RETROSPECTIVE

On a trip to Pontefract Museum to see Santa with the Grandkids yesterday I was taken with their small display of vintage items.

Here are the telephones. See anything you had or have?

Some Star Wars figures.

A Dinky FAB1 and a Dalek.

A tinplate Nautilus and some slot cars.

An old cassette player and a mix tape. Did you make mix tapes?

What do you think?

Does your local museum have a few vintage toys?

LANARD THUNDER BOAT

I'm quite impressed with this Lanard Thunder Boat I saw online. Dated 2002, it has those cool looks we enjoyed in the Sixties and Seventies.

What do you think?

Did you have a toy speed boat as a kid?

ERIC EDEN'S SUPERCAR

After seeing the recent post from Scoop with his excellent photos of SUPERCAR I was reminded of this.

The Eagle Times of Autumn 2000 had a write up on Eric Eden, one time artist on the Dan Dare strip. The center spread of the magazine was his version of Supercar from the early 60's Supercar Annual.

Here scanned for Moonbase readers.

Terranova47

USA

What If? LP had taken over from Tri-ang

 Well they say the devil will make work for idle hands and its a slow afternoon in work, so I decided to have a bit of a play. I love the old sixties box and card art and the original Spacex cards and boxes are probably the most standout examples of the period. Spacex used actual models photographed against backdrops for their card backs and despite one or two of the models being pre-production versions and slightly different from the toy, they are great little designs. I took some shots a while ago, of small LP and Imperial space toys on one of the blue vac-formed moonscapes, so today I thought I would mock up a card based on the idea that LP had picked up the ball for the space toy market after Triang and Pippin had ceased trading the line.

I had fun with some other models previously, making carded Excavators and SWORD miniatures on Moon Traffic cards, but I had never made a card back. So for this one, I used the photos I had already taken and superimposed them onto a Spacex card, which had all the text and imagery removed and just left the nice dog eared edge.

I also dropped the signature Golden Astronaut from the card too and went with the idea of a 'looky-likey' layout, which at a cursory glance might attract a childs eye to a toy line similar to the original.

STRANGE NEW WORLDS?

Has anyone got this magazine from 1993?

What's the article on Thunderbirds collecting like?

COMPUTERISED ROLLS ROYCE CORNICHE

I saw this on Adams Auctions and saved the pics. I just love that gold Rolls Royce Corniche. What a beauty! I would have loved that as a kid. I had a few plastic prestige cars like a red stretch Mercedes with luggage in the boot.

Looks like Rolls is computerised. Wonder what it did?

WILL OS' TV21 ADS AND ANNUALS

 

The TV21 ad for the TV21 and Captain Scarlet annuals and the and the actual annuals themselves.

Have you got them too? Did you have them as a kid?

Will Os

UK

Dark Shadows Comics

I came across an old Dark Shadows comic book while sorting through some things. I have no idea how long I have had this. As the show did not screen in New Zealand, I would not have known what it was anyway.

It is by Gold Key, which was once a major US comic book company, publishing a wide range of TV and movie based comics. According to Wikipedia, the company was active from 1962 to 1984.

Gold Key Comics - Wikipedia

The Dark Shadows series was based on the US supernatural soap opera that included vampires and werewolves. There were 35 issues. My example is issue No.29, dated December 1974. Published bi-monthly by the Western Publishing Company. Authorized edition, © 1974 by Dan Curtis Productions Inc. 

In 2010-11 Hermes Publishing released a five-volume, hardback re-print series of the Gold Key comics, under the title Dark Shadows - The Complete Series. They also reprinted the newspaper comic strips, and the original DS novels.

Dark Shadows Collection - Hermes Press (hermes-press.myshopify.com)

The cover of the original comic is printed on a light, glossy paper, while the contents are printed on a cheaper, newsprint-like paper. Full colour throughout. There are 32 pages, size 175 mm by 257 mm. 

The Gold Key emblem appears in the upper left hand corner, with the number 90240-412; there is a small orange and black photo of vampire Barnabas Collins; and the price was 25 cents US. There is one story inside, divided in to two parts. Stolen Centuries - Part 1: the Return, and Part 2: Rite of Passage. 

There are 25 pages of story, the remaining seven pages, inside covers, and the back cover, are all advertisements.

Paul Adams from New Zealand