Late birthday gift to myself

Broke down and bought these for myself.  

I've had Fantasy Flight Games' "X-Wing" for about two years now.  I've not really played it ... just haven't had time.  Our old game group (mostly guys I work with) really haven't gotten together in a year or so ... so, no games.  So far I've got the starter set (one X-wing and two TIE fighters) and the Millennium Falcon expansion pack (got it mostly just for the miniature).  At $15 bux a piece, the miniatures had kind of hit a price limit for me.  They're good, really good miniatures but $15 is a bit much for me.  Now I've found a dealer selling them for $10 each and free shipping on orders so I'm giving myself the go ahead to start building my fleet and get this game rolling.

These will be the start of my X-Wing game miniatures collection which I plan on adding to each paycheck as well as making some custom capital ships / freighters / support craft through kitbashing.  The Tantive IV is one of my favorite ships in all of sci-fi shipdom.  My 8 year old mind fell in love with that hammerhead shape and those eleven blazing engines as soon as I saw it on the silver screen way back in 1977 and ever since then I've been looking for a good sized replica of this classic ship.  About two years ago I broke down and bought the $300 27 inch long Rand Cooper Tantive IV (currently saving up for his $500 38 inch long Imperial Star Destroyer) but haven't put it together yet.  Here's a Tantive IV in much smaller scale (still large) and it's prepainted and assembled so right out of the box it's a display unit.  I'll probably only have one Tantive IV in my collection but I've got up to three Rebel transports ear-marked for the collection and this will be my first one.  The local hobby shop wanted $50 for the Transport and $90 for the Tantive IV which, again, was a bit much in my book (and for my wallet).  I spend some pretty money pretty fast sometimes but even I'm prone to waiting until the price falls or shopping around for the best price.  I like to support my local shops but going online I saved about $40 on these two items (the Transport was $40 and the Tantive IV was $60).  That savings gives me enough money to either add four fighters to my collection or another Rebel Transport (and I've found an online shop that I'm going to give a lot of business to in the months to come).

So, that's the update.  Happy late birthday to me and it was a pretty good birthday with me buying myself the '89 Dodge Daytona Shelby back in June and now, two months later, these two sets of expansion miniatures.

My old dune buggy

I'm a '69 model, posed here in my '70 model Dune Buggy at my old house in Birmingham, AL. To this day I don't see how my parents never saw what was coming in my teenage and later years but in hindsight I had a frigging great childhood and it only got better after that!

The strange thing is, at 45 years old, I still remember this pedal pusher car. I had a lot of fun in it but quickly outgrew it and moved on to another, bigger toy ... the Marx Wild Rider! Even then I marveled at the levers and pedals that made the wheels turn.

Do you see the discolored stripes in the rear plastic wheels? That's from me doing "burnouts" on the back patio there, I could sit in one place and basically physically pedal it faster than it could get traction so the rear wheels just spun on the concrete. I used to do the same thing with my Mattel "Big Wheel" only with the front wheel. Sanded that thing almost smooth doing "burnouts" on pavement.

My parents really didn't have a clue what they had brought into this world ...

Do want! - NECA ALIENS: Colonial Marines figures

Well, after finally adding NECA's BORDERLANDS "Claptrap" to my collection (it resides on my desk, next to my nameplate, holding up on of my business cards in its pincer hands) and after almost finishing my "Terminator" and "Terminator 2" action figure lineup (all Arnold figures in various states of damage and decay up to (or is that down to) and including the Endoskeleton) I've decided to clear some more space on my shelf for a new wave of somewhat pricey action figure goodness ... namely NECA's "ALIENS: Colonial Marines" series of toys.

Oh, yes.

I've waited for these figures for a very long time, I even wrote NECA an email years ago requesting that they do these figures.  I can't say that they listened to me, I'm not that naive as they probably got thousands of emails requesting ALIENS figures, but irregardless (which I'm told isn't even a real word) the figures are finally here ... or almost here.

The first wave is going to include Hicks, Hudson ("Game over, man!") and a reworked ALIEN.  Hopefully additional waves will include the other characters.  

I think that Armyghy from the Gearboxsoftware forums said it best "With the sheer number of Predators Neca does, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the entire squad done. Drake, Vasquez, Gorman, Farro and Spunkmeyer would need original treatment, but the majority of the marines would only need head swaps and color differences. And I would buy every last god damn one of them."

