F is for Follow-up - Fantastic Flying Fancies!

So, as promised, I fired-off the recently found (and seen here) Tom Smith novelty artifact, the 'Surprise Space Rocket' at our Christmas Breakfast (more of a brunch) meet, and we can now look at the contents and finish studying this delightful example of how Austerity Britain cheered itself up in the 1950's! Actually, probably the 1960's!

 

This has a video of the launch in the middle, but also has all the images from both posts as an accompanying slide show, and I didn't know whether to put it at the start or the end, but the whole point of the thing (post and event) is to see what happens, so it should go first!

 

So, the contents were a bit disappointing, in that I had hoped they might be space-related, astronauts, spacemen, little UFO's or something, but actually they were pretty standard budget-end novelties, classics in fact, with two whistles, one a novelty face, a 'magic' fortune-telling fish, plastic 'tangram' puzzle and small red balloon. In fact, it's all a bit red!

 

Not a game - see video - there was also a very simple card rocket kit to cut out, and glue, the only real nod to the theme of the container, I will scan and print it, laminate it to some stiff card, and make up the duplicate, as a future follow-up, to this follow-up!

 

The six pieces are one-sided (colour/print-wise) as I may be able to build it on a card tube or wooden dowel of the correct diameter, and reinforce the landing legs with tooth-picks or coffee stirrers?

 

The party hats were the bulk of the 'shot', being the sort you see in old TV sitcoms, soaps or drama's from the 1960's or early 1970's, so it may not be the 1950's item I thought it might be?

 

Much taller than modern Christmas Cracker hats, and manufactured in crepe-paper, they have tissue frills around their tops in the same pinky-orange paper as their restricting-for-packing, paper 'vest' wraps, and one is decorated.

 

The decoration is more Easter-themed, with rabbits, bears and little flowery things (it looks like), than Christmassy, but of the same mawkishly sentimental style as wrapping papers of the era, I can still, well remember. So these 'poppers' were clearly aimed at the birthday and other celebratory market, to take up some of the slack of the quiet period between Christmas cracker seasons!

 

Construction was a loosely overlapped card tube, held together with the decorated rocket paper, with chip-board discs sandwiching the spring, and lighter fibreboard or hardboard discs holding the toys in another sandwich above the hats. A gap of about 10-mil, helps the spring generate acceleration, before the contents meet the lid.

 

Turns out the top just slides out, and I'm hoping to carefully feed this back behind the outer wrapper, eventually. For now, I've folded it down to preserve the folds and prevent the loss of the hardboard piece!

 

You will notice from the video, the toys go one way and the hats another, one suspects that if the quite substantial, bed-spring type wire-helix, hadn't been in compression for 50 or 60-years, everything would have flown further! There was no pyrotechnics though, I thought there may be a snap, as with crackers, but nothing of the sort!

O is for On the Subject Of . . .

. . . evilBay providing answers to questions we didn't know we needed to be asking, I picked this up for a lot less than it should have, or could have gone for, and it would seem to be new to Blog and Hobby, but not the Internet, obviously, as it's been on feeBay!

 

I present to you, the Tom Smith 'Surprise Space Rocket'!

 

The 'surprise' being; it doesn't look much like a space rocket! The artwork however, does show a common design from the 1960's, looking like a Thunderbird Missile (real, not Gerry Anderson!) sans the four booster rockets, similar to the Bloodhound we know from our Airfix or Frog kits, but lacking the two side engines, the Thunderbird was the Army air-defence version of an RAF Bloodhound, having approximately half the range. It also has the lines of a Bomarc (Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center [sic]) CIM-10 (IM-99) Missile. All of which dates this cardboard tube, nicely to the mid-to-late 1950's

 

Quite a circus 'Big Top' look to the back of the tube, and this is clearly not aimed at either Christmas, Guy Fawkes Night (5th November), or Halloween (which was a nothing-event, here in the UK in the 1950's), but rather, like the giant 'party-popper' it appears to be, aimed at any-old reason to celebrate, any-old time!

  

And therefore, might have been available for some time, in this configuration, or other graphics, do you remember anything like this? I think you'd have to be over 70? 65 maybe?

Clockwise from top left; instructions; silver-paper covered card disc, and two shots of the 'pin' which launches the 'rocket'. I have had chats with Adrian Little and Paul Morehead about this, and rather than get their words/points wrong, I'll précis my thoughts on it, as they have evolved in conversion with both, and on studying the object/rocket!

 

When I first saw it, I assumed it would have a bang, from a black-powder charge, like the snaps in Christmas crackers; remember, Tom Smith also produced indoor fireworks; and that the force of the explosion, would propel the contents of the tube, through the silver paper, like a dog (or a clown) jumping through a paper-sealed hoop at the circus!

 

Also, the green 'gaffer tape' (always known as 'army tape' in our household, during my childhood), or carpet-tape, is something often associated with military pyrotechnics, such as thunderflashes, 'Schermuly' parachute flares* and trip-wire pot-flares, as companies like Pains Wessex tend to use the tape in the construction of such devices, often to cover the final triggering assembly from accidental use!

 

But, there's no pyrotechnic warning, as you will find on some Christmas cracker boxes, even those by Tom Smith, on all indoor fireworks, and would expect to find, on something more powerful, such as this 'bomb'. While the "Hold Away From Face" message could just be about flying stuff, rather than explosive stuff?

 

Also, the cuts in the paper-foil cover, which are to help it sit over the heavy particle-board/card base, would also allow it to fly-off? While the silver disc actually seems to have hard-card underneath, not likely to allow things to fly through?

 

So my suspicion, now, is that actually, the outer tube, telescopes off an inner tube, sprung-loaded, rather than pyrotechnic, and that the hats and novelties fall away from the 'rocket' as 'exhaust gases', landing near the launcher where they can all be found, rather than flying up into the air, over an explosion, to be scattered to the four winds, or at least behind all the furniture?

 

It remains to be seen, and, if it is only a spring, it might have been used and re-set, meaning the contents could be unoriginal crud?** The hope, obviously, is that it's all original and unused, and it WILL be tried, at the annual Christmas Breakfast, and hopefully videoed? However, last year's Christmas Breakfast was in the first week of March, so don't get too excited, it's only October now, so it may be up to six-months before the mystery is fully solved!

 

However, when you shake it (I have!), it's clear the items are more substantial that the average Christmas cracker prize/novelties, like rings or charms, so the hope is we may have something figural, even the astronauts or spacemen linked to crackers, but that's probably wishful thinking, with a selection of nail-clippers, whistles, jig-toys and novelty-shaped combs to look forward to? Again - only time will tell!

 

 

* Not 'shamoolie' as the Tabloids prefer, it's named after the inventor, ffs!!

 

** I have studied it with the jeweller's loupe, and it seems to be a substantial bed-spring type thing of about 2.5mm diameter steel-wire, and about three-and-a-half turns, attached to a thick piece of particle board above, closer to chip-board than the PCB-type card of the base, so I think a) it's not been reset and b) it will blow the whole silver disc out and spray stuff everywhere, only time will tell, and it will be told here!