MOONBASE CENTRAL

Saturday, 8 November 2025

Game On!

Seeing this German board game, ÖL, on one of my Kleinanzeigen searches reminded me how I used to collect vintage board games for the beautiful box art like this.

Always arresting and high quality, board game box art was fabulous in the Sixties and Seventies, standards which took these games around the globe. I guess you could call it boomer box art, when everything was still an adventure.

Here's the UK and Finnish versions, OIL and ÖLJY.

Other fantastic boxes I've found over the years include these Waddingtons beauties, all good enough to hang on a wall:

Do you have some favourite board game box art readers?

Boeing 733 Toy Jet Plane

Here's another dreamy jet, the toy Being 733.

It's looks like tin to me but sure is handsome. Not certain of the maker.

Have you anything flying round like this?

Friday, 7 November 2025

At the Car Squash

Over the past few years I've amassed tons of die-casts. It was great fun to do - they're just so plentiful and cheap at car boots - and many I spent hours touching-up with Sharpies and paint pens in my fave armchair, a really relaxing activity I first discovered with a Batmobile.

Alas, my cabinet is bursting with die-casts now, squashed on top of each other and my Hot Wheels and good Superfast stuff are waiting in the wings for shelf space.

I've decided to thin out the herd and heeding my old collector friend Casinelli's advice to "keep your best Woodsy" I've boxed up only those models which I can live without. Quite a few as it turns out.

I'll be sorry to see them all go but I'm looking forward to displaying my other stuff.

I'm sure there'll be a few you recognise. They include mostly Corgi, some Dinky, the odd Majorette, two Yatming, some SIKU and one Lone Star. Oh and a Blue Box.

Have you a lot of die casts? Have you had to thin out your collection?

A Motorbike Clearly

I just love the design of this Takara motorbike bot. The whole thing is one! Reminds me of the old Tetsuo films, man melded with machine! There's a Capsela feel to it too. I love how the helmet is a fairing! Looks like a Sea Devil!

Is it Microman? Micronauts?

Like it?

June Lockhart 1925-2025 RIP

Hi

I expect many of you have already heard this sad news, but actress June Lockhart has recently died, aged 100. She was born on 25th June 1925, and passed away on 23rd October 2025, after a long career in films and television.

I remember her as the Mother of the boy in one of the many TV versions of Lassie in the 1960s; and then as Doctor Maureen Robinson in Lost in Space (1965-68). She was also in the horror movie She-Wolf of London (1946), one of the few classic horror movies with a female lead.

In Troll (1986) she played a witch, who transforms in to a younger version of herself – played by her real-life daughter Anne Lockhart, who had been in Battlestar Galactica.

There have been many tributes to her. Rest in Peace.

Paul Adams from New Zealand