16/12 RETRO EAGLE TRANSPORTER

Some more previously posted photos I took of the Sixteen 12 Retro Eagle Transporter. Like the retro Eagle Freighter, not to everyones taste, but personally I think it looks great. The Eagle Transporter models were limited to just 500, and are now sold out on the Sixteen 12 website. The green paint scheme, inspired by the look of the vintage Dinky toy, and a cause of annoyance to some collectors looks good to me, along with the chrome engine bells and the red details.

CHRISTMAS UNWRAPPED

Well, Christmas is over more or less, for another year.

Despite its strangeness I still enjoyed the unique festive atmosphere at the top of the year.

The highlight was watching our Grandson opening his presents. It was a portal into my own past and reminded me that Christmas really is for children.

Four year old junior liked the wooden castle and knights we got him. It was big enough for him to sit inside and play. He also liked the Toy Story pen set and scribbled notes on a post it pad, which became letters to the King in the castle.

Top-it by Ideal from 1972 was another hit. We always like to introduce a vintage toy or two and at £2 complete boxed from a chrity shop it was a no brainer. The box art is that typically wonderful colour style that Ideal always had. I wonder who the artists were?

Without doubt though the biggest hit was a large plastic remote-controlled crane we got Junior. Nearly as tall as him he was in his element delivering buckets of purple hearts to the knights in the castle. He played with it for ages.

It reminded me how I must have felt when I opened up my Cape Kennedy Project SWORD set Xmas 1967 and remote-controlled it round the house!

Those were the days! 

Did you get anything remote-controlled as a kid readers?

16/12 RETRO EAGLE FREIGHTER

A few photos I've posted previously of Sixteen 12 Collectables blue retro Eagle Freighter. Although it's not to everyone's taste I think it looks fine. The Sixteen 12 die cast model obviously takes its inspiration from the vintage blue Dinky Eagle Freighter from the late seventies.

DO CHRISTMAS WALKS SPOIL A GOOD SOFA AFTERNOON?

This will be controversial I bet but I can't stand Christmas walks!

Just when I'm snug as a bug in a Christmas sherry jug, enjoying the inexplicable delight of wearing my pajamas all day, after a lunch of festive meats and treats, some bright spark will chirp:

"Anyone fancy a Christmas walk?"

My heart sinks. 

Just as I'm heading for the sofa to check out my new book on horror films and turning on a Superman II DVD for Junior, whilst balancing a saucer of mince pies and a glass of Captain Morgan, I hear that dreadful clarion call to don winter woolies, dress the grandchildren and head out into the sub-zero temperatures of a Northern hemisphere December!

God help me, why oh why this obsession to ramble, amble and hike on Christmas and Boxing Day, just at that very moment when we have achieved the perfect Hadron collision of food, drink, comfort and warmth, only to be casually thrown away for entering a world of dog sh*t, scrotes on trials bikes, pram disasters and the odd penguin lost in the freezing fog.

Please, no more Christmas walks Santa. That is what I want next year!

GO APE WITH A SHOOTING PEN

I loved a good pen as a kid and always a toy gun so a toy pen gun like this would have been a huge hit.

I had to chuckle when I saw this display card online. The artwork is just ace!

Not only do we get a mischievous looking Tom Cruise junior but also a fabulously monstrous ape!

By Success, I love the model number 01P. I wonder what 02P is?

Did you have a toy pen gun?

IS CHRISTMAS TELLY RUBBISH NOW?

Is it just me or is Christmas TV in the UK utterly rubbish?

I know there's a global pandemic and shows can't be made like they were, if at all, but there are literally millions of old shows, series and films that could be shown that aren't complete trash.

OK, to give BBC4 its due, on Christmas Eve there were a few Mark Gatiss repeated ghost stories late on, for which I was truly thankful for, but these appeared to be a rare example of TV programmers actually scheduling anything different for Christmas.

The same old gaggle of tired comedians, inane minor celebrities, endless repeats and reality re-runs, not to mention exactly the same dire barrel-scrapers like Knives With Wives on just the same as if Christmas didn't exist at all.

What the hell happened? When I was a kid there were just three channels for God's sake, but the programmers managed to show, over the Christmas holiday, every Sinbad film, every Hammer horror, every Buster Keaton comedy, every Laurel and Hardy show, a full run of Flash Gordon and for monster nuts they even made their own ghost stories just for Christmas Eve.

Has Christmas programming on 'normal' channels hit rock bottom or am I missing something here?

Do I have to sell my soul to Sky, Netflix, SkyNet and Cyberdyne to get any proper Christmas telly?

Vertibird by Mattel

Hi Woodsy, 

Vertibird! 

I remember having no control of these things! But then the toys always looked better on the advertising on television! 

http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/Vertibird.html 

MJ 

Southcoast Base UK

* Anyone get one for Christmas as a kid?

DAN DARE'S ANNIE

A few previously seen photos I took of my old Annastasia scratch build using the same diorama I created for my Fireball model. The model is based on the Annie we see during the story, The Red Moon mystery as, at the time I built it I only had that comic strip as reference. Like my Fireball model, Annie is made from wood, vac formed plasicard and clear accetate.