BIG FRANKIE SAYS HALLOWEEN IS COMING

Hi Woodsy. The Halloween yard decorations are all up! The big Frankenstein monster is new!-

BrianF

Monster Base

NJ USA

I CAN'T COME NEAR YOU

 

HELLO GOOGLE

I recently sat alone in my daughter's living room with a Google Assistant. It's Google's answer to Alexa. Being in a room with an electronic presence is really quite odd and I was unsure what to say to be honest. Like sitting with a stranger.

So like all new relationships I used humour to get over my initial shyness! For God's sake this is a machine I assured myself.

Being Google-born I asked the same thing I asked Google on my laptop years ago, how do I find Chuck Norris. I was surprised that Assistant didn't give me the classic reply, You don't find Chuck Norris, he finds you. Assistant said she didn't understand, which was probably a problem understanding my accent rather than any Chuck ignorance.

I then tried asking did she [is Assistant a she? I just assumed she was, dunno why] know that other Google entity, Siri? She said she did and they get on very well. I could have asked about Cortana and Alexa but the fizz had gone out of my curiosity now.

One more question popped into my head though, is there a cheap Nuclear Ferry toy somewhere in the world I can get for twenty quid and could you get it for me?

With visions of a huge mortgage-munching bill heading my way I didn't even voice it and left Assistant to brood on the meaning of her digital life.

My daughter walked in the room and asked Assistant to put on some cartoon or other for our Grandson who'd just come down. No Chuck Norris, no Nuclear Ferry, just practical.

Hello Google she said with the confidence of the tech generation.

And so AI has thus entered our family unit, utilitarian and always on hand. 

It's not for me I don't think although somehow I wish it was. I feel that I may miss out on the turbo jet pack or robot rocket that must inevitably follow on from engaging with these devices. They are so very Thunderbirds after all and we deserve our jet packs.

Is it for you readers?

Goodbye Google.

Radar Love Rekindled

A recent rash of rare space toy auctions allowed me to plug a gap in my Apollo Moon Exploring series collection, with the addition of the Radar Console set. Besides being a great little toy, I was amazed to find it was a good deal smaller than I had assumed, as I thought it would be a direct remoulding from the Blue Box Missile Bank I had acquired earlier.

The Blue Box toy itself is a copy from the Topper Cape Canaveral set and as I had already seen this model before, I assumed it was just the same toy with the missiles substituted for radar scanners. Had I actually thought about the size of the cards the Imperial Moon Exploring toys come on -5" wide - I would have realised it was much smaller!

But it was still a very pleasant surprise to receive it, along with the little Matt Mason Space Sled and a Golden Astronaut! One more carded set to find in the shape of the Rocket Gantry and I am almost done with the main releases. Then its just waiting to find the oddments and rarities from the lesser sets!

 

Picture courtesy of Ed Berg, via Paul Vreede's Spacex site (click for link)

FIGURE IT OUT

 

The Missus and me have just got back from a long weekend in the fab Derbyshire dales. All still Tier 2 thankfully.

We were based in the city of Derby and travelled out to various rustic dales and spas. We also visited quite a few charity shops and one very rural car boot sale, where I picked up a whole bunch of cute plastic fantasy and animal figures pictured above, along with a neat paperback of Phase IV, which you may have seen as a film - about very smart ants!

If you want to have a go at ID'ing the figures then please have a bash. 

I'll have a go at them later on tonight too.

The Devil Reads Out

"In the wink of an eye, as quick as a flea,

the Devil he jumped from me to thee.

And only when the Devil had gone,

Did I know that  he and I'd been one"

Halloween approaches, the clocks have fallen back an hour, there's a chill in the air and the smell of burning brush. Having spent a week in the deep forest in Yorkshire, my thoughts have definitely turned autumnal and dark. The dogs brought an unwelcome guest home in the form of a deer tick, battening quietly on warm blood and bloating in warm folds of fur. With the evenings drawn in and the fire blazing, there's never a better time for ghost tales and the supernatural.

A great place to start, especially as I am resident in the North West of England, is with Andrew Michael Hurley, award winning writer of three novels and several short stories. I was first introduced to Hurley at university with 'The Loney', his debut novel which was set in the wild coastal area near Morcambe and dealt with themes of devout religious fervour and paganism. With more than a touch of 'The Wicker Man' and folk horror about it, it was an excellent read which led me to buy his second novel on release: 'Devils Day'. 

 

'Devils Day' centres on a schoolteacher returning home to his family after the passing of his grandfather at his farm in rural Yorkshire. In a remote community bound together with tradition, malice and hardships, his home coming is soured byt bad memories and unpleasant discoveries. Like Nigel Kneales 'Beasts' series, Hurley manages to make the worst horrors the ones imagined by the reader and without being overtly creepy, the story has some genuinely scary moments.