HUA!   You and me both.

If NECA ever produces a to-scale Power Loader and / or ALIEN Queen ... well, I've still got two kidneys, you can get by in life with only one and I hear there's a good market for things like that for people who need them.

Soon ... soon.

(UPDATE)!  They are MINE!  Muhahahahahahahahahaha!

Hail Mighty Raydeen!

Here's another cherished childhood toy ... Raydeen.

Shogun Warrior.

And a damn big one at that.

I first met Raydeen sometime in the winter of 1978.  He was placed, just like the picture above, in the widow of a small import / emporium shop located in the strip mall at the corner of Lincoln Road and South 28th Avenue in Hattiesburg, MS.  This was back when that intersection used to be a four way stop instead of an intersection controlled by traffic lights.

The import shop is long gone though the strip mall is still there.  I think the import shop is now a pet supply shop but I can't be sure since it has been a while since I've gone that way let alone paid any attention to the shopping opportunities there.  It's an old part of Hattiesburg, a part that I grew up in but like me, everything there that was at one time familiar has now moved on.  Decades have rolled by and nothing remains the same.

Memories and dust.

I met Raydeen sometime in late October of 1978 and fell in love with him.  I used to ride with my father up to the Shell station on Saturday and Sunday morning to get a newspaper and (for him) a cup of coffee.  We'd sometimes walk up and down the strip mall sidewalk, especially so I could look in the window of Hobby Depot, a plastic model and paint type hobby supply shop that lasted maybe two, maybe three years in that location before folding.  Hobby Depot had some really well built models, real pro stuff, in the windows and I marveled at how models could be painted to be so lifelike.  Someone had even reproduced the crashed Monogram B-17 bomber diorama that Sheppard Paine had made.  

And right next to Hobby Depot was an import shop, the name of which will probably always be lost to me now, and in that import shop's window was Raydeen.

I think that Star Wars had just entered my life but Star Wars toys were still non-existent in my area nor did they have the proliferation that the Kenner line would later enjoy.  As such, in late 1978 I was still playing with G.I. Joes, Legos, building models and playing with my Marx army men and military playsets.

Enter Raydeen.

Shogun Warrior.

Super bad ass robot that was tall like Godzilla and three times as bad (at least back then he was to me).  Shogun Warriors were a new thing for me, something interesting from the land of Japan.  My experience with Japanese toys was limited, same for their comics and cartoons.  I just didn't know very much about toys from the Far East and that intrigued me all the more.  Having just started to watch live action Japanese shows like "Ultra-Man", "Spectraman" and "Space Giants", I had a prepubescent hard-on for giant robots.  

Mattel to the rescue with their Shogun Warriors line of toys.

Mattel marketed and produced the Shogun Warriors but I'm sure, now, that they were just packaged or marketed by Mattel.  Those familiar with the "red Mattel sawblade" logo can see it clearly in the bottom lower left of the package pictured above.

Raydeen was awesome and my imagination worked overtime to add him to my toy collection.  Oh, the things that I would do with Raydeen ... assault the guns of Navarrone.  Use him as an Allied / American super weapon against the Nazis ... my fervent imagination had already taken possession of Raydeen.  I told my dad that I wanted Raydeen and he made the usual parental dodging that all parents do when their kid asks for a fairly expensive toy, especially when they ask for a fairly expensive toy when Jimmy Carter is in office and the economy is tanking all around you.

But then those are the concerns of adults and not of children faced with the dilemma of how to own one of the coolest damn toys they've ever seen.

Raydeen was huge ... easily the biggest toy that would ever be in my collection and he did so much ... I mean, just look at his play features; hawk-missile that shoots from his chest, a shield with a nasty spike on it, and a flying fist with dual ax blades on it that you can launch across the room.  That was a lot more than most of my toys did back then and I was impressed ... I was also 7 years old at the time so ... being impressed with a toy back then probably wasn't as hard to be as I thought it was at the time.

The weeks in November and December stretched by slowly, filled with thoughts of Raydeen.  I took my Legos and built a hangar for Raydeen, and since Raydeen was giant, I used some 1:72 scale ground crew that had come with one of my plastic plane models to prepare things for Raydeen's arrival.  Everything was prepared for Raydeen ... now all I had to do was wait.

Patiently.

