PASS THE SAUCER PLEASE!

I've always like the JR21 New Flying Saucer.

Here's a couple of box variations I've seen online.

There are also versions of this toy by T in a Circle, Polyplast and Brohm.

Have you got one readers?

AERION MOONSHIP

I was reading this about a new Supersonic plane https://www.ge.com/news/taxonomy/term/5844 from 2019 and I thought, Wow! 

That new Aerion AS2 looks a lot like our friend the Century 21 Moonship from over 50 years ago! See what you think!

Now that's flying!

Image: GE

Image: Arto

Sherlock Holmes Book Nook Diorama

Book nooks are small dioramas, which will fit on a book shelf. They are very narrow, but fairly deep. Apart from making your own, there are now kits available. Wood seems to be the main material.

In this series of You Tube videos Brad hair looks at a kit called Library Prague. He turns it in to a crime scene for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson to investigate. The figures used are 3D printed.

I had not seen these kits before, but had a look around the shops recently, and found some. Not the same as the one featured in this video, but similar. They include lighting.

Fairly expensive, but they look like fun.

Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag86Fhcmev8

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JKYuPNoMvE

Part 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJru61ZdIM

Part 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgEvu-U1LiU

Part 5 - all finished. A highlight of this episode is a guest appearance by his cat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLpd3E1AstY

Paul Adams from New Zealand

The Bowden Spacelander

Hi Woodsy, this is in reference to Miss Moonbase Jr's Schwinn trike. I've owned a few beach cruisers and super choppers and a number of my friends have had similar collections, however all of us agree that if we had the cash to splash we would get one of these babies!!!!!! 

Look at the price!

What do you think readers?

Is there a cooler bike?

MJ

Southcoast Base

GILL MAN

 

I'm always tickled by comical customs. Here's someone's vision of a Creature's head atop a He-Man style body.

Have you got an odd head on a strange body?

ARCO DETOO

 Looking into Arco's Play Kid toys is fun and I've come to realise Star Wars figure collectors like them a lot, especially knockoff fans.

Arco's SpaceWar range of small figures are as prized as a Wampa's doo doo and collecting them all would be a real challenge I bet.

Here's Arco's little Darth Vader effort. He even gets a TV camera for filming his own rise to power and an mechanical arm for keeping his millions of fans at arm's length.

I love the golden robot C3P0 on the header. Did they do a R2D2?

Do you collect Spacewar figures readers?

Alongside Arco's more famous Spacewar are their more generic Play Kid sets. I've looked at the space ones before on MC but here's a different line, construction workers in the hilariously titled box, On The Job!

Seen on Ebay, everything looks as it should be and I for one would have loved this in the Sixties, when I suppose Arco's equivalent back then would have been someone like Blue Box and their beautiful three-layered window boxed sets of tippers, trucks and workmen.

Did you like construction worker and vehicle sets as a kid readers? Blue Box? Arco? Who?

IMPKO ON THE BRAIN

I adored looking at the black and white ads for IMPKO decals when I was a kid. They were always at the back of horror comics like Creepy and Eerie. Such cool icons of the monster craze, I never owned any of them but remember clearly all the monster ones.

Do you?

So when I saw this old vending pack on auction I recognised the IMPKO decal bottom right straight away! 

Its theor famous Health Club Member motif! A bit like Uncle Creepy, its a classic IMPKO design and here is the decal in colour like the vending one.

You can relive the glory days of IMPLO and browse a six page catalogue of theirs here.

Just keep clicking on the pages to move forward.

https://www.impko.com/

What do you think?

Man to Man

Toys in the sixties were at the forefront of a sea change which affected the industry forever. With technology benefitting from developments in the space race and an overarching zeitgeist with its gaze firmly fastened on the future, kids found themselves unwitting guinea pigs in a challenge to marry these elements in a new type of plaything. Complex, fussy and breakable toys were left behind in favour of simpler, more elegant designs, which were easy to produce and appealled to child psychologists ideals of suitable playthings. Lego and Playplax appeared as construction toys and many items made of wood, such as marble runs or push along trains. Colour and shape were at the forefront of the new design aesthetic, rather than realism.

One of the most popular toys was a simple figural toy, called variously 'Acrobates', 'Funny Men' or 'Whipper Snappers'. The idea originated with french artist Rene Ach (see links at the end) and was quickly snapped up by several British and European companies, such as Raphael Lipkin, Pedigree and Combex.

At its most basic, it is composed of a simple figure, almost robotic in its stance, which is made in such a way that the arms and legs can connect to the head and body of another figure. Later sets added accessories such as horses and ladders in the Circus set and firemens helmets in a fire engine set.

Scaled down from the standard 4" figure to about an inch, they were released as Whipper Snappers or Mini Boys in sets with vehicles and animals. The basic proportions are always the same, irrespective of size.

I have always liked these simple, almost abstract sculptural toys, so I was very excited when I discovered another variation on the figure by Combex.

The Wacky Walking Men took the idea of the 'ramp walker' toy and applied it to Funny Men. Curved feet enable the figures to waddle, rocking gently from side to side on a slight incline, lifting alternate feet off the ground, giving the impression of walking.

They work much better on a slope with gravity than my gentle persuasion, but you can see the idea! Like Funny Men, the three figures are detachable and can be rearranged, but lack the connectivity on the legs.

Read all about their creator and his other amazing toys in Paul Vreede's two part bloglets here:

 https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2012/01/discovering-rene-ach_31.html?m=1

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2012/02/adieu-rene-ach.html?m=1