Merit Film Projector Film Library including Dan Dare Down Under

I saw this on auction and was intrigued by it's film slides.

I saved the pics.

Among the strips are two Dan Dare.

It looks an old set and us so appealing.

Is this a projector set you know readers?

X-TWO ZERO'S SUBMARINE MODEL

 Some photos I’ve taken of the submarine used by  surface agent X- Two Zero, the sneaky, mealy- mouthed toady of King Titan!

I made it from a modified 1-72 scale Revell Bell X-5 aircraft model kit, something similar to what was used in the original Stingray TV series.

After altering the parts to suit, it’s a fairly simple build, although deciding on something like accurate colours is always problematic, what with harsh TV lighting, dirtying down etc. so I just went with a ‘close but no cigar look’, and what I personally found attractive!

I chose Tamiya Acyclic Yellow Green mixed with Light Green, and Revell matt Red, with matt black outline detail. Perhaps a little bolder than what we see in the show, but I’m happy with it.

The hull detail on each side uses parts from a B58 Italeri Hustler kit. For the ‘fish eyes’ I used 1914-1918 French aircraft roundel decals.

Speculating within the fictional world of the TV series, I assume the submarine is the creation of one of Titan’s undersea races, and naturally owes it’s design to the aquatic efficiency of marine life. Looking like a large fish, with a gaping mouth, eyes and striped red and green colouring, this look might also have a practical use by scaring off the occasional hostile sea creature.

It has a large rear caudal fin, and thin dorsal and pelvic fins. Although, some scenes show either the dorsal or pelvic fins missing for some reason.

In the episode, Countdown, the submarine gains access to Stingray’s pen, and surfaces with it’s dorsal fin in place. However, once it’s docked the fin is missing, only to reappear in the next scene!

In the episode, The Golden Sea, both fins are present in several scenes. However, the dorsal is occasionally absent leaving just the pelvic fin below.

While Titan’s Mechanical Fish are obviously a principle recurring threat to Stingray, X Two Zero’s sneaky sub still manages to cause a few headaches for Troy and Phones, although X-Two Zero knows better than to take on Stingray directly. In the episode, Echo of Danger, X -Two Zero almost collides with Stingray, and only manages to flee by fooling Lieutenant Fisher, into thinking he’s detected another vessel.

In the same episode, we see that the sub is armed with torpedoes, which fire from the mouth of the craft. X-Two Zero uses the boat’s periscope to target the ship towing the floating oil containers

X-Two Zero may well have replaced the sub more than once during his nefarious shenanigans with the WASP’s. In the episode, Countdown, X-Two Zero is prepared to sacrifice his sub, and kill Marina in an attempt to blow up Stingray’s holding pen. However, Troy manages to pilot the unmanned sub well away from Marineville’s ocean door and make his escape prior to the bomb exploding. Whether the sub was destroyed or salvaged on that occasion is unclear.

The actual Bell X-5 was an experimental aircraft, and the first capable of changing the sweep of it’s wings in flight. Inspired by the captured untested wartime P.1101 design of the German Messerschmitt company, two X-5 aircraft were built and made their first flights in 1951.

One was lost in 1953, when it failed to recover from a violent spin, a recurring design problem with the X-5, which resulted in the death of test pilot, Captain Ray Popson.

The surviving aircraft was retired in 1958, and resides in the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

Rockets Galore!

 

Besides vintage space books, my main obsession is with vintage space toys and models. Growing up in the space age, my childhood was replete with all manner of toys, some expensive and complicated and others simple and pocketmoney sized. The smaller and cheaper toys are much less likely to last through the decades, as they were not built to last and were impulse buys or giveaways with sweets or cereal. Amazingly though, some of these simple toys have managed to make it through many hands and years of play.

A favourite of mine was recently given to me by Woodstock and is a japanese sweet shop type of toy, a very inexpensive model of a Saturn V on the launch pad. Very often these type of items came with a packet of candy tucked inside the box. This one was bought at a japanese auction site and appears complete. The box art is typical of the era, with simple graphics and bright colour and the model itself is simply moulded in equally bright plastic.

The gantry and the rocket break down into several pieces and can be re-assembled puzzle style. The whole model is around 3" high.