And in case you didn't know or can't remember, when you're seven years old, patience, especially when it involves waiting for a toy you really want, is next to impossible.

Christmas day arrived, December 25, 1978, and with it came ... Raydeen.  Jimmy Carter and his bungling of the economy had not prevented Santa from bringing Raydeen to my house.  Raydeen was everything that I had imagined that he would be and I walked around the rest of the day with that giant colorful plastic robot tucked under my arm like a teddy bear.  Oh, the battles we fought that early morning ... the Marx Nazis never knew what hit them and the Americans easily conquered Navarrone Mountain.

Sometime in the spring of 1978 Marvel Comics introduced a "Shogun Warriors" based comic book that I immediately started collecting.  And who was proudly displayed front and center on that comic?

My Raydeen.

The comic ran for 20 issues but to my 7 and 8 year old mind the stories were epic.  I still have a copy of the entire comic series today in my collection but it has aged badly and rereading it did not bring the joy and wonder that it once had.  In fact, it kind of brought about the feeling that I was reading utter crap.

The Shogun Warriors comic starred Raydeen, Combattra and Dangard Ace, all piloted by kidnapped and impressed into service individuals from around the world.  Raydeen was piloted by a stuntman named Richard Carson who had a girlfriend named Deena.  I particularly liked the story arc where Richard Carson has to let Deena in on his secret ... he's Raydeen's pilot / operator.

Raydeen was my favorite but Combattra was a close second mainly because Combattra could break up into several different types of robot vehicles including a fighter made out of the head.  Dangard Ace was boring ... all he could do was launch his rocket fists, fire some missiles from his fingers (IIRC) and his chest panels opened to reveal two big cannons / launchers that shot out some kind of energy bolt / torpedo.  It reminded me a lot of those battery operated robots from years earlier, the ones with the swing open chest doors and the sparkling chest cannons ... Dangard Ace sucked.

Raydeen also changed in the comic ... my Raydeen had a fist with a pair of ax blades on them.  In the comic, Raydeen didn't have a fist like that ... he had the shield with the spike and ... he had a bow!  A giant bow that fired explosive tipped arrows that were loaded from a hatch in his arm / fist.  Of course, that kind of Bo & Luke Duke technology applied to a giant robot seems kind of silly in hindsight but back then it was nothing short of awesome.
 
Each month I would go with my parents to Cloverleaf Mall and I would visit the big metal turn-rack at K&B Drugstore to see if the latest issue of Marvel Comics' "Shogun Warriors" had come in or not.  Each month that issue would get dog eared from heavy reading as I savored the next chapter in the adventures of Raydeen, Combattra and ... that other stupid big robot.


One of the neatest things about Raydeen, that I learned about him in the comic, was the fact that Raydeen could not only fly with rockets in his feet but for real speed he could transform into a hybrid mode, a streamlined robot bird form that was capable of supersonic flight and this form was called the "Firehawk" making Raydeen easily the fastest of the Shogun Warriors able to respond to a crisis.  In fact, in several instances in the comic, Raydeen takes off, converts to the supersonic Firehawk and is the first to show up at a problem with the other two Shogun Warriors eventually showing up long after Raydeen had landed and started handing the bad guys their ass.


How the conversion from Shogun Warrior to supersonic Firehawk took place can only be referred to as "magic" ... or maybe it uses the same technology that the Michael Keaton Batmobile uses for its armor plating when he says "Shields" and all of that plating comes out of nowhere and just covers the Batmobile in armor.

The full size Raydeen was a stiff toy, limited in movement ... in fact, it had no real movement short of its arms swinging up and down or rotating back and forth in a complete circle.  No manipulation, no ability to be posed.  Wheels on the bottom of the feet allowed Raydeen to roll along on smooth surfaces but pretty much this was a toy of pure imagination.  

That summer, for my birthday, I got another Raydeen ... this one was smaller, much smaller and it was made out of metal but it was poseable.  Not only did the face shields open and close but the legs bent and it could transform into the supersonic Firehawk mode.  

This version of Raydeen came with the bow and the spiked shield but it didn't come with any chest missiles.  Both fists, however, were spring loaded and launched.  The only problem was ... that version of Raydeen really had no good play value since I owned no other Shogun Warrior toys.  How I used that smaller Raydeen was much like Jet Jaguar from Godzilla, he was the real size able to interact with my green army men but when the need arose, he could change into the giant sized Raydeen to kick giant sized ass.

