleasing addition to my Dr Who Product Enterprise collection.

Cadaver - Dead Good

You will have often heard me bemoan the fact that the golden era of toys is dead and one of the nails in its plastic coffin, is video gaming. Whilst I often kick this particular chestnut out of the brazier and roll it around a bit, I have to admit to being seriously hypocritical, for I am a serious gamer myself. There, I've said it, the virtual elephant is in the room. In my defence, I have to say I was lured into it many years ago and my gaming passions do not extend to the current swathe of online multiplayer bullet parties, which seem to attract the gaming faithful today. My gaming heyday was the late 80's and started with the beginning of the 16bit era and the prominence of home computing. When Commodore brought out the Amiga (and Atari copied with the ST) the colourful imaginative graphics caught my eye and I saw the chance to play the kind of games I had only seen in arcades, at home. My favourites were Nemesis, R-Type and the raft of japanese shooters that had flooded the market, with spaceships blasting all kinds of laser death at waves of aliens hordes.

One of the best games developers at the time, were the Bitmap Brothers and they were the company who assured my gaming would become a long term love affair. One of their first games was Xenon II -Megablast a scrolling shooter with fabulous graphics and a stomping soundtrack from 1989. 

It was the graphics which drew me in at first, end of level bosses in the shape of Nautiloids, waves of spiders and alien insects and a chunky interceptor to pilot, with tons of extra weapons to buy to increase your firepower. To this day, I have never been able to complete it and have maybe briefly reached the beginning of the third level. To todays gamers, it would look like a phone based game to todays hard core, but for me it was heaven. I bought the Amiga system and a portable tv, just to play it and from then it was a slippery slide.

The Bitmap Bros brought out a string of superb games following this, such as Speedball, a competetive Rollerball type game, Gods, a mythological platformer, Magic Pockets, a weird fantasy and the Chaos Engine a victorian steampunk adventure.

I was totally sold on shoot em up - space invader derivatives - and was never drawn to fantasy or dungeons and dragons type game, which were the other mainstay of the 16bit generation, so when I saw a demo of Cadaver, by the bitmaps, I assumed it would be the usual D & D fare. However, I was wrong. Dead wrong. Rather than a hack and slash running battle or a 'roll a dice make a move' affair, Cadaver was seemingly simple, but devilishly complex.

You play a dwarf, Caradoc, who must explore a castle on a quest. So far, so what ? A typical game from a popular genre. But the game demanded much more than a little fighting, each room in the castle had to be thoroughly explored and each item in it examined. The simple interface allowed Caradoc to pick up, hold or throw anything he found on the ground, or in the many chests and cabinets around the level. Rewards were also granted for killing monsters, discovering secrets and casting spells.

In order to progress, doors needed to be unlocked or ways to escape discovered and some of the puzzles were extremely fiendish and sometimes depended on items which had to be collected several rooms away.

Each room had an assortment of items in it, moveable furniture and occasional monsters, leading up to the final confrontation with a huge dragon, which is only slain if you happen to carry a certain combination of weapons and spells. Again, I can't say I have ever completed the game, or its expansion pack The Pay Off, or the three self contained level demos that came with the various Amiga magazines each month. 

The game is a huge sprawling map of connected rooms on several levels and is a massive time sink. The 'just one more go' factor kept me up into the small hours many a night.

Now that Playstation 5 and its peers loom large on the horizon and super realism and virtual reality is the order of the day, Amiga and Megadrive style games are considered ancient history and glossed over, but just as classic space toys still retain their charm, so too do these amazing games. Most titles are available to play online, so have a look at Cadaver and see what you find.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/cadaver-13x/play-13x

Heeerrres Johnny!

This blogging lark is certainly labour intensive, so just to keep the wagon rolling, here's an updated post from 2009.


Having Major Matt Masons Space Crawler, its essential to compare its cousin from Marx and its bold pilot, Johnny Apollo!

The similarities in build of the wheels on the crawler are immediately apparent, as is the enclosed cockpit on the vehicle. Mattel went for a much more practical route with the Space Crawler, putting Major Matt into an open cockpit. Marx also managed to go one up on Mattel in terms of choice of crew, while Matt only had three other blokes, a batch of aliens and an unlikely giant with a disconcerting stare, Marx gave its astronaut a much more fetching colleague in the shape of Jane Apollo. Presumably this was to either capture the doll market or to add a little equality to the spacelanes. Either way it was much more than Matt had and certainly a step up from poor old Moon McDare, who only had his trusty space mutt for company!

Johnny also wins out over Matt Mason in terms of detail and durability. Whereas Mattels figures could happily be dropped out of windows or suffer catastrophic crashes in the Re-Entry Glider due to the rubber body, the wire armatures which gave the figure poseability were naturally prone to breakage and were almost impossible to repair. Johnny on the other hand, is a hard plastic build and has more in common with the later Gi Joe figures.

Although there was always a danger of the toy cracking or scratching under duress, poseability was always good. He also got a lot more accessories than Matt, even if they were slightly lacklustre gold finish rather than snappy chrome. He topped out a little taller than Matt too, and also found fame as a stand alone set in the Cape Kennedy Astronaut boxed set.

Whereas Marx saw fit to enclose him in a pressurised cockpit on both the crawler and his nifty buggy, they never saw fit to give him a visor for his space helmet! Whoops! Perhaps this was a practical consideration for when he was alone with Jane in that cramped space capsule...

 Since I posted the bloglet in 2009, I managed to score an orange Johnny figure, essentially the same square jaw, but with slightly redder hair. Still on the lookout for a Jane to keep the boys company!

Thanks to Looey for the inspsirational catalogue shot below too!

The Wizard from Oz

After his disappointment at Hamleys, blog reader and professional model maker Lewis Morley documented more of his adventures returning to London from Australia recently! Enjoy!