Our blog friend, Will Schwartz who lives over the pond, in Tucson, is having a bit of a rough time health wise at the moment, so I reckon it won't do any harm to ask you lot to send him all our good wishes as he recovers in hospital .
Will is a big fan of the Japanese series 'Ultraman', so hopefully a couple of photos from the series should raise his spirits.
The Missus and me took a trip east along the M62 today to the ancient cathedral town of Beverley in the East Riding for a day's mosey round its ancient Minstered streets and shops.
In one charity I snapped this old board game new to me, Motorway, which I believe contains road signs among other stuff. Do you remember it?
One last word. I had a look at this in a charity, a novel I recognised from the 1970's by one Marshall Macao, whoever he was.
Last night I watched Moonfall on Netflix.
At first I thought it was Moondust, a novel I once had on the shelf, alas unread, but Moonfall's based on another book.
The film is basically about the moon falling nearer to Earth and life as we know will end.
It starts well enough, out in space, on a Space Shuttle.
It began to lose ground with me when humour was forced into an otherwise serious plot, with the introduction of a character called Dr. Houseman. He's a kind of Good Will Hunting type janitor-genius who avidly blogs about his particular geekery, the idea that the moon is a Megastructure.
Megastructures are the kind of thing I really enjoyed reading about in the 1970's, along with Nazca Lines and the Chariots of the Gods. Wacky stuff like that was the currency of the decade back then.
I was, though, surprised to see it in a film in 2022.
But it wasn't Megastructures that became the issue with Moonfall. It was the unconvincing Houseman character, a sort of super brainy buffoon at odds with the alpha males and females of NASA's astronauts, together with the thick dollops of cheddar ladled onto the dialogue by its director.
I expected some corn, after all it is a Roland Emmerich film, he of Independence Day, which I enjoyed hugely, but Moonfall's dialogue is so weak that the schmaltz just drowns it.
When the male lead grabs his errant son and loudly proclaims that he wants to give him a world where it can all be better I had to turn it off.
Moonfall went on to become on of the biggest cinematic flops of all time losing millions and millions of dollars.
Somewhere the sci-fi got lost in the lunar cheese.
Have you seen it readers?
I do like this simple clean plastic play shape sorter by Pippin toys.
As collectors in the UK should soon be getting delivery of the much anticipated Sixteen 12 Micro Eagle sets after all the logistic problems which were all beyond Sixteen 12's control, added to that my old photos are still proving very popular with quite a few of you, here's (probably) a final look at their pre-production models.
Corgi Trackside DIYCAST 5-packs
Hi
The Matchbox Graffic Traffic series was not the only attempt to market a range of decorate-it-yourself models. Some years ago Corgi also gave the idea a try.
Unlike the Matchbox models, which were sold as toys for children, the Corgi DIYCAST range was aimed at adults. They were sold as part of the Corgi Trackside series, and were intended as accessories for OO (1/76th scale) model railways. So the only people who have ever heard of them are railway modellers. The models could be decorated in any way the buyer chose. The plain finish meant that it was easy to apply different colour schemes, or company names and logos.
There were ten vehicles available, sold in two sets of five. These were not kits, that you built and painted. They were factory assembled, and painted in a matt white undercoat.
Each set contained two cars, and three vans, mainly dating from the 1950s and 1960s. On a layout, they would have been suitable for the 1950s to the 1970s, although the later vehicles would not have been appropriate for the 1950s. The models were mounted vertically in a clear plastic bubble, mounted on a backing card. The sets came with a paint brush, and three small plastic pots of Humbrol acrylic paint, but there were no decals or stickers.
I would assume they were not big sellers, as they were very short lived, and I never saw any in the shops. I recall I had to order mine through a model shop.
Purely for convenience, I am referring to these as Set 1 and Set 2, they are not identified as such on the cards.
Set 1
Morris Minor - 1948
Ford Anglia - 1959
Bedford HA van - 1963
Morris J2 van - 1956
Morris LD van - 1952
Silver, Red, and Yellow paints
Set 2
Mini - 1959
Ford Escort - 1967
Ford Escort van - 1968
Bedford CA van - 1952
Ford Transit van - 1965
Silver, French Blue, and Brunswick Green paints.
Yours Sincerely,
Paul Adams from New Zealand
