Rob's WIAD Lagerhalle

Woodsy,

Here is another nostalgia trip for me, the WIAD B1060 Lagerhalle (Warehouse), a German HO scale model building kit I first built in 1970 - 55 years ago!

A quite basic kit, first issued circa 1965, and designed primarily for adding “color” to a train layout, I built the first one in the original plastic colors it was molded in, as shown on the box, but decided to gussy up my 2nd attempt as best I could. The fun part was getting all those bulkhead pieces to align properly around the concrete foundation. I don’t think I even bothered to do this this first time around!

No train layout to show them off, but I still love these German railroad structure kits. I even decided to put the WIAD* logo on the front, as this was my favorite brand of plastic RR models back in the day.

Rob C

USA

* WIAD stands for Willy Adler, the founder of the company!

CORGI BATMOBILE AND BATBOAT

 Some photos of the later version of the Corgi Batmobile and Batboat.

Paul McCaffrey's Merry Xmas Card

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year,

Cheers

Paul

 

A Captain's Christmas

If there was one toy I could take to Mars it would be Mattel's Captain Lazer. With his Leonard Nimoy looks and glam rock boots the Captain is the coolest toy ever. I adored him as a kid. My old Mum must have forgot to leave it out for me on Xmas morning 1968 (I think), so on hearing my sobbing she quickly retrieved it from under her bed, came down stairs and handed it to me wrapped in paper. 

"There you go Son, Santa didn't forget after all".

Good old Mum. She was the real Santa!

I even wrote a poem about ol' Cap when I was a young teenager. Such is the power of the Captain's dazzling eyes and chest plate. I think the neatest stuff though, were his lazer attachments; the rod, the barrel and my favourite, the purple shield. Callisto and his cissy string pistol never stood a chance against the might of the glowing Captain!

These three coloured lazer parts reminded me of the cool weapons and accessories which came with Colorform's Outer Space Men, probably the best space toy range ever made. In fact Mattel's Major Matt Mason range and the Outer Space Men fit together perfectly. Callisto could easily be an Outer Space Man! Ol' Cap was so cool that Mattel used his body again for a new generation in the Seventies, by which time Captain Lazer will have been but a distant ray blast.

Finally I'd like to mention the sound the Cap's backpack made. I've talked about it before and will no doubt again. It is one of those iconic sounds unique to a Sixties childhood, like a spring rattling round a paint tin. 

Words like 'bodoingggggg' and 'de-de-de-de-de' don't do it justice. What do you think readers? 

What was that sound like?

*Pics of my second Captain bought in 2014.

TV SERIES MODEL TRANSPORT

 

Tamiya Lotus Super 7; AMT Piranha; , Polar Lights Batmobile,; MPC Monkeemobile;  AMT' Galileo 

II' Shuttlecraft .

Ballantine Baggins

I love this fabulous cover art on the American Ballantine paperback releases of Lord of the Rings.

The slipcase too, what a beauty!

I think it's the same artist on my Ballantine Worm Ouroboros, but yet to look the artist up.

Have you these or anything similar?

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

I was watching Disney's classic 20,000 Leagues yesterday, as its a classic adventure film and considering it was released in 1954, is an amazing achievement. I recall watching it on the cinema in the sixties and marvelling at the giant squid attack sequence and the beautiful submarine, the Nautilus. However, looking at it with a modern perspective, the set design and general cinematography are outstanding, with each scene resplendent with a huge level of authentic detail.

Being a big fan of photography, I tend to browse a lot of blogs and sites which detail the history of cameras and lenses and recently, I found a very interesting video on Youtube, by one of my favourite creators, Mathieu Stern. Stern uses a lot of strange kit to create weird and wonderful effects in his camera work and is always searching the antiques stalls in Paris for exotic and strange equipment. His most recent video details a very rare find he came across at auction - something extremely rare and apparently lost for the last 70 years - a special lens adaptor, created especially for Cinemascope cameras, to make an 'anamorphic' frame possible. Basically, the adaptor squeezes the usual widescreen camera view down onto standard 35mm film and Walt Disney first used the device for 20th Century Fox release of the Jules Verne film. At the time, there were only a handful of the special adaptors available and Disney gambled on the new film, investing huge sums in the production, including the cost of hiring these special adaptors from the company who had built them especially for Fox.

Luckily for the Disney company, the film was a massive success and went on to recover the funds that Disney had invested in the production. Shortly after though, camera technology moved on and the adaptors were no longer required, as anamorphic lenses were being built specifically for Cinemascope and similar systems. As the special adaptors were now redundant, they were mothballed and found their way into museums. The item that Stern spotted at auction is one of the devices used by 20th Century Fox and may even have been originally used on the film itself. You can see the fascinating tale here: https://youtu.be/Vg0ftclnwzI?si=5iBmuA2-W0mtWpwN

 

UNCLE MARX

Some old photos of my Marx Man from UNCLE figures, along with their THRUSH adversaries.

They would have originally been bought unpainted, however mine came already painted and varnished to a high standard.

I did a piece on these a while back.

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-marx-man-from-uncle-figures-affair.html