Worked for me.

The Shogun Warrior craze never really caught fire with me or my friends.  Together we had a handful of the toys ... I remember a giant Dragun, another had a giant Godzilla and Gaiking and another had a Mazinga (the early version with the removable spaceship in the head).  Together we had three or five of the small Shogun Warriors, there was my mid-size Raydeen and I had the Sky Arrow jet.

One interesting thing to note is that in the diecast toy offering there was the Liabe ... a spaceship which was featured in the Toho sci-fi epic "Message from Space" and a spaceship which has come to be known as the "Millennium Falcon of the Far East".  How it became part of the Shogun Warrior collection is probably an interesting story.

The Shogun Warriors were hot stuff for a while before finally fading away to nothing in 1980.  The toy line didn't have the staying power required to survive in the post-Star Wars era that 1977 to 1980 quickly became.  Toys were quickly changing in the late years of the 1970's.   Electronics were coming and computers were here.  Interactive toys like Milton Bradley's Starbird and Big Trak did amazing things, had flashing lights and sounds that simple toys like the Shogun Warriors simply didn't.   Also, like many other toys of the time, the Shogun Warriors line of toys were plagued with outrageous concerns for child safety based on children acting like total effing retards and shooting the shooty parts into their eyes, into the eyes of other children or shooting the shooty parts down their own throats and subsequently choking to death on the shooty parts (probably while the parents were in the other room playing Bridge or some other socially popular game at the time).  Normally, we would just chalk that up to a good case of Darwin and a bad case of parenting but the outcry was enough from lazy parents that manufacturers had to remove the fun parts of the toys because a few total retards had ruined it for the rest of us kids.  It was just more of the whole retarded liberal mindset that would continue to plague America in the years and decades to come ... the mindset where the needs of the few always outweigh the needs of the many.

If you want to know more about these toys, follow this link.

I no longer have Raydeen but I have some really good memories of that toy.  Even though I don't remember it, I'm sure that Raydeen was eventually decommissioned and sold to a private firm after which I have no idea what happened to him.  And by being decommissioned I mean that he had a dollar fifty price tag stuck to him one Saturday morning at my parents' annual garage sale and Raydeen went home with another child ... hopefully he had a few more adventures in him.  I hope to God he still had some adventures left in him and that he didn't wind up as a frequent, dress wearing guest at some little girl's tea party before he ultimately met the sad fate that most toys of childhood eventually face but for a while Raydeen was mine and while he was mine he was nothing short of awesome!

Mattel "Heroes In Action"

Command 'em!  Collect 'em!

Sometime in 1974 I was introduced to Mattel's "Heroes in Action" line of (somewhat) poseable toy soldiers and toys.  I was 5 years old at the time and Military toys, as one might expect, were kind of on the down side at that time since the (unpopular) Vietnam War was still going on.  Even Hasbro's "G. I. Joe" had started to show some pacifism by dropping his mean green attitude and adopting the motif of "Adventure Team" whereas Joe took up adventuring and tomb raiding rather than mercenary employment and clandestine wetwork.  I'd been playing with Marx toy soldiers and any of a half-dozen types and brands of "green army men" when I saw these toys for sale and it was love at first sight ... that big action display showing the figures, the demonstrator figure on its stand where you could move the tab on the base and here the "click-click-click" which, with a little bit of imagination sounded just like small arms fire.

Okay, maybe it didn't.  

Maybe it sounded like some cheap Halloween noise maker but moving that lever made the figure move, if only his torso and the figure would swing his torso from left to right and back again, spraying the enemy (whoever that was) with machinegun fire.

To say that, at the time, these guys were cooler than penguin nuts is an understatement and I eventually had a bucket full of them.  They were my first introduction to small action figures that not only could be posed but which also came with accessories and weapons that could be swapped between figures.  The Mattel "Heroes in Action" henceforth abbreviated simply as "HIA" in this post, were my first introduction my love affair of what would later evolve with the Kenner "Star Wars" action figures.  Mattel's "HIA" were so cool that they didn't even need an enemy ... you could just fight ... whatever ... with them and they would kick so much ass that no trace of the enemy remained.

The bases were always my favorite parts of the toy since they were so detailed ... we're talking Geoff Darrow detailed ... splintered wood, rubble, debris, strewn ammunition belts, broken open wood boxes with handgrenades spilling out ... detail.

