SURF'S UP

Originally designed by Harr Bentley Bradley for the Alexander Brothers in 1967, as a real customisation, the Dodge Deora was one of the original sixteen models in the Hot Wheels lineup and probably the most radical. Taking the custom and futuristic concept and nailing it firmly to the wall, it stood out from the other cars by a country mile. Added to this was the super cool inclusion of the two plastic surfboards on the back of the model, this was something unlike any of the model cars I had seen at the time. As a result it was my very first Hot Wheels car and because they were very much more expensive than the standard Matchbox and Husky ranges, which I was collecting at the time, it was very much adored. Since then, my Hot Wheels collection has grown and I have managed to find almost all the models from my catalogue wants list. My original purple Deora has been battered over the decades, lost its surfboards and been stripped back and repainted at least three times in an effort to restore its former glory. Mattel have since released several versions of the classic model, including a deformed version with pop out engine, a Deora II and recently a convertible Deora III. None of these have replaced the original in my affections, but I felt it necessary to have  a good quality iteration of the model in my collection, so I managed to score a nice green model on ebay recently, without breaking the bank, Naturally, the surfboards weren't present, so I fashioned a new pair out of plasticard. A lick of paint pen and voila! Ready for Baja once more!
 

The real version of the wonderful Dodge Deora was recently on display, along with another Hot Wheels classic, by Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth.

https://driversfoundation.org/cars-at-the-capital

Harr Bentley Bradley's sketch of the customisation process. Mattel also released a 'fat' version of the Deora with a deformed body, shorter chassis and exposed engine on the truck bed. Whilst retaining the basic Deora shape, it is no comparison the the original.

My original 1969 Deora, battered and playworn, but still irreplaceable.

Blake's 2

Model maestro and Blakes 7 aficionado Kevin Davies has made a score with another of the elusive Jotastar Blakes 7 toys. Originally released by Blue Box, the simple friction driven toys were branded to fit in with the tv series as a marketing tie in.

The range includes a saucer which looks very like some of the ships in the series and may have influenced Jotastar's decision to use the Blue Box range as the basis of the tie in.

Kev reports that he had all four of the vehicles over the years, but now just has two! The saucer and the second rocket are now in his sights!

 

POLE POSITION

A couple of years ago, Hot Wheels released the 'Speed Blur' model, based on the real world autonomous racer, Roborace. Originally designed by industrial and film designer Daniel Simon, the car was intended to usher in a new kind of sport, A.I racing. Although the project hasn't amounted to much yet, the models themselves and the car design are singularly beautiful.

The initial release was a black and lemon yellow livery, which mirrored the production car. As is often the way with Hot  Wheels, a series of different variations followed. On my recent foray for Redlines, I spotted the final two variations I was missing, the green body version above and the white/orange variant below.

 This brings it to six variations in all. Daniel Simon explored the concept of futuristic racing in his wonderful book 'Timeless Racer', looking ahead a few years to 2027. It seems reality is still lagging behind the idea so far, but with advances in electric motors and A.I itself, who knows if his dreams will be realised in the next decade?

AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE: LOOEYS DRAWERS

I had to laugh when I received an email recently from our blog reader and model maestro Looey Morley, after he saw the 'Gripping Stuff' post:

"Hello Wotan, you're doing a great job at the wheel while Woodsy's out of the picture. Your posts are interesting and varied and your punning titles are great! Take for instance that Arm robot featured in your Gripping Stuff article.

It reminded me I had one, because I decorated the side of a sliding draw in my kitchen when I built it 30+ years ago. In fact the sides of a lot of these draws have popular culture ephemera pasted inside, as hidden treats to entertain you when you're scrabbling for a tin of Spag-A-Saurus...

      

I won't give a draw by draw commentary, but these I can't resist. 

"The robots took to fighting and rolled out on the floor, Ideon looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone..."

And "Sunderbardo..." the Japanese chewing gum wrappers featuring Tracy Island's finest."

What a cool idea to re-use vintage ephemera and a fantastic looking kitchen area! I replaced all the cupboard doors in mine recently and none of them are on straight! Top marks for building entire units, let alone decorating them so imaginatively! Glad you're enjoying my blog tenure, still lots more to come!

BUILDING BRIDGES

 

As I was preparing the recent Hot Wheels post, it occurred to me that I was still shy of a couple of lesser models from my go to list, the Deora - my very first redline, which needed a replacement copy, as the first one has been repainted so many times now, its an inch thicker and the Repco Brabham race car.
The Brabham was one of the more 'sedate' and ordinary models in the catalogue, which I didn't really care for back in the day, as it doesn't have the more extreme styling that I favoured, so despite my buying the other three race cars in the line - the Indy Eagle and two turbine based models, the Brabham never got a look in. Until now. Surfing Ebay, I found both a Brabham and a reasonably priced Deora (sans surfboards). While I was there, I also saw a set of three trestle track supports from the original range, so I bagged those too!

