BRUDER PARTY BOT

I like this Bruder party box from West Germany.

I saw this one on Ebay small ads.

There's a neat mini red robot in the corner. Is it a bot you know readers?

Accessories Assemble

 On returning to Moonbase I was chuffed to unwrap the handful of old bits I'd won on eBay to progress Operation Blues and Royals. All are original Action Man, except the metal sword.

They all need checking over and getting to something like Palitoy's final look.

I just need a cuppa and a digestive.

The Devonian Horde

I take it all back. Devon came up trumps in the end! Here's the full toy haul now safely back at Moonbase for sifting, sorting and fixing. Talk about Devon sent! 

The Greatest Catch of All Time

 I saw this fabulous framed print in a Kingsbridge charity shop this week. I wish I'd have got it now! 

I was immediately drawn to it because it reminded me of series of Aurora kits that fascinated me since first seeing them in Rick Polizzi's Classic Plastic book, Great Moments in Sport, the box art of which is simply stunning and includes boxing, football and baseball.

My favourite is Willie Mays

 Famous baseball Catch, a beautiful illustration.

I got to wondering if they they were the same artist of both the print and the box art?

After some digging, sadly they're not but they are both very well-known American artists in their own right.

The top framed print is by the late Frank McCarthy. I found the same image in an old fictional story, the Take-Charge Guy, from a May 1952 Colliers magazine online. Looks like they issued prints of it judging by what I saw in Kingsbridge. I don't know if the play shown is fictitious. Do you?

The Aurora box artist on the other hand was Mort Kunstler, who is still around and creating art. From what I can see online no prints of the Willie Mays painting are available, which is a shame.

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153593459825036&vanity=mortkunstler

Willie May's incredible move is known simply as The Catch and is widely seen as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, baseball catch of all time.

Here it is in real life, an amazing shot borrowed from Wikipedia, showing The Catch for the New York Giants, New York, 1954.

Have you got any baseball art or collectables or even the Aurora sports kits readers? 

SCREEN IF YOU WANT TO GO FASTER

 I've a few things on the boil at the mo.

Just finished this simple addition to my incomplete TB2 pod JR21 Land Rover, a neat plastic windscreen donated by Wotan Bill during lockdown.

Not an original part but it'll do nicely. At some point I'll paint it red.

Next up is a 1980's Transformers Galvatron spruce-up.

Broadway, Baskervilles and Goodbye to the Exe

Well, our hols are more or less over. We are en route to God's own county (Yorkshire!) but have broken the journey in half, overnighting in Broadway in the Cotswolds, half hour from the M5 motorway and the final two hour stretch home tomorrow.

Broadway is a long Cotswolds village, peppered with mansions and listed sandstones. James Martin has an old huge gastro pub here. It's an affluent place but we still found four charity shops, from which I sadly garnered nowt.

We stayed here one Winter years ago, twinkling with Christmas lights and decidedly quiet, where we visited Snowshill house.

Not so today. It's rammed to the Grade 1 rafters with tourists: big coaches of Japanese folks on a grand tour and fleets of slick black SUV's housing retired couples in loafers and pastel pullovers draped over svelte shoulders. The difference is startling. It's a honeypot of dosh.

Being retirees ourselves we have retired to our room in an old, modest, crooked inn, kaput and ready for our evening grub at 7pm. Hopefully we'll have scoffed and retired once more before the football starts on the pub telly when England take on Holland and things get tense.

In our cozy room is this old print hung on the wall. It immediately reminded me of one of my favourite Hammer horrors, the Hound of the Baskervilles and the opening scenes, where the jilted Baron, hell-bent on revenge, screams that immortal line,

'Release the hounds!'

Sherlock Holmes aka Peter Cushing eventually solves the case but only in the nick of time, the current Baron coming frighteningly close to the sulphurous maw of the Hell Hound.

It was a true shocker when I was a kid and only shown post-watershed after 9pm. These days I've watched it mid-afternoon on the telly!

I was always surprised there wasn't more merchandising made of the story. I can't recall any games, jigsaws or toys at all. It would have made a great Aurora model, especially the glow-in-the-dark feature, perfect for the beast's fiery jaws.

Maybe Sherlock Holmes licences were difficult for model and toy companies to acquire?

I do recall thinking about the Baskerville curse as we drove through Devon's darkling lands between the Exe and the Dart and in particular heeding the warning at its heart

'to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.'

Do you have a hellish hound near you?

DC McFarlane Newer Video

https://youtu.be/Lo8rth0gzi8?si=D1i2QpwzuyMf7Lxd  

Hi Woodsy,

This will give you a better taste of the new McFarlane Toys  Super Powers,

I hope you like it!

Regards 

MJ

Southcoast Base 

The Cox Helldiver Model

Hi Woodsy

Following your recent discovery of that old knitting pattern, with a photo of a boy holding a toy aeroplane on the cover, here is a bit more information on the aircraft.

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2024/07/excerpts-of-exeter.html#comment-form

The Curtis SB2C Helldiver was a WW2 US Navy carrier-based dive bomber. The SB2C designation means Scout Bomber, 2nd type built by Curtis.

It first flew in 1940, and entered service in 1942. The US Army Air Force also adopted the type, under the designation A-25 Shrike, as an Attack aircraft.

Cox was a major US maker of flying model aircraft, and they produced the Helldiver in both US Navy and US Army markings. The models were the same, but in blue or dark green plastic, with different markings.

Both had the number 511 in yellow on the nose, and post-1947 US national insignia. The Navy plane had a red spinner, and the Army version a yellow spinner.

The model had a 20 inch wingspan, and was powered by a 'real gas engine', the Cox .049. It carried rockets and long range fuel tanks under the wings, and a bomb under the fuselage that actually dropped.

It also came 'With Thrilling Bail Out ! Parachute Action' for the pilot. After leaving his stricken aircraft, the pilot descended by parachute.

I do not know when this model was introduced, but it was certainly available in the 1960s.

Six photographs from Worthpoint.

Yours Sincerely,

Paul Adams from New Zealand