ANOTHER SPECIAL BIRTHDAY GIF: THE PROJECT SWORD NUCLEAR FERRY FLY-PAST

 

Original Nuclear Ferry Art by Bob McCall

BOB MCCALL'S EXPLORATIONS

 http://www.mccallstudios.com/explorations/

Just look at this collection of beautiful paintings by the late great American space artist Bob McCall. 

Among the many pearls it also contains the original box art basis for the Project SWORD Nuclear Ferry, a magnificent toy, which only a very few people have the pleasure of owning. 

I hasten to add that I'm not one of them, though I did borrow one once and took a snap of it in my collection.

BLOGGIVERSARY TREAT: ARTO'S ORIGINAL SPACEX SIGN AND MOON BASE SET TOGETHER!

Sometimes things just come together and this year Arto was able to pair a SpaceX Moon Base set set with his lovely original SpaceX shop sign. How cool is that! Thanks Arto!

MY MATCHBOX MOTORWAY: A BIRTHDAY MEGA-SPECIAL BY KEVIN D

My childhood was dominated by tvsf, the worlds of Gerry Anderson, Star Trek etc. There is remarkably little difference in my adult life now I come to think of it.

Anyway, leaving aside that sociological treatise for the moment, there were some non-space toys in my life. 

One that stands out in my mind is the Matchbox Motorway. I can vividly remember setting it up on my bedroom floor and it would've been late 60's. I have no idea why I suddenly wanted one again in 2021 but I did. You can't reclaim your youth but it is still worth trying!

So, grab the moment, and the mobile phone and get onto ebay. It didn't take long to find one that looked reasonably complete and I took a chance on it.

It arrived and I was delighted to discover that it was all there. I set it up, cobbled together a power supply (my childhood one had run on batteries that I suspect no longer exist!). Astoundingly, after all this time, it ran immediately.

I was ridiculously pleased to watch cars run around on it.

The beauty of the design of this toy is that it is not a race track (although you could use it as one). The two lanes can carry lots of cars and can go in opposite directions, pretty much like a motorway but without miles of restrictions so that two guys in hi-vis jackets can paint 6 inches of white line.

The other clever thing is that ordinary matchbox cars can run on it. No electricity powers the cars, instead the motors drive two long, continuous springs that run in slots in the road bed. The cars have plastic pegs stuck on their undersides that slot into the gaps between spring coils. You can still find new, unused boxes of pegs to this day and I even got a power unit for it.

Brilliant to see it going again but what really mystifies me is that whilst all my other childhood toys seem small now, this still seems huge!

Having got the toy up and running, I thought I'd do some photos of it in action. My next thought was that it would be great to reproduce the brilliant artwork on the box lid. Great idea but it meant finding 12 specific Matchbox cars. 

Many of them I'd had as a kid so I'd be happy to own them again. The ever helpful Wotan donated some too. Trouble was, I don't think the cars were always available in the colours shown. Customising was going to happen. On the plus side, I could get cheap, battered ones!

Here is an example of what I needed to do. The car I'd obtained was blue and rough. I drilled out the one rivet that held it together and got it into its parts. I primed the body with white primer and then sprayed it red.

The finish was not shiny enough so then I brush painted some gloss enamel varnish onto it. I put it all back together and superglue was enough to hold it where the rivet had been. Not a bad result, 1 down, 11 to go.

I then finally managed to put together the 12 vehicles seen on the box lid.

This is the result.

and here it is all moving on a short video.

The beauty of the Matchbox Motorway system is that it doesn't just work for Matchbox toys. Any suitably sized vehicle will do. Here is a Corgi Juniors Batmobile kindly donated by Wotan.

Holy flexibility!

Happy Bloggiversary,

Kevin D

UK

ANNIVERSARY SHADO: YET MORE ECHOES OF STRAKER'S GUN

We've had this toy gun rattling round the blog for years, the ECHO gun used in Gerry Anderson's UFO TV series. 

Its a bloggiversary legend!

Click the labels below for more.

I just love the wood-effect formica-style grip! They left it on for UFO too! I think they may have had a different barrel tip or maybe just painted it silver.

You can see a sort of review on You Tube as part of an American shop. Importantly, you can hear the loud echoey sound it makes!

https://youtu.be/S0ZAYLTgiAg

What do you think?

Like most toy designs it got to see the light of day again and like any decent echo just kept on coming.

There's often one lurking on Ebay USA somewhere.

Here's two more versions, all with E serial numbers on the side and like the one above, made in Taiwan.

Chitech's Magna Force [maybe they are all made by Chitech, who's most popular toy online appears to be a three-headed plastic dragon!]

and another re-packaged one that came in both orange and blue boxes.

The eco gun appeared in the UFO TV episode Exposed but as I've no access to that I can't say if the production team simply used the sound the toy made or did something else with it?

Does anyone know?

DID YOU KNOW THE BLOG IS 13 YEARS OLD TODAY?

 

 

BIRTHDAY SPECIAL! PAUL WATSON'S REDBOX ASTRONAUT - COMPLETED!

Hi Woodsy 

A few new photographs of my final iteration of the Redbox astronaut. Some of this set was purchased for me in 1970 when my parents couldn't find the official Action man suit.

It was played with to virtual destruction and then 45 years later I went looking for the other bits to make it up again.!

A couple of people have insisted that it had a large KO space sled with it BUT I only remember the near copy of the Action Man astronaut set.

Hope they're of some use to those chronicling the range.

ATB

Paul Watson