IS CHRISTMAS TV RUBBISH NOWADAYS?

Apart from the Ghost Story for Christmas on Christmas Eve and Alistair Sim's Christmas Carol a little earlier that week, I thought the 'normal' telly schedules were rubbish over Christmas this year in England. Some days on Freeview you wouldn't have known it was Christmas!

I dunno - like the big Sixties kid I am - I wanted Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad or any Harryhausen, lots of Laurel and Hardy, lots of 1950's B-movies like Them! some Thunderbirds [from the Sixties] and maybe a whole haunting of ghost stories.

Having said that we were out a lot so it may have been just our bad luck to miss all of the above if they were on!

This year was the first one we didn't invest in a Christmas Radio Times. Maybe that had something to do with it!

What do you think readers? What's Xmas TV like were you are in the world?

BATGIRL BIKES: A CASE IN POINT

 

I saw these lovely cased Batgirl Bikes in a Charity shop late last year. They were a fiver each. I was sorely tempted as they as so damn attractive.

They're just two of the many vehicles issued in the Batman s=range by partworks kings Eaglemoss a while back.

Have you got any Batgirl stuff?

UNBRANDED T IN A CIRCLE MERCURY MARK SPACE SHIP

I used to be a big collector of T in a Circle/ Tai Hing plastic toys.

One I haven't got is the Mercury Mark IV Space Ship like this one I saw online.

Its a lovely thing but this particular one appears to have no branding. Not T in a Circle/ Tai Hing, nothing.

I can see wording on the battery cover which I think says Made in Hong Kong.

Have you anything like this readers?

NEW YEAR'S SUPER SHOWROOM

 Well, the dust has settled on Santa's sleigh for another year but the season offered some fine die-casts for me to drool over and have fun restoring paint chips.

Whilst in Whitby I treated myself to the lovely Superfast Dodge Charger - left - in a collectables shop. At £4 it was a bargain, just the windscreen chipped. The body is divine. In a mad fit of over-confidence I bagged another cheap Dodge on Ebay last week for its better windscreen hoping to recycle it.

Drilling out the rivet I managed to split the damn windscreen! Still I did find a nice purple Sharpie that patched up the small chips on the spare Dodge - the one at the back below - so my finer Charger will just have to suffer its chipped screen!

It is a beauty and the windscreen and sides lift up gullwing style [is that right, is it called gullwing?]

The rear black grille is just fabulous.

Another car I touched-up is this Matchbox Super Kings Shovel Nose Clipper. Luckily there was a similar pale yellow in my new acrylic paint pens [thanks Wotan!].

Its a fine looking futuristic motor. I just spotted it with yellow, some silvering and black panel colouring.

.... a lift-up windscreen too! I just need a smaller Superfast version of this now!

Some shades are proving difficult to match to anything I have in terms of Sharpies and paint pens. These two, a Superfast and a Corgi Junior, are good examples of paint chips I can't restore until I get similar hues of yellow and orange.

So here's the line-up of the all the Superfast I got over Christmas, the ones I've since managed to restore the paint chips, which all turned out rather nice.

The two Superfast at either front end needed no work as they were in such good shape.

Right, these are ready for the display cabinet.

Have you or did you have any of these toy cars readers?

BLACK HOLE PĹAYSUITS

As I've quite a fondness for the film, 'The Black Hole', I really need some more information on these awful looking playsuits!

Lots More Old TV Ads

Hi

         Here are some more collections of old TV toy commercials. First up, Topper Toys, with a selection of Secret Sam items that includes a cane, pipe, and baseball bat that all shoot. A remote control truck. Tigers soldiers and remote control tank. Silly Safari game. Various dolls.

Topper Toys Television Commercials The The 1960s - YouTube

     This Marx collection includes the Bop-A-Bear game. A double-barrelled big game gun fires rubber tipped darts at a battery powered bump-and-go bear - he growls when hit. Totally nuts. Missile firing robots. A child-sized ride-on Batmobile (did they do an adult-sized version ?), playsets including the Cape Kennedy set. At the end there is a shot of a Flintstones train set, but we only see the box.

By MARX! A Tribute to Marx Toys (with commercials and fun facts) - YouTube

     Then almost an hour of old TV ads. The Steve Canyon toys look amazing - and expensive given the dates. But what would they go for today ? The Screaming Mee Mee-e rifle and pistol, trumpeter Louis Armstrong in a commercial for the Suzy Cute doll, American Flyer model railway with landscaped sections that clip together, Slot Cars, and a Roy Rogers Quick Shooter Hat which contains a concealed Derringer pistol. Near the end is a walking Billy Blastoff.

CLASSIC TV TOY COMMERCIALS 1950/60s 60 minutes - YouTube

Happy New Year!

Paul Adams from New Zealand

CORGI BRETT SINCLAIR DBS

 A few old photos of my Corgi Brett Sinclair Aston Martin DBS as seen in The Persuaders! TV series. 

It was released in 2002, and featured a figure of 'Persuader',  Brett Sinclair.

REMEMBERING REVELL MODEL KITS: A BOOK REVIEW

Here is another quick look at one of the reference books from my library.

Remembering Revell Model Kits, Thomas Graham, Schiffer Publishing, USA, 2002, 2nd Edition 2004, 3rd Edition 2008.

There are some reference books you use all the time, and this is one of them. Thomas Graham wrote books on the Big Three US model kit companies, and this is his second, on Revell. 

Revell was probably the closest US company to Airfix in Britain. They had a vast range of models, mostly covering the more serious side of modelling, with the occasional diversion in to more oddball areas.

Revell started out in California in 1941 as Precision Specialties (not to be confused with Precision Plastics in Pennsylvania). Again, the company began by making a variety of products, and moved in to toys after WW2. Their first kits came out in 1951, based on an existing line of toy cars, but now sold unassembled. 

Revell grew to be one of the Big Three model companies, with branches all over the world, but was sold in the late 1970s, and would eventually be merged with Monogram.

This book is similar to the previous volume on Aurora. My 2nd Edition has 174 pages. The first 144 are on glossy paper, and packed with well reproduced photographs, most in colour. 

The remaining 30 pages are on plain paper, and comprise listings of all the kits Revell produced from the 1950s to the 1970s, giving kit number, year of introduction, period of production, scale, and brief notes. Again there is a detailed history of the company, and the people behind it. 

The story only goes up to the sale of the company in 1979, and the later history is not covered. Also, the book concentrates on the US side of the company, rather than foreign operations.

The illustrations are beautiful - from some of the early toys, to original artwork, box tops, assembled models, store displays, and vintage advertising. 

Many are of items you are not likely to see in the flesh - such as the multi-kit Gift Sets, and oddballs like the Westinghouse Atomic Power Plant, or the Dr Seuss kits.

Paul Adams from New Zealand