COTTON BALL SPACE STATION

 

I love this retro cotton wool space ball container from the Seventies. It should be on the set of Thunderbirds or UFO. It probably was!

Was there anything like this in your parental home?

NEW WHITE 2001 NASA SPACE GLIDER: BLACK V VARIANT

 Here's another NASA 2001 Space Glider variant which I don't think we've seen before in this exact form. Its hard to recall now as there are quite a few! I saw this on an old auction listing.

I love this white colouring and the small black V on the nose. My own white example doesn't have the nose V but my red one does.

Have you got as NASA 2001 Space Glider readers?

MORE PLASTIC MECCANO

Hi

Regarding Plastic Meccano, here are a couple of photos of it that I found on Ebay, very different to the set you showed in a recent post. As a boy I had a New Zealand made Torro construction set, which I think was Plastic Meccano for the NZ market. This would have been early 1970s I think, or perhaps very late 1960s.

Not sure, but mine might be in storage at the moment. So here are a couple of photos from Trade Me, the NZ equivalent of Ebay. Looking at the photos, it appears the shapes are all the same, but the fine surface detail on the NZ sets is different, with more studs than the British sets ? Or did the design change over the years ? This is not my field, so I could be wrong on the finer points.

The set I had, and a few accessory sets, was mainly red, blue, and yellow, but some boxes were black (perhaps smoother than the yellow boxes ? Not sure after all this time), and a few track links in orange. Torro also did building blocks.

Paul Adams from New Zealand

A FEW MODERN WORDS

Here's some modern words which are either meaningless, elusive or just plain annoying. Again, no googling or dictionaries involved.

Pack: anything put together in a folder or a plastic wallet becomes a pack. The 80's were chock full with packs and they're still around. Almost without meaning.

Resource: anything that can be placed in a pack. Maps, cuttings, instructions, tickets, anything. Resource pack was my middle name in the 80's and now its plain annoying.

Manspreading: an unpleasant name for men standing with their legs apart. I don't manspread and don't use the word.

Double down: a Trumpism which has gone viral. It means to focus on something so why not just say that?

Yaw: a technical word, which I do like the sound of. I think it means to twist. Used in aeronautical circles.

Tare: possibly means volume. Often seen on lorries on motorways.

App: I still think an app is simply a program with a shortcut.

Life-hack: isn't this just a practical tip like the ones Grandparents told you?

Search it up: why up? Why not just search for something online, why search it up?

More to come.

JUST WHAT IS THIS FABULOUS THUNDERBIRD 1 TOY?

This Japanese toy is simply stunning, a working toy Thunderbird 1 launch bay! I mean damn! Anyone know what it is?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9ui4DP-aTA

Is it the TB1 part of this magnificent working model?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizatmUphcY

ALL REVVED UP

A little silvering on the Superfast big motor and this bad boy is ready to rumble.

When You Were Sweet Sixteen

I'm always keen to look at Hot Wheels cars and here is the aforementioned 'Sweet Sixteen' catalogue with the gorgeously sleek artwork representing the first releases.

later catalogues would use actual photographs of the models, but Mattel's initial release uses the wonderfully stylistic packaging to set the line apart from the more traditional Matchbox and Tootsietoy lines. 

Hot Wheels were always much superior runners, due to the sprung suspension and the physical weight of the cars, a feature that Lesney's Matchbox range tried to compete with in the later release of the Superfast line.

For me, the big attraction was the exotic and original space-age styling as seen in the Swingin' Wing or Splittin' Image.

Some later models included extra action features, such as the Whip Creamer and the spinning turbine in the rear.

The paint finish on Hot Wheels Redlines made them stand out from other cars, along with the 'mag' wheels with the signature red line stripe, Spectraflame paint is a fine layer of colour applied directly to the polished bare metal body, aloowing the shine to set off the colour and making the cars visually different from the standard enamels. These paints are available for use with airbrushes, allowing faithful restorations of old models to be carried out. Replacement wheels and reproduction plastic parts can also be purchased from specialist model sites.

The Twinmill was an early release which was re-issued recently in a casting similar to its 1970 version, but also updated with more modern takes on the styling.

The first catalogues showed a muscle car which did not appear in the line, but which was released as a new casting a few years back as a fan club exclusive and later as part of the main line. New York based Terranova found a Target Exclusive version in gold for me to grace my collection too.

MY OTHER CAR IS AN ESPADA!

I'm in love with the Lambhorghini Espada! Hows this for a cool motor! Its worthy of UFO billing!

wikipedia