From probably the same period comes a full blown model kit by Aoshima. The spectacular graphics suggest a highly detailed kit, but the resultant model is under 6" high. Moulded in self coloured plastic, it is a simple build, which makes quite an accurate and recognisable kit. As the model was a vintage version from the mid sixties, the decals provided with it were unfortunately too degraded to be useable, so despite a rudimentary paint job, it remains unfinished.

Kelloggs Sugar Smacks cereal had a great run of premiums in their cereals in the 1970's, starting with a lovely set of tiny kits of space models. A Mercury Atlas Rocket on a gantry was supported by a tiny Molab, a LEM and Apollo pair, a rocket transporter and a nice space station. Cereal premiums fell out of favour in the late seventies due to problems with small part being deemed choking hazards for small children.

The popularity of the small cereal kits meant that third party supplier continued to make them as stand alone offerings, even after the main company ceased trading. R & L, a major australian company specialising in these premiums, folded in the late seventies and the dies for the production of a lot of the models found their way to Mexico, where they were used to make new copies from the old moulds. One such model is a 3" Saturn V on a crawler (the gantry may well have been available as a separate purchase) and also a smaller Nova Rocket. The green Nova rocket has been decorated after the Tri-ang Spacex toy version seen here.

The Tri-ang Spacex Interspace Miniatures were far and away my faourite space toy of the period, a small inexpensive plastic vehicle on a card was sold in Woolworths and formed part of a larger range.

Such is the popularity and enduring legacy of the toys, Kevin Davies, a professional model maker has been making large scaled up versions of the line, including the Nova rocket and the Mobile Launch Pad, shown below.

A rare sight on European toy shop shelves would have been toys from the Eastern bloc, such as Russia. Although generally inferior in workmanship to Western toys, the Soviet Union did make some excellent toys, such as the this large plastic 'R7' launch vehicle. The label on the fron reads 'Mir' and seems to commemorate the launch of the space station in the mid eighties. 

The rocket booster itself, follows the basic R-7 arrangement, which launched all the major soviet vehicles from Sputnik to present day Soyuz capsules and features four strap on boosters. Pulling up the orange central collar releases the units, which fall away backwards, just like the actual vehicle. The large bulbous second stage reflects the unit used to carry the segments of the space station to orbit, but here houses a single, simple cosmonaut figure, in a pre-school format, so perhaps the toy was designed with educational purposes in mind.

Spanish company Congost made an excellent board game/toy around the russian Lunokhod missions, with a small plastic rover on a landing craft that is lowered onto a cardboard moon surface.

Soviet and eastern bloc toy makers were keen to promote the success of the Lunokhod missions and may tinplate versions of the rover were made, some with remote control and flashing lights.

A very popular kit in the Airfix space range was the Vostok Rocket, first released in 1970, but availble in different releases until the mid 2000's. Although I got it on release, it hasn't survived the rigours of play and I picked up a more recent version again, last year.

Although a comparatively small model - the finished kit being about 14" high - it is packed with detail and includes options to build the Vostok, Lunik (originally listed as Sputnik) and Soyuz launch vehicles. It even comes with a tiny cosmonaut, nut much bigger than a grain of rice. Production artwork by illustrator Roy Cross, showed an all-white vehicle, but as the R-7 was initially a military project, the actual vehicle was actually grey or drab green. The white colouration was attributed to the freezing fuel on the rocket as it sat on the launchpad and a layer of frost which coated the exterior.

Compare some modern space models from Matchbox, as part of the Skybusters line. The Spacex Starship is a sleek, plain missile shape, with canard fins. Skybusters are a range of diecast aircraft and most recently spaceships which have been running besides the traditional car lines since the early 1970's.

Another space related model is the Dreamchaser Re-entry vehicle, a proposed re-useable shuttle alternative. Like the Starship it is a simple diecast vehicle, with no moving parts.

However elegant the Starship may look, its lack of playability when compared to the similar scale Tri-ang Spacex toys, is very evident.

Again from the Skybusters series, a movie tie-in from the Top Gun 2 film, in the form of the beautiful hypersonic Research Vehicle 'Dark Angel'. Once more, the solid casting looks wonderful, but the total lack of any kind of features detracts from its overall appeal.