WILL O'S TV21 MACH-X

I'm having great fun matching up the old tv 21 adverts to their actual products.

Here's my Mach-X.

 More to come!

Will Os

UK

BUBBLE TROUBLE: AUSTRALIAN TARHEEL 007 SPY BATH MYSTERY

 This item has always baffled me ever since I saw it years ago. Its been on the blog for a decade now and my memory was jogged when I saw another bottle of James Bond Lotus Esprit Spy Bath Bubbles online.

The mystery is the maker's name Australian Tarheel.

I know about American and Japanese Tarheel - makers of plastic toys in the Sixties and Seventies - but who are Australian Tarheel?

There are very few instances of this bubble bath online so information on the company - if indeed it is a different company to the Tarheel we all know as the American purveyors of Project SWORD toys.

So readers, anyone know of Tarheel of Australia or any more about this bubble bath?

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/james-bond-007-1977-lotus-esprit-471661693

THE HANDI TELE-REST

 I had to chuckle when I saw this.

The height of technological advance in the Sixties or Seventies!

Its one of those so-called fancy goods that filled little shops at one time. Remember those shops stuffed with crucial rubbish?

Now you can get them on Ebay still boxed! Its as if you can reach across time!

Yes, the Handi Tele Rest allowed hands-free phone calls before you knew you wanted one.

Essentially a plastic coat hanger, it fitted all phones no problem and matched the colour.

I never saw one of these must-haves at home when I was a kid or even in the office I first worked at in 1978.

Did you readers?

PONDERING PONDEROSA: BONANZA TOYS

 

I clearly remember having some Bonanza toy figures as a kid, getting them one Christmas. Maybe Little Joe, Hoss and a horse. They were brilliant toys with soft plastic accessories. Very Marx like the Best of the West.

Westerns like Bonanza were such a huge part of TV in the Sixties and Seventies. High Chaparral became my favourite of them all.

Did you have any Bonanza toys? Did you like Westerns on TV?

WEEKEND BY MACKINTOSH

 

As with most things that have gone I hanker for them even more. 

So it is with Weekend chocolates, Mackintosh's wonderful trays of delights that could be eaten any time but often on a Saturday night when my parents cracked open a box.

Every single one of the chocs was terrific. The fudge, the chocolate cherry cup, the chocolate cracknel, the wrapped raisin fudge and the fabulous nougaty montelmar. Even the lemon jelly slice would be welcome back!

I would love to have all this weekend to make up my mind again!

What a delicious Christmas Day they would give me.

You too?

A Catalogue of Rare Treasures 1959

As usual, while looking for something else, I came across this amazing catalogue of kits and toys from 1959.

From the Box Art Den site, is this entry for Hobbies Are Fun 1959, which seems to be a catalogue covering the products of various companies, not just kits. 

It includes the giant insect kits by Hawk and ITC, including some that do not seem to have been released. Shown in full colour, including photographs of built-up models. Very exciting stuff.

Aircraft, missiles, ships, cars, figures, firearms, paint-by-numbers and mosaic sets, the Matchbox die-cast line is up to 60 models, plus the Models of Yesteryear and Major Packs, model railways, and tools. 

Among the kits are the Hawk Beta-1 atomic-powered bomber; Revell Westinghouse Atomic Power Plant; Precision Cruifix; Revell Dr Seuss models; Comet flying models of the Snark and Regulus missiles; and the first releases in the Bachmann Birds of the World series. 

Filled with wonderful weirdness.

https://boxartden.com/collections/gallery/index.php/Vintage-Model-Kit-Catalogs-1950-1999/Hobbies-Are-Fun-1959

Paul Adams from New Zealand

ANIME OR CGI: EVOLVING 21

 

Here's the 1982 intro to the Japanese animated Thunderbirds 2086 TV show. I never saw it. I do like the vehicles - where they made into toys? It all looks sort of ahead of its time to me. Is that fair?

By comparison, and maybe its an unfair one, here's the intro to the New Captain Scarlet series from 2005. I didn't see this either.  I've seen some of the vehicles since onscreen and as toys and they aren't too bad. I have to say the show's CGI faces look awful. What do you think?

SECRET SOFAS

Years ago I saw reference to Stanley Unwin's sofa prop on the Gerry Anderson Prop Gallery site. Its always fascinated me that out of all the hundreds of props that were made for the various Anderson shows its odd items like a sofa that survived.

You can see it fleetingly in this Secret Service trailer, a brown floral settee.

Here's the Gerry Anderson Props entry, just scroll down http://www.gerryandersonprops.com/models.php

The Secret Service sofa prop was sold by Bonhams In 2011.

Here's a very similar brown flowery sofa in an unidentified episode of Joe 90 I think. I imagine the two brown sofas are related, maybe made by the same prop maker?

Looking for more couches, I was amazed to find further furniture props like this from Gerry's show still in existence too. Here are some from a Bonham's auction and listed as from unknown productions.

Does anyone recognise them?