ALIEN CAGE

 Testing and idea for an animal cage, here's my Aldi trash toothbrush holders on the back of Juniors Fisher Price Safari car.

Cargo: giant toxic alien caterpillar! 

Fixing up my New FAB1

 It's years since I owned a JR21 friction FAB1. My first was in 1965. My second 2009. My third, now.

The first my parents threw out. The second I swapped in the worst swap of my life ( I was desperately seeking SWORD lookalikes back then and delirious).

This new one is from a vintage toy shop in Otley and has fair warmed my cockles I must say. What a design! What a toy! My favourite of all the Thunderbirds vehicles. Is it yours?

My new FAB1 did have a few issues (hence the low price, £17):  namely a missing wheel, a non-working friction drive, a missing FAB1 front sticker and a cracked canopy. 

So, after some unscrewing, polishing, glueing, bodging, chroming and fettling, I mended the motor, created a sticker, made a wheel and had a go at the canopy.

This is how it looked when I got it. Not that bad on reflection!

Alas, this part of the job went south. Opening up the crack to glue it I created more micro cracks! In at attempt to fill them I covered it all in PVA. This achieved nothing but removing the PVA did leave a nice clean surface. The cracks remained and were worse!

You live and learn. I moved on. I don't want to mess it up anymore!

The body itself unscrewed easily and I was able to loosen the motor with WD4O and with some fixing got it to stabilise and work properly.

I finagled a wheel from a white draughts piece, two white rings and some bits painted chrome silver. Not brilliant but it'll do until I find a real one.

Some buffing and a new FAB1 sticker later and, ignoring the canopy cock-up, I was generally chuffed with it. I'm done now and will leave Parker and Penelope alone to drive.

Here's some snaps of it on the road to deadly danger.

Did or do you have a JR21 FAB1, either sort?

Pictures welcomed!

Martian Screaming Missile Rifle by Tudor Rose

I wuz gobsmacked when I saw this on eBay last year when researching Dalek toy guns.

One I'd never seen before and certainly a rarity, this is the 30" long Martian Screaming Missile Gun, the M.S.M.G, made by those gorgeous toy makers, Tudor Rose.

With an eye-watering price tag, I saved the pictures for later. It eventually sold I think and some lucky Buck will be making martians tremble everywhere!

Not sure who the creatures are on the box? General martians?

Overall it has a feel of the big Dr.Who bazooka I covered - and made - last year.

A bazooka style toy in a huge box, it's the first time I've ever come across this toy. Is it one you know?

Corgi Night Squad

 A few home snaps of my new Corgi Black Beauty, along with stablemates The Thrushbuster and Batmobile.

It's quiet in the city tonight!

Classic Japanese Space Ray Guns | toykarma

Years ago we covered all the fab toy Japanese guns that had Thunderbird's Zero-X on them. 

Here's another different medley of amazing Japanese ray guns from other TV shows like Ultraman and Godzilla.

The toy are sumptuous and the box art just terrific. See what you think.

https://toykarma.com/2012/06/22/classic-japanese-space-ray-guns/ 

Vintage Otley Outing

 With the Missus and a mate, visiting my favourite vintage toy shop round here, in Kirkham Arcade in Otley, I was really pleased to bag a few great collectables for the Moonbase collection.

The haul comprised of a smart loose JR21 FAB1, a neat re-issue Corgi Black Beauty and an Action Man Rifle Rack along with the golden grenade launcher. I had all of these as a kid and it was great to get them back and a snip at £30 the lot.

In the town's charity shops I bagged an old hardback copy of Brave New World, a paperback horror by Shaun Huston and a hardback Adventure Annual with Pyro toy designs on the cover. 

My final item was a cool multi-rotational tin globe. It rotates on two axes! 

All in all a great day out.

What do you reckon? 

More on all of them to follow.

CECIL B. De MILLE'S LOST DESERT CITY

Watching Tom Cruise's reboot of the Mummy last night - basically Mummy Impossible! -  I was reminded of something I'd read years ago about another American desert movie, if not the very first, made over a century ago in 1923:

Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments.

It was a silent, enormous and expensive undertaking in the unforgiving sands of California.

Paramount artisans crafted the Sphinx like masons three thousand years ago!

Paramount Studio

I recall reading that Cecil's entire Pharaoh set was so massively huge that he could not afford to take it out of the Guadalupe desert where they were filming, so the whole things was buried in the vastness of the dunes!

Paramount Studio

It's still out there brooding under the shifting barchans, occasionally revealing a scree of perished plaster.

Archaeologists are involved, as they would be on an ancient dig! 

Watch this fascinating short clip about their attempts to recover De Mille's Lost City.

Have you ever been there readers?

Dracula: The Play

The other night I took a friend to see Dracula in Wakefield.

The Opera House to be exact, Dracula the stage play.

We enjoyed it. A dark tale with a talented cast. A clever use of movable crates and scenery kept the set alive as the story progressed from the Count's castle to Whitby to London and back to his castle.

The cast intermittently spoke as a chorus, warning the world of the terrible nature of vampires and that they are most certainly real. Quite startling really! 

The ending was a surprise. Dracula sacrifices himself to save his brides and the global vampire community. Is that in Bram Stoker's novel? (which sadly, I've not read). I'm used to Van Helsing polishing off the old Vlad!

Have you ever seen Dracula on stage readers?

Image not from the play