Burning Plastic: The Fleetwood Toy Ghost Rider

And now for something completely different from my toy cabinet. I loved rack toys as a kid. They were always affordable with a little saved-up pocket money. I was too old for rack toys by 1976, having diverted my interests to rock music and the opposite sex, but had I been 9 or 10 I would have snapped this one up, the 1976 Ghost Rider by US plastic rack toy specialists, Fleetwood Toy Corp.

Having always been enthralled by Super Heroes I started to collect comic strip collectables in the early 1990's. To feed my passion I bought various reference books and magazines and in particular Tomarts wonderful guides and Action Figure digests. It was in one such book that I stumbled across the above Ghost Rider and I was hooked. The scarcity of the toy added to its allure and I vowed to own one one day. That day came around 2005, when my friend bid and won one on fleabay on my behalf. I was thrilled to bits. Not perfect but still a fine example of this rare toy. Hakes, the US valuers, describe it as the very first Ghost Rider toy ever made. There is a later variation with a flaming red card title and you can see an example on the mega Mego Museum site.

Anyone else got any interesting Super Hero toys locked away in the cupboard?

Multibooster Leaves Enceladus

Saturday night tinkering with a photo of one of Saturn's Moon and Wotan's maxed-up deep space Booster Rocket toy. It's search for Nu-Earth continues....

The Ejectables

The ejectable miniature craft inside some space toys were always hidden treasures. Worlds within worlds. The fabulous JR21 Submarine Aircraft Carrier had red wing-tipped missiles called 'Air Crafts' nestled under it's bomb hatch, seen to dramatic effect on the fantastic box art [my favourite of all JR21]. Similarly the Spacex Nuclear pulse had an integral 'Space Ship', which launched from a clear cockpit - style blister. The instruction sheet explained everything in glorious detail [courtesy of Mike B]. Are there any other toys with hidden or secret firing rockets and missiles? What's your favourite?

Pyro B

Hi Paul,

…..a follow up to the Pyro cruiser - a few years ago I made a model of a Dan Dare space ship from the story "Operation Saturn". It turns out to be a version of the Pyro ship!

Best wishes,

Andy B

21st Century Schizoid Man

So many times since ive been collecting toys as an adult (and I use that term loosely), have I had flashbacks to the heady days of childhood. Not just pleasant memories and a wave of nostalgia, but a literal zap of de ja vous as the sight of something new elicits that rare and wonderful moment of magic that I knew as a kid. Today, toys are a far cry from the sometimes delicate, always simple constructions of the past. Modern concepts of toymaking leave nothing to the imagination and toys are expected to move and make sounds and represent real life exactly. As a kid, driving a dinky SPV around the carpet and doing all the voices for the characters as well as the vrrroooomm engine sounds was all part of the fun, and dropping the front wheels of the vehicle to blast enemies with the little red and white rocket was the best feeling in the world for an 8 year old.
Its almost impossible to get that rare buzz these days from finding a new or a vintage toy, because my mind is conditioned in a different way, expectations are much higher and in some way I could say that after nearly a half century, I have 'seen it all'. But every now and again, Its fun to get that little window on the past and unlock a tiny door in the recesses of memory which allows a fractional glimpse into that childlike excitement. I picked up the the toys in the photo on ebay recently, Multimac space toys. They are modern, modular, construction toys with a small friction base and a load of garishly coloured bits. Ostensibly, they are direct products of the massmarket factories in Hong Kong, cheap disposable tat designed to keep a kid happy for an hour, before half the bits get lost and the rest ends up mixed in with the Lego. But something about the layout of the wheels, the bright colours and the spare use of chrome on the tractor treads, reminded me just for an instant of the regular trips every saturday morning to Woolworths, to browse the racks of Spacex toys and to pick out which two I would be lucky enough to add to my collection that day... and that is a rare and wonderful thing.

Pyro Mania

Reader Nyrath the Nearly Wise recently reminded me how cool the Pyro Space Cruiser was. I've put together this collage of the toy and appearances of similar spacecraft on magazines, Spaceways and the Adventure Annual. Nyrath also gave me this great link to a Pyro lookalike posted by super space archivist John Sisson over at his terrific blog Dreams of Space.

Ex Libris Wotan:TTA

Back in 1978 before the heady days of the internet, i'd scour the shops for books arriving on the wave of Star Wars fever. Usually, given the renewed interest in all things space, this was never a problem. What was difficult, was finding the good quality books among the mass produced dross. Sci-Fi paperback sales were going through the roof and the world and his dog were churning out mass market stories and old classics were being dusted off and remarketed to a new audience. As a consequence of this, sci-fi illustrators started to drop out of the air with new and exciting styles and designs. Whereas previously the likes of Chris Foss had held sway with his iconic covers for Asimov and E E Doc Smith, other new artists began to appear on the shelves. Whilst a lot of the artwork produced by the artists found its way onto paperbacks, the new vogue for 'coffee table artbooks' of pure illustration, meant that artists could showcase their work in dedicated volumes. Besides the standard artbook, I came across something a little different one day on the way home from college, the first in a series of Terran Trade Authority data books, which showed the craft from a fictional space force and gave details and backstory to each ship. The author, one Stewart Cowley, had apparently taken the used paperback artwork from a multitude of different artists and written a story and fictional basis for the vehicle in the painting. The text was of variable quality and generally tended towards the hopelessly romantic as opposed to the true hard sci-fi I preferred, but the artwork was always good.

For the next couple of years, a sequence of related volumes appeared, 'Great Space Battles', 'Spacewreck' and 'Starliners'. These were supported by what seemed to be a series called 'Galactic Encounters' prepared by a 'Steven Caldwell', which I always assumed to be a pseudonym! These were of lesser quality, but along similar lines. The major problem with the books was that some of the illustrations were clearly not suitable for the series, but may have been all that was available at the time, so one or two or the more exotic or less thematic illustrations meant that the text had to be pretty silly to shoehorn in avian birdmen or daliesque surrealistic images of weird landscapes.

However, with the advent of the second volume, Great Space Battles, Cowley showcased a peculiar and fabulous talent in the shape of one Peter Elson, a clearly 'Foss' influenced illustrator who crammed his imagery with detail and action. Each painting always had a small ideograph 'PE' in the corner in the fosslike style and all his ships and vehicles had tiny, intricate details and insignia which gave the paintings a really authentically 'sci-fi' look.

I especially loved the way Elson added in mythical imagery to his hi-tech style such as the demon headed snake above and the all seeing eye on the cruiser below.

Peter Elsons style went on to influence my model making and the 'stellar cow' Tanker under attack from fierce red fighters below directly informed the rather rubbish paint job I attempted on the 'Alligator' in the Airfix Cosmic Cruiser kit.

The books included some beautiful artwork by other artists such as Jim Burns, Tony Roberts and Angus McKie probably most notable for his 'Interstellar Queen' paintings. Also, have a look at this amazing TTA tribute website which has modern cgi rendering of some of the ships from the first book! (Thanks Ray!) And Master Modeller Kev Davies just sent me this neat model of the Interstellar Queen/Hooded Swan ship too!

a J. R Hartley Moment

Well, once more life imitates art and I am tempted to start believing my own publicity as I had a rather strange moment on ebay yesterday.  Trawling through the listings during lunch, I came across something which gave me pause:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120737846172&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Looking at it, I had to laugh as I was reminded of the old Yellow Pages ad of the old duffer trawling bookshops for a copy of a book he'd written, 'Fly Fishing by J. R Hartley'. According to the listing I appear to have previously branched out into the toy making business....

I shoved in a bid just to complete the synchronicity of it all..  bizarre.