Barging In

Just sat on the Rhein Herne Kanal eating schnitzel and croquettes. The view is great what with fifty foot long industrial barges idling past every half hour. Complete with the owners' cars on top, they look amazing. 

Do you have barges near you? Anyone got a toy barge?

Oh and little dingies with umbrellas!

IT COULD BE WURST! THE HOT DOG KING TOY VAN

I like this Hot Dog King van from Multiple Toymakers I saw on auction. We've seen other vehicles in this range before including the ice cream van. They went on to influence the Century 21 Toys Topo Gigio Ice Cream and Camper vans.

Anyone for a hot dog?

Scrambling My Brains

 

For some time, I have been trying to find copies of a sixties colouring book series called ‘We Land on the Moon’. The series, which has at least six different editions includes drawings based on the Ed Valigusky paintings in the Time Life book, ‘Man in Space’. 

Ed Valigursky's 'Moon Base' from 'Man in Space'

An example of the colouring book, with some of the artwork including the MEV and Sword Moonbase modules can be found on Dave Sisson’s wonderful space book site - Dreams of Space. 

http://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/2017/07/we-land-on-moon-coloring-book-based-on_7.html

Memory can be a difficult beast and after seeing this edition, I recalled having a colouring book back when I was 8, which was left in my old house the day we moved out, along with a Thunderbirds book, bought at the same time. Ordinarily, I would just put it down to the passage of time and being in a rush to leave the property. But the more I thought about it, It occurred to me that the reason I missed the book was because it contained references to Project SWORD. At first, I assumed I was just recalling the Valigursky drawings, but the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the colouring book had a drawing of a Sword Moon Crawler in it. Since then I have checked various copies of the We Land on the Moon series, to no avail.

Then, a few weeks ago, while visiting a local car boot with Woodsy, we found an old used copy of a colouring book in a box of annuals, which I bought for 50p. 'Man on the Moon' is a British publication and a similar format to the American series, but not as well produced.

Some of the illustrations had been partly coloured in, but 90% of the pages were untouched. It started off with some satellite pictures and various astronauts, before moving to Apollo Moon Landing themes.

Pioneer and Sputnik

Ranger 4 and 5

Some of the drawings are clearly based on photo reference, such as the classic Ed White spacewalk, while others show more unusual fare, such as the suggested rogallo parawing capsule return for the Gemini missions.

One or two of the pages had some high spirited colouring, but nothing too bad on the more interesting artwork.

Once more, some of the astronaut suits were a little fanciful and some of the futuristic themed art is inspired by conceptual images, such as the West German Junkers shuttle concept seen in Kenneth Gatlands ‘Frontiers of Space’.

Other drawings clearly showed the relation to contemporary media such as Thunderbirds.

One of the drawings has more than a passing resemblance to a rocket pencil sharpener from the same period.

However, what was most satisfying of all lay near the back of the book and confirmed that my memory had been partially correct, as there were several drawings clearly referencing Project SWORD, but not the Moon Crawler, but the Scramble Bug!

The first major indication that it had been borrowed from somewhere was the ‘Moon Vehicle Depot’ drawing, which is loosely based on the illustration in the 1969 TV21 Annual, for the Project Sword text story, ‘The Loyal and the Dead’.

The bug then appears in other drawings, notably in a spread next to the Junkers Shuttle, which again is influenced by the TV21 annual.

This drawing takes its design from either Ron Embleton's beautiful painted art from the 3031 article, or Malcolm Stokes' interpretation of the drawing for the text story, ‘Ace of Spades’

The remainder of the bugs appearances are incidental to the main pictures, appearing in the background.

Finally, tucked away is another more oblique Sword reference in the form of a large ‘moon bus’.

So there you have it, another mystery solved and another annoying itch scratched!

POWER RECORDS! HEROIC VINYL!

Do you remember Power records from the 1970's?

Here's the Superman single in its cover. Well several really that I got many years ago for my old toy stall. I bought about 10. This is what's left.

I've seen the Planet of the Apes Power record too, which I think is a gatefold maybe.

They covered Batman and Spidey too.

Did you have the power?

Ein Spezi Please!

Still abroad I've been sampling various local brews. 

One here in Deutschland is Spezi. Sold in bottles and cans, it's a mixture of cola and orange fanta.

It's quite delicious!

Have you a cola drink in your neck of the woods readers!

BIG CHIEF NO MORE

 Sad to read that the high quality figure collections company Big Chief, which did a range of Anderson related figures, has gone into administration.

My sympathies go to the company employees, and the many people who pre-ordered the John Koenig figure, and the new range of Anderson action  figures.

I don't know for sure what caused the company to collapse, but from what I gather the recent Covid epidemic created a lot of delays.

Whatever the reason, it's sad to see yet another niche firm go bust.

WADDINGTONS PURPLE PEOPLE EATER

Here is another weird one. Is this something you came across in your days as a toy trader ? Did you ever play it ?

The Flying Purple People Eater was originally a 1958 novelty song by Sheb Wooley. There was also a 1988 children's movie (in which Sheb Wooley appeared), a game by Waddingtons, and several toy versions.

The Waddingtons Purple People Eater is described as being something like the game Operation. The object was to remove tiny plastic people (who were not purple) from the mouth of a sleeping Monster, without waking him up.

The monster was a large, hideous, slimly, octopus-like creature, with two eyes, one of which glows red, and a menacing growl (batteries not included). The colour scheme is purple/red/green/yellow.

The box provides a fair amount of information:

The Electrically frightening 'feely' monster game of skill.

The Purple People Eater is asleep. Can you save the people from his horrible clutches ?

If you wake him up you will hear him growl as his eye lights up in anger. Caught in his clutches you will feel his tentacles quiver on your hand.

Will you be able to rescue the people through his gapping jaw ? Take care, because if you wake him he will get very angry !

The creature does not match the description in the song (a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple alien). The Waddingtons monster does not appear able to fly, he has two eyes, and no horn.

From 6 Years, 2 - 4 players. It dates from the early 1980s sometime, with different sources saying 1979, 1980, 1981, or 1982. I could not find any photographs showing a copyright date, to pin this down.

A bag of 16 small red plastic people was included, for the Monster to chomp on. But in reality, the Flying Purple People Eater only ate purple people, so the little red people should be perfectly safe.

The retail price was £7.99 according to this old TV ad.

https://www.google.com/search?q=waddington+purple+people+eater&oq=waddington+purple+people+eater&aqs=chrome..69i57.11611j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:10762b90,vid:YwHC4v9AkKM

This is another one of those toys or games where you can only wonder what was going through the minds of the creators. It does not look to have been a big hit, and there are very few sales listings for it today.

Two photographs from Worthpoint.

What do you think?

Paul Adams from New Zealand