The "HIA" were an interesting lot ... there were basically four upper torsos and three lower sets of legs (standing, squatting and sitting).  By rearranging the torsos with the legs, Mattel presented us with 12 different initial variations of figures including an officer with a soft cover ("cap" to you non-jarheads).  At first the "HIA" seemed to be intended for World War II but one quick look at the weapons showed that these were Vietnam era combatants.  Weapons included grenades (which slid onto the figure's hand), M60s, M3 "Grease Gun" SMGs, .45 Colt automatic pistols, bazookas, and flame throwers (complete with backpack fuel tanks!).  One of the weirder offerings was a soldier with a removable gas mask (that was hella cool!) who had a M60 with a rifle grenade on the end of it.  

Huh?

Even at that early age I understood that you couldn't shoot a rifle grenade off the end of a M60 machinegun!

 

The figures were sold individually, each variation came in a simple carded blister pack with accessories like a single weapon.  The officer came with a .45 Colt automatic pistol and a walkie-talkie.  The grenade guy came with a grenade and a M3 "Grease Gun".  Most of the expressions of the figures were their "war face" ... either that or they were terribly constipated from the K-rations.  There were mostly white guys (or really tanned guys) and a few black guys.

Larger offerings included three playsets - each with two figures included on a much larger, dual clicker base with accessories.  These were represented by the heavy machine gun crew (one guy sitting and firing a tripod mounted .50 HMG while the other threw grenades and gave covering fire with his M3 "Grease Gun" or M60), the Mortar Team (again two guys manning a crew served weapon) and the Anti-Tank Gun Team (two HIA with a Recoilless Rifle).  I had all three of those playsets and one other ... the "missile artillery" which was a trailer mounted missile (replete with classic 1970's white and black checkered stripe color scheme) that you could launch about five to eight feet across the room.  There was also a Jeep that I never had, a howitzer that I never had and a really heavily gunned helicopter gunship that I remember buying at Wilson's in Jackson, MS (Wilson's would later become Service Merchandise).  The helicopter had a number of unique features ... spinning main and counter rotor, a place for a figure to stand in the back and be a door gunner, wing mounted air to ground missiles, a rocket pod, two .50 heavy machine guns, a gatling gun and a weird laser cannon with antenna ... because I distinctly remember US Air Cav gunships, namely the Hueys, having laser cannons during the Vietnam War.  I think there was a winch as well but I can't be sure as time has made that memory fuzzy.  I played the hell out of that copter with my "HIA" figures ... I had a sandbox and I crashed that copter and half buried it and had my "HIA" figures do rescue attempts and recovery operations.  I played with it until the decals started to peel off and the parts vanished one by one.

 

Mattel's "HIA" became "SWAT" - Special Weapons And Tactics - and green became blue while obviously trying to pick up on the TV show of the same name's (then) wild pop-culture popularity

Sometime in 1976 ... Mattel took the olive drab "HIA" and colored their uniforms an urban semi-police blue and reissued the "HIA" as "SWAT" ... possibly because at that time there was a police / crime drama show on TV named "SWAT" that was really, really popular and had that catchy theme song that was a number one hit for the group "Rhythm Heritage" and was playing about every fifth song on the radio back then ...  Unfortunately the "SWAT" version of the "HIA" didn't really hit it off and the toy line folded shortly thereafter, especially in the blistering arrival of "Star Wars" on the big screen.

For what it was worth and while it lasted it was a grand time to be a kid and Mattel made it wonderful.

Shortly after Mattel's "HIA" entered my life another small line of action figures entered my playtime as well ... Fisher Price's "Adventure People."  The scale was close enough to warrant interaction between the two toy lines but like I began this post with ... talking about the Fisher Price "Adventure People" is going to have to wait for another time.

Mystery toy guns of my youth ...

I'm once again asking for help.  Does anyone remember a pair of toy guns from the early to mid 1970's?  The last time I saw them for sale was sometime in the mid 1970's, say 1975, and I want to say that Mattel produced them.  

They were very well built toys, on the high end in price.  