Having found his pace and flavour with the first two novels, his recent third book; 'Starve Acre' raises the bar again, becoming almost Clive Barkerish in its imagery.

In similar style to Devils Day, the story centres around a young couple as they struggle to adapt after the untimely death of their five year old son. The central character becomes obsessed with discovering the remains of an old oak tree on his land, legendary for being the scene of mythic sacrifices and executions, while  his wife is disturbed by recurrent visions of her lost son.

Hurley ramps up the suspense and gruesome imagery in Starve Acre, with a disturbing and very real manifestation of evil besetting the household. 

If you enjoy M.R James ghost stories or the work of Nigel Kneale, i'd recommend any or all of these books, with perhaps Devils Day being the best starting point, as the sense of terror and isolation is especially poignant here. 
 

Hot Squeals: The Real Ghostbusters Hot Wheels

Hi Woodsy

Regarding the Ghostbusters films, Hot Wheels have done several die-cast vehicles from the series. Sorry, but this is a little complicated. The Entertainment series has changed its name several times, but is mainly devoted to film and TV vehicles, and is a premium line. 

The main Ghostbusters vehicle is a 1959 Cadillac, fitted with ambulance bodywork by the specialist company Miller-Meteor. It has the number plate ECTO-1 in Ghostbusters (1984), and is commonly referred to either as ECTO-1 or the Ectomobile. For Ghostbusters II (1989), the vehicle was upgraded and given the number plate ECTO-1A. Cartoon versions appeared in The Real Ghostbusters (1986-91), and Extreme Ghostbusters (1997). Then came Ghostbusters (2016), in which the all-male team is changed to an all-female team; and the 1959 ambulance is swapped for a 1984 Cadillac hearse, with a red top and landau irons - and a return to ECTO-1 plates. There is also a Harley-Davidson motorcycle kitted out for Ghostbusting duties as ECTO-2. Various other vehicles have appeared in cartoons, comics, and video games - I am not even going to try and include these. 

Following a few Batmobile models, ECTO-1 was the first official Star Car model to be included in the Hot Wheels Mainline, appearing in the 2010 line-up. 

A more detailed version appeared in the Retro Entertainment series in 2013, and has been re-issued since. It was also included in a 2016 two-pack with ECTO-1A. 

ECTO-1A appeared on its own in the Entertainment series in 2015, and in a two-pack with ECTO-1 the following year. 

The Real Ghostbusters cartoon car appeared in the Entertainment series in 2015. HW went to the trouble and expense of creating a new casting, rather than just using the existing movie car model. 

In 2016 came the new movie car. It was included in a 2016 two-pack with the ECTO-2 motorcycle, and on its own in the 2017 Replica Entertainment series. 

In 2016 there came a set of eight Ghostbusters models. ECTO-1 was included, but the rest were various HW fantasy vehicles decorated with Ghostbusters graphics. The Hot Wheels Wiki entry for this set says it was a Walmart Exclusive. That must apply only to the US, as I have seen most of these models in various shops in New Zealand, except for ECTO-1, which is much harder to find. 

There have been a few special versions, mainly of ECTO-1, for various conventions, and Halloween in weird colours. 

No, I do not have all of these - I have only just realised how many different versions there are. 

Yours Sincerely, 

Paul Adams from New Zealand

Shuttle Service - Next Stop

We have often seen the little red shuttle that comes with the big Apollo Moon Exploring set, or carded on the small Imperial brand rack toys. Its often been suggested that it was based on the Blue Box range of four toys as shown below, but the design appears in many different guises, even as a Blakes 7 version! 

Some time ago, I found what  I thought may have been the definitive version on which the Apollo Moon Explorer might have been based, but on closer inspection, I saw that the red spanish Payva version, was different again, having two nacelles at the rear and an unusual arrangement of panels on the top.

So I was very pleased to find yet another version in red, with a blue canopy like the smaller cousin, by japanese manufacturer Yone. This is a clockwork version, as opposed to friction and has a similar panel arrangement on the back. I suspect that the Yone version may be the oldest, although it does have wingtip tanks that are only shared by the most recent Blue Box version. Yone also included a fifth model, the Space Tank in their line, which has so far eluded me.

The chrome purple model is by Ahi, makers of the Moonship, who also produced versions of the Space Jet and Space Disk.

Here is my current fleet of Ahi, Blue Box ad white unbranded Space Disk. There are other branded versions of the clockwork sparking series too.

Addendum: Kevin D, a long time Blakes 7 fan, shared these images of the Gauda Prime saucers and Federation Pursuit Ship which must have been the basis of the decision to use these four toys as B7 tie ins. The toys were called 'Cosmic Strikeforce' and appear to be officially endorsed by the Beeb. They were made by an unkown company called 'Jotastar'.