The original Deora

REDLINES 'A' LIST

REDLINES 'B' LIST

I had recently bought a big box of track on ebay, witha mix of Corgi Rockets and vintage HW track, plus a few Sizzlers track accessories, including the glorious High Winder set. Following this, I found a boxed pair of U-Turns and treated myself to those too.

https://hotwheelsracetracks.wordpress.com/category/sizzlers/page/2/

All the Hot Wheels catalogues always had extensive layouts  in huge spacious living rooms and I have always wanted to set up something like this. As a kid, I used to run my Matchbox Superfast and Corgi Rocket track down the garden path, as the back garden was on a natural gradient, but it was always just a straight speed run, with a loop and a couple of jumps. 

Hopefully with the trestles and a couple of curves, I can give all four of the race cars a good run for their money now!

LIKE CLOCKWORK

When visiting a toy fair in Liverpool, back in the 1980's, I stumbled across a rare treat amongst the train layouts, car models and toy soldiers - an actual space toy! At the time, there were hardly any vintage space toys on the secondary market and ebay was still a good few years away, so finding anything space themed was always a big plus. As it turned out, what I spotted and quickly bought for the princely sum of £1.25, was actually quite a new and recent toy, as I would find out some months later when visiting a toy shop. The little toy was a cross between a spacex model and plastic Meccano, some six inches high and vaguely  resembling a dinosaur. I had always had a penchant for anything bio-mechanical, so this immediately caught my eye. However, what really got me was the small golden astronaut sat in the cockpit. Was this some obscure relative of Tri-ang Spacex toys or just a co-incidence? Either way, I snapped it up and took it home, to find it was actually quite a complex little model, with a small wind up motor and a great little walking action. Closer examination showed the name of the maker - Tomy.

Not long afterwards, I saw the toy in a toy shop and found out that they were a whole range of clockwork dinosaurs, made up from small kits. Around Xmas the same year, a larger brontosaurus type model was released, with a battery powered motor and even more action features. As it was still pre-internet days, I was desperate to find out more information, so I wrote to Tomy UK and some weeks later, got a copy of their new catalogue in the post, which to my amazement, showed a radical expansion to the line, with Red Zoids and even more impressive models. Just to make things even more exciting for me there was a further range of action figure robots called Battle Rats, again with clockwork action features and again having the same golden pilot seated in the cockpits.

Thus began an intense period of buying activity for me, as I purchased wave after wave of Zoids toys and even managed to get spare parts for certain models from Tomy, to augment some of the bigger models with even more weapons. So it went on for some years, until after a bit of a lull, Tomy slyly released a Zoids 2 range, medium sized clockwork models, but much more detailed and looking even more like dinosaurs and less like a radio shack hobby. Unfortunately for me, tucked away in the box was a leaflet, all in japanese, showing even more of the new range - none of which were available in Europe. 

As sales were visibly slowing for the toys and they began to disappear from shop shelves, I assumed that they would rapidly be relegated to that list of toys that would forever be out of my reach - C21 Zero X, Johnny Seven, Spacex Space Station and Micronauts Aliens. Fast forward a few years to the advent of home internet services and wifi access and in 1997, I got my first modem and dove into a nascent internet. My first few searches were very simple and after finding information on Project SWORD and ultimately contacting Paul Woods, I then ticked off my toy bucket list. I discovered a whole raft of Star Wars models I had never seen, including the Droids line of figures, found an entire world of japanese Microman toys that I had been previously unaware of and discovered that the catalogue of Tomy Zoid toys that I had found were the tip of a very large bio-mechanical iceberg.
 

It appeared that Zoids was colossal in Japan and had manga, anime, games and all sorts of spinoffs from the toy line, let alone an immense range of models that had been available for years in the US and Far East.  It had the effect of immediately exciting me and chastening me at the same time, as I suddenly realised that I was bringing a knife to a gunfight if I thought I had any idea of completing even a small part of a Zoids collection, such were the variants and exclusives available, alongside the main line. So as a result, I contented myself with locating some of the easier prey, such as some of the aquatic models and quickly lowered my expectations. 

Nevertheless, there was still plenty of other options available to the mechanical dinosaur collector, as the Hong Kong toy makers had seized on the popularity of the line and began churning out a host of similar toys and lines. Silverlit with its Multimac line, even went s far as to almost replicate parts of the early Zoids line in their toys and included a small gold or silver astronaut in the cockpits too.

Tomy was ultimately merged with the other giant japanese toymaker Takara and Tomy-Takara went on to make even more fantastic toys and models, aimed at the collectors market.

Silverlit Multimac Ocean Discovery Line

Recent Tomy Zoids release

Tomy Zevle Deathpion

Modern Tomy Sea Scorpion