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.

Monday, April 17, 2023

C is for Combex's Cruising Crayon Carving Craft!

Picked this up the other day, little rocket pencil sharpener, although, it's not that little; it's nearly ten-inches of pulp-cover, Space Age, interstellar loveliness, from Combex, that [not] very well known ex-comb maker! Geddit! Lots of useful stuff here.

To give a sense of the size, it's here posed with some Giant clones and a couple of Keshi eraser types I happened to have to hand. Clearly this was more of a desktop novelty than a pencil-case thing, and I'm a bit gutted I never found one in my Christmas stocking, because clearly it belonged there!
 
The whole ship is hollow, so you can literally disintegrate most of the contents of your pencil-case, in one sitting, should you be minded to! And the seven-vent engine-bay is removable to empty the contents. Maybe, it was sold AS a pencil-case, possibly even having some pencils secreted within, it could easily take five or six . . . anyone know? Yes it was, see comments/Graces Guide page (link below) - 1954! It's 69!
 
There are two launching 'rails' moulded on the underside, so it was a horizontal launcher, a popular launch method in early fiction, whether fired as projectiles or using some magnetic-levitation device, or sequential-explosion (multi-chamber) accelerator. There is interesting stuff being done to deliver small payloads with a giant revolving sling-shot arm, at the moment.

Posed with what I think might be early (very clean/sharp mouldings), factory-painted (more in a later post), Premier space-ship escorts, I think the far one is what Ed Berg has dubbed a 5" Dart - version 6, and the near one is a 3" Wide Body - version 1?
 
Obviously, with the rails on the underside, giving an 'up' and 'down', I never really thought to photograph the red side! So black-top and red-bottom/wings, and it's pretty awesome!

7 comments:

Jan Ferris said...

I see whole new series of 007 movies coming into existence. I know we have seen rockets before, but not with the likes of these. Or at least they can find their way into the next science fiction flick.

Hugh Walter said...

That's an idea Jan and no mistake!

H

Terranova47 said...

Your link shows it was sold as a Pencil Box. I'm pretty certain that if I had one as a kid my teachers would have confiscated it as a toy had I taken it to school.

Hugh Walter said...

My link? Show's how superficial my search was! I'll have to go and have a look!!! Cheers Brian! Yes, it is a bit sharp!

H

Hugh Walter said...

Oh yes, on the Graces Guide page . . . how did I miss that! I could have nicked the image . . . hay-ho! Well spotted anyway!

H

WOTAN said...

I got one of these in 2017 and have only recently managed to get the cap off! It had old Revell decals applied and the sharpener had been glued on tight! Bill
https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2017/08/an-open-and-shut-case.html

Hugh Walter said...

Soaking in Bleach sometimes helps to soften glue Bill, but I've not tried polystyrene cement? And it can discolour the plastic, I bleached a couple of the Atlantic mini-sphinxes and they ended-up looking like they'd done ten years in a sandpit, but were otherwise OK!

H