Oh My It's Imai!

Fancy a Zero X for Xmas? Here's a cool series of TV ads from Japan courtesy of ak1go on You Tube. The OX appears towards the end.

Enjoy!

Stranger Than Friction

This cool little plastic friction drive Missile Car recently featured on fleabay. A new one on me, it sort of reminded me of the sleek lines of the LP Moon Explorer pictured below.

I suspect though that the Missile Car is related to Nitto's early 1960's Fileder 2, which appears on the superb Japan Super Fantastic Models online site.

More pictures of the Missile Car to follow in the future.

Christmas Birds

 

Hello Woodsy,

Seeing as I’m going through a bit of a Thunderbirds kick I thought I’d dig out a few adapted Xmas ads for the Thunderbird JR21 toys which might cheer you up as well as put us all in a nostalgic mood for the upcoming festivities.

 

Thunderbird 1 appeared in TV21 issue 98 (December 3rd 2066). I got the friction drive version for Christmas. Looking back I don’t remember thinking how bad it was, those awful wheels, the soft plastic nose cone and the’ look at them and they fall off’ tail fins. still, I liked it at the time.

 

Mike B

 

Woodsy says: Cheers Mike and very festive too! I'll post one of Mike's ads each day. Alas, I'm having ongoing problems with image size on blogger. It forces me to seriously reduce them in size. I need to solve this but for now my apologies for the loss of detail.

Sub Force 2

More from that cool Imai book listed on Ebay. This 1967 Japanese Navy submarine reminds me a lot of an underwater version of the SWORD Task Force 2 from the same year. It even has a cockpit blister, albeit in a different place. Both can be seen together below. Anyone got this kit?

Selection Process

Selections boxes like this one were a HUGE part of our family Crimbo when I was a wee lad in the Sixties and early Seventies. My Mum scattered them about the living room in and between the prezzies like first aid. They were never wrapped apart from when Uncles and Aunts had given one to us as a present. Like a mini-larder they were always available for a quick snack in between the main meals. I'm sure that there was always one particular bar left till last because no-one wanted it. Caramac maybe? It's equivalent in a box of chocolates was the unpopular coffee creme [which I love!], left festering until the bitter end. Talking of boxes of chocolates, besides standards like Black Magic, Terry's All Gold, Milk Tray and Just Brazils, I clearly remember much bigger boxes shaped like hearts and squares with pictures of flowers or dogs on the lids. I've never seen anything like them since. You?

My ideal Selection Box would now include: Topic, Lion, Picnic, Wispa, Double Decker, Marathon [Ok, Snickers] and Twix. If I could dip into the chocolate past I'd also grab a Waifa, Bar Six, Aztec and Amaizin Raisin! Ummm, yum!

What would your select Selection box be?

End Credits

Just been watching an episode of Thunderbirds, Security Hazard. When I saw the end credits, where stills of the Thunderbirds craft rotate by 90 degrees, I got to thinking how might I achieve the same effect with pics of SWORD toys? Can it be done simply with something like Microsoft Movie Maker or even an simpler image application? Each toy would need 2 stills, the second one rotated I suppose.

By Jupiter!

Flicking through fleabay for Crissy prezzies I noticed this cool Japanese Imai book [seller: nippon-dododo]. One of the featured kits from 1966 is the JUPITER HOVERCRAFT [above left bottom]. Seeing I knew I'd seen that design before. In fact I'd owned the very same toy for a while, the army Hovercraft by MMF shown below right. I've pictured an adjacent close-up of the Imai Jupiter box and kit for comparison. Pure conjecture on my part but I wouldn't be surprised if the Imai box art was painted by Japanese SWORD maestro Shigeru Kamatsuzaki. Anyone got the Imai kit?

Flaming Dune

David Lynchs epic adaptation of Frank Herberts sprawling fantasy novels was a major undertaking in itself. A strange film for many reasons, the central theme being an ongoing struggle over Arrakis, a desert world on which is found the enigmatic 'spice' Melange which gives prescient powers after it is ingested. Herberts original trilogy has been expanded upon in recent years, to make a large selection of novels, but Lynchs film focussed on the original and attempted to cram a huge conceptual and stylistic world into a standard length film. As a result, it suffered greatly, both because of Lynchs strange view of filmaking and because of technical limitations and time. Some of the characterisations were brilliant, such as Jurgen Prochnow as Duke Leto and Francesca Annis as his consort and Max Von Sydow and other notable actors such as Patrick Stewart and the odd inclusion of Sting as Feyd. Some of the characters were wonderfully realised while others came across as flawed and farcical such as the grinning Sting and Brad Dourif as the slightly clownish Mentat, Lynchs direction added a slightly obscene and grimy undercurrent to the Harkonnen world, with a bloated Baron Harkonnen floating under a shower of oil as he enjoys the torture of a servant. The Guild Navigators were realised as both silly looking actors with excessive make up and prosthetics and as a huge gas breathing being in a portable tank with a fabulously modern-gothic style. The film excelled in terms of style and effects, the sets were lavish and the vehicle designs nothing short of unusual.

 As usual a range of toys appeared to support the film, 6" inch action figures, a pair of toy guns and some motorised craft. Possibly the oddest toy was the rubber Sandworm, at 10 inches long and with 2 points of articulation, it was probably the most useless toy ever made.

 The large Spice Scout was designed to fit the action figures and has a large rear wheel not unlike the Sword Survey vehicle and an enclosed cabin to fit the crew. This design and the one for the small motorised crawler is lifted directly from the sandworm attack sequence, where the massive beast rises up from the sand to engulf the spice harvester. Both the crawler and the Spice Scout are seen driving frantically into the huge harvester as the wormsign is detected by Letos overflying ornithopter.