CALLING OCCUPANTS

Its always good to see some Project SWORD and relatives on surfin' forays. Here's an old chum, the TOMY Interplanetary Space Rocket, complete with parachute, a forerunner of the Project SWORD Apollo Saturn toy.

Seen on Yahoo Japan.

Have you anything like this?

MAJOR MATT MASON: OUR MAN IN PASTE

 For the kid who had everything from the worlds of Major Matt Mason ...

.... Major Matt Wallpaper!

I mean, Wow! Who wouldn't have wanted this on their wall back in 1967! I seem to recall I had antique cars but this would have been much better! A major step forward!

Our very own budding astronaut in Finland, Commander Arto Aldrin, is now the proud owner of this piece of Matt Mason history. Suffice to say Arto is excited as it wends a merry voyage to Helsinki Base all the way from the States.

Wall to wall fun or what!

[The picture is from the Ebay seller, toyscout57 of NY, who has sold 14 pieces of this marvellous MMM wallpaper]

SUB STANDARD

I had to chuckle when I saw this old carded frogman. I mean, the firm have just brazenly ripped off one of my favourite Action Man box illustrations! It was clearly the Wild West back then in Hong Kong when anything went!

The toy itself appears to not live up to the famous illustration, a super cheapo frogman and a one-man sub that looks like a soda siphon canister.

Still, back in the day I would have accepted this toy with open arms. I would today! ha ha

Did you have a one-man sub?

MY FIRST PARCEL

I wrapped up my first sale in the re-opened attic this morning.

A 1980's Barbie Gym no less!

It'll go to the Post Office later today.

Wrapping it was a first small step in the latest chapter as an Ebay seller, which began all those years ago in the year 2000, when Ebay started up in the UK [five years after the USA I think?]

Back in 2000 we lived in a different house, where I had an even bigger room to play with, an entire cellar, which I'd turned into an 'old toy shop' in the early 1990's. It was definately a fun hobby.

All before Ebay existed, back then I supplied toy fans with stuff via mail order and also personal customers who visited on the weekend by appointment. All great fun after a boring week at work! I was called Moon Zero Toys. I even took it on the road and had a stall at toy fairs!

Maybe I sold to you!

Have you done much selling readers?

What If Kit Box Art - Part 4

From Matteline 1967, another collection of 'What If' box art designs for kits that never were - but certainly should have been. This is Part 4.

Box tops include Firefox from the Clint Eastwood movie. Poseidon from The Poseidon Adventure, which is actually the original Queen Mary ocean liner. 

The Disney version of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Then on to Alien, Quatermass, a Dalek from Doctor Who, a Triffid from The Day of the Triffids - Glows in the Dark !, Cocoon spaceship, and wrapping up with a Dogfight Double of the Flash Gordon spaceship battling one of Emperor Ming's ships. Finally a portrait of Roy Cross, the great Airfix box artist.

All great. What a pity none of these were ever produced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6yo8S1DOho&t=24s

If you really want a model of the Poseidon, Revell did a 1/570th scale kit, which is pretty close to the 1/600th that Airfix used for most of their modern naval and merchant vessels. 

There were also a couple of small scale die-cast models, by Dinky in the 1930s, and Tri-ang Minic Ships in the 1950s.

Paul Adams from New Zealand

Space Snaps

The nights are drawing in and I found I had a bit of time on my hands, so I decided to try and recreate one of my favourite spaceships of childhood, the Nuclear Mars Mission Craft. It first appeared on the cover of the Brooke Bond Race into Space Tea card album, but also popped up on the pull out poster from Countdown comic - ‘Space -Forward to 1988’.

Clearly, these were futures that never arrived, much to my dismay, but the design lives on. My ambition is to make a large scale model of the Mars rocket, but as usual, the best laid plans went out the window and the sections of waste pipe I had put aside for the job, stayed in the back of the garage till another day. So I scaled back my plans and bought a packet of bubble bath tubes instead, each about 4” long. Around the same time I won some Matt Mason spare parts on eBay, along with a few other space toys, which included a plastic LEM and part of a Saturn rocket - both from one of the cheap space sets often sold in supermarkets. The Saturn rocket was in two parts and was made of a soft plastic. Having joined the three bubble bath tubes together as the main body, I needed the elongated ‘neck’ section, so I reversed the front half of the Saturn and fitted it back into the booster section, and the resulting tubular arrangement fitted nicely onto the body. A few bottle tops, some tap accessories, a handful of beads and some Lego finished off the model. Rather than fiddle about trying to neatly paint everything, I printed out a ‘wrap’ with decals and details of panel lines on and fixed this to the outside of the tubes. A bit of copper tape for colour and some final detailing finished it off. Not nearly as ambitious as the model I want to make, but enough for a distraction over a couple of evenings.

The plastic LEM is quite a nice, simple toy in the vein of the late sixties Apollo Moon Exploring, only larger. I added a couple of Lego flats as windows to relieve the stark whiteness of the body and made a base and engine nozzle to sit on the hollow underside and it makes a nice, differently shaped LEM, not unlike the very early proposals for the lander.
 

Modulo 2000 by Koster: Dome Sweet Dome

I like this old spherical rover from Spain I saw on Todocollecion.

Its like an Isetta for the Moon!

The box art is fabulous.

Anyone got anything like this Modulo?

HARRY'S OPEN!

 I've opened up Harry [the attic] and retirement sorting/ perusing/ pondering/staring through the window/Ebaying has resumed.

The old Mad About Monsters desk is once more alive and kicking.

I have a friendly old wizard to add some magic!

Once you start rummaging its amazing what pops up!

These old Walls et al cards are gorgeous and I'm pretty sure I had some as a kid. Did you?

Pretty much everything I loved as a little 'un is pictured including deep sea frogmen!

Thunderbirds-like crabloggers!

Undersea bases and sleek jets!

What more could you want!

Maybe an old game from those golden years, Twister by MB. Now that was a crazy family pastime, stretching across a plastic mat in your socks! Phew! A classic and a symbol of the Sixties for me.

Did you have a favourite game as a kid?