VALIGURSKY MAN: THE MALE COVER HERO OF ED VALIGURSKY

Ed Valigursky, US space artist and imagineer of the SWORD Booster Rocket, Spacex MEV2 and Spacex Nova Rocket, was a prolific pulp book and magazine cover illustrator during the 1950's and 60's. 

Looking further at his book cover art, Mr. Valigursky was obviously keen on rockets, robots and monsters. He was also keen on painting young people of both sexes and in particular a dark haired spaceman. 

His hero is classicly handsome, often uniformed and very versatile, a sort of Rock Hudson type in space. There's often a high collar or some red somewhere too. 

Here's a sample gallery of this Valigursky man below  - was it a self portrait? You will find many more googling the artist's name.

Similarly handsome and uniformed females graced Ed's covers and a good example was on the front of the Ace Double, Wandl the Invader.

Do you like Ed's space men and women readers?

THE LEAKY COFFIN TOY

 This could be the strangest toy I've seen on Ebay ever on Moonbase!

From Dee Bee Co. of New York

It's a leaky coffin ..

with a peeing skeleton!

The Ebay seller's listing comment was priceless:

"I can't get it to work!"

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A good thing too!

Do you have a leaky coffin readers?

NINETY NINE

My late Mum would have been 99 today!

Like most kids she was the provenance of my childhood and everything in it. My Mum was the original Moonbase Central. She made it to just 56.

I'll be raising a glass of beer to the old dear tonight and thanking her for all that she did for me and my Sibs God bless her.

Here she is far left with her shades on at Butlins. Yours truly is with my Aunty holding up my new plastic ship. Its around 1964 I would say. Happy days!

HOLD OUT YOUR HAND BOY!

It always amazes me what we had to put up with at school in the Sixties and the early Seventies. 

It was a goddamn battlefield and I'm not talking about the kids. I mean the teachers. They were weaponised. 

Weaponised teachers on a mission to beat the hell out of us kids!

I'm talking about corporal punishment. The legal injury of young bodies in school!

It may seem like a quaint blip in education's history but it was no laughing matter at the time. Allowing teachers to smack, hit, wallop and cane youngsters was a bad idea. Period.

Looking back the thought that on a day when you could be deliriously happy playing Joseph in the school play you could also get the strap several times on each hand executed by the deranged Head of Chemistry seems like some sort of sick joke to me now.

I was strapped. For dancing on a lab table. OK I shouldn't have been on the table before the teacher came in but to actually hit me with a rubber strap for it is ridiculous.

I also had a wooden board rubber thrown at me from the front of the classroom. Being a W I was sat the back. Now that took some umph to wang that rubber all the way to the back. It caught me on the shoulder in a cloud of white chalk-dust but could easily have knocked me out. All for not knowing where we where in David Copperfield! I ask you!

I once saw an art teacher stand on a chair to give him extra height when leaping off to whack some poor kid's hand with a stick. They might as well have given psychopaths baseball bats.

For a vivid glimpse of how it was just watch the old movie Kes, set not too far from where Moonbase is now. There's whacking aplenty in it.

Not all Secondary justice was heinous. For mimicking an English teacher's funny voice I was commanded to write out 100 vocabs - that's words and definitions from a dictionary. I remember Ziggurat was one, as in the Ziggurat of Ur.

Many teachers were fine too. Nice, helpful people who never hit anyone. 

I was never keen on school I don't think. Its blizzard of rules was stifling for me but somehow I managed to get through it in one piece and pick up some O levels, because I enjoyed English Lang and Lit, History and Geography, subjects with words at their heart and for me words and their meaning were everything.

In an arc of supreme irony fifty years later I work in education and despite the school rules being ever present no-one gets walloped by teachers anymore thank God.

Nostalgia can have its bruises. I don't expect everyone to agree.

FAB1 DOME: DOES IT OPEN?

Looking at this image of FAB1 on Sixmania I was amazed to see that the car's dome splits in half and rises up like a sunroof.

http://www.sixmania.fr/wp-content/uploads/la-fabuleuse-histoire-de-la-vraie-fab-1-premiere-partie/real_fab1_015.jpg

or is this the way Parker and Lady Penelope actually got in and out of the car in the Thunderbirds TV show?

Do you know readers?

THE WRECKER WRECK

 

I felt sorry for this wrecked wrecker on auction this year. It must have got into a few major scrapes to end up like that. I just hope it went to a good home with a skilled mechanic!

Luckily I've a whole C21 Wrecker at Moonbase for those JR21 prangs that occur on the Century 21 freeway.

Have you got a wrecker of sorts?

GEEK SALAD SAUERSTOFF

I was gobsmacked to hear today that NASA had succeeded in making a small amount of oxygen on Mars. Perseverance did it using a device onboard, which converts CO2 into the life giving gas. It was enough to last a Martionaut 10 minutes. How amazing is that! I can well foresee in 50 years huge silos of oxygen bristling on the surface of the red planet. Can you?

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I heard a kid use a phrase today, like a straight rainbow, and I thought that's neat. Is that something you've heard? Not sure what it means.

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Another phrase I heard was Killed by Death. I don't think its possible to be killed by death is it? Death is a consequence, not a cause. What do you think?

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I saw my Grandson's favourite cuddly toy in a movie the other day, a soft doggy from Ikea. He calls it Dizzy and has a second one called Doody. It was in the George Clooney vehicle Midnight Sky. A young girl, reminiscent of Aliens' Newt, had it. Maybe Junior should rename one Clooney!

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According to the radio Phil Collins objected to the original title of Easy Lover. He just didn't like it, Choosy Lover. It got me thinking as to what else it might have been: Cheesy Brother? Sleazy Mother? What would you come up with for Phil?

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This clip on Wired blew me away. I thought it was a jungle on Earth bit its the Norgay and Hilary mountains on Pluto at Sunset. Stunning don't you think?

https://www.wired.com/video/watch/sunset-on-pluto#intcid=_cne-watch-pages_e7a4c611-d650-4c36-9a18-bd53f9c05691_entity-topic-similarity-v2

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These Ocean Adventures toy packs look really cool and remind me of Britains and Lone Star frogman toys. Have you come across Ocean Adventures?

https://guide.alibaba.com/shop/ocean-adventure-playset-32-piece-scuba-diver-figures-with-boats-and-playmat-1-35-scale_9695062.html

DO YOU KNOW WHAT FAB3 WAS?

I've always loved FAB1 - like most kids of my age. Its just one of those TV cars that was the perfect form of style and looks and drove straight into the showroom of our memories.

FAB2 was Lady Penelope's yacht, which we've blogged about once or twice. Not sure if Parker was the pilot or whether FAB1 went on board. It would have made a great JR21 toy, maybe using the Vosper  toy as its basis. Would that have worked?

Amazingly there was a FAB3 too! I only found out today. I could never have guessed and I had to chuckle when I read it. It was Lady Penelope's racehorse! Now I've no idea if it appeared on TV and whether Parker was the jockey. Not sure it would have been a decent JR21 toy, but they did release at least three other small toy horses, the Rocking Neddy, Piggy Chariot and Cowboy Joe.

Now please don't tell me: there was a FAB4 too?