About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Sunday, April 23, 2023

C is for Clipper-ships - Space Clippers!

Back to the 'Spaceways' annual for a second, and you may have noticed down the bottom left-hand corner of the cover (previous post) what we would call a thumbnail image these days, back then it was probably a miniature-insert, insert-miniature or something!

Again he's turned to toys for his inspiration, and this time we're looking at Tudor Rose for the donor, a push-and-go version is out there, but it may be a knock-off?

Never given an X-number, it really should be considered X-500, being a larger, passenger beast than the X-400 Space Explorer, a sort of fighter-bomber to all the smaller fighter-types! leaving X-600 for the 'big bus' the Atomic Space Ship, and you could allocate X1-10, 15-95 etc . . . to all the little flyers, flitters and Premier's darts and wide-bodies; a neat idea spoilt only by Dimestore Dreams swapping a number a few years ago, Doh!

Turning to the Adventure Annual for a quick look at it's treatment in the Swift Morgan strip, and you can see it's pretty accurate, and I like the idea that when these guys got writers block or a stiff hand (pen and ink can be intense) they would have been able to play with their toy space-stuff while enjoying their coffee or watching the world go-by outside!
 
The push-and-go version has a large box for the mechanism, on the underside, and bigger wheels set further-out, while the artist's got the little cheeks on the sides of the wheel-cowlings down just right, so he had something like the photographed example in front of him.

Clearly marked and probably the best for surviving, being quite a robust toy - except those little fin-tips! Sadly and for reasons I won't bore you with this was only mine for about 24-hours, 15-years ago, and the 'mine' is open to question, but I've regretted letting it - and an X-400 - go, ever since!