The first toy gun I remember was a pistol gripped full size carbine that fired plastic stripper caps fed single file into a removable magazine in the pistol grip.  The stock was pseudo-wood, more like dense pressed fake-wood that they used on car dashes on old Chevy Impalas.  It was a big gun, full size, adult and a childhood friend had one but the stock kept coming off (mainly because it was held on with one long screw which had become lost ...).  It looked almost Olympic in its design, it was metal and plastic and fake-wood and it weighed and cost almost as much as a decent Daisy BB gun at that time.  I've searched for years on Ebay just to see this toy again and maybe find one cheap enough to own but alas ...

The other toy gun was called "The Black Widow" and I think that Mattel made it as well.  It was a unique looking, wicked black revolver, more waspish than widow.  It had a long barrel, a metal cylinder and it took those 8 shot plastic ring caps that were easier to load than the paper caps but which were such a total step bitch to pry off once you had fired the entire bunch and the cap blasts had melted or distorted the cheap plastic.

I miss the smell of a good, lengthy cap gun fight ... the smoke, the odor wafting on the wind.  Precious childhood memories, filtered through the rays of light of a fast fading year in the cool fall.

Both toy guns were sold and packaged as being the equipment used by urban spec-ops / SWAT teams.  I'm pretty sure these guns came out the same time that Mattel painted their "Heroes In Action"  figures blue and reissued them as "SWAT".  Heroes In Action ... that's another post in the old neural queue soon to come your way.

Well, if else anyone remembers these two toy guns or you have more info on them, drop me a line.

Update - January 28, 2014 - Mystery solved ... I found the carbine in an old J.C. Penny Christmas catalog from 1976.  This item is listed as a "Crackfire Carbine" in one place and as a "Police Task Unit Carbine" under the picture.

The description (4) reads "Crackfire Carbine.  like the ones used by police task units.  Pistol grip holds full load of strip-shot caps (caps not included).  Release safety and fire - the caps eject automatically.  Black and woodgrain finished diecast metal and plastic.  34 1/2 inches long.  3.20 lbs. $9.99".

I'd be lying to you if I told you that, as a 6 year old and a first grader, way back in 1976, I didn't daydream about getting that army play uniform and military gun playset though I didn't like the camo scheme on the Tommy Gun.

Even a year later, as a 7 year old second grader, even being big for my age, this gun was hard to hold and play "guns" with.  It was heavy, too ... big, long and heavy so it wasn't a favorite.  I remember the dark colored packaging of the rifle and I want to say that my falliable childhood memory put this as being marketed as part of the Mattel "Heroes in Action" SWAT offerings.

Of special note is item number (8) - the Rango Rapid-Fire Rifle which would later be repackaged with an Ape mask as part of their Planet of the Apes offerings.  Doubt it?  See here?  Oh, those lazy toy manufacturers.  Mattel also repackaged their old Tommy Gun with an Ape mask as part of the same series though neither a lever action rifle or a Tommy gun was ever used by an Ape in the POTA series.  I'd be willing to go so far as to bet that the Western revolver offered as part of the POTA series toys was also a repackaged older toy.

And a few minutes after I found the mystery carbine I also lucked up on the Black Widow pistol ... it was offered by Mattel, part of the "Crackfire" series and listed as a SWAT offering.

Thank you, Internet, for helping me find the mystery toys of my youth though sometimes my memories are a bit fuzzy ... like the fact that I remembered this revolver had a larger frame / longer barrel but it seems remarkably like a lot of other similar cap revolvers of the time.  Strange ...

Marx Toys - M240 Machine Pistol

I had several of these when I was a kid ... back when "guns" were cool and a cool game to play.  Liberals cringe at the idea but my friends and I used to run around pretending to be gung-ho soldiers, using plastic toy guns to "shoot" each other and we'd die screaming, laying on the grassy lawn, under a blue Summer sky with all of that UV radiation just cooking our DNA.  When we got hot, we'd go drink out of outside water faucets or garden hoses and you know what ... we grew up normal.  Not one of my friends who ever spent the afternoon playing "guns" has ever shot another human being for any reason but especially spite.

Liberalism.  It's a neural disease, it really is, akin to severe mental retardation.

Anyway I digress ...

Here she is ... the Marx Toys M-240 Machine Pistol based on a design that never existed but would have been hellacool if it ever had.  Look at that oversized magazine with integral handgrip.  Feast your eyes on that elongated barrel with integral flash suppressor, that undersized grip, oversized trigger guard (which made it easy on cold Winter days to play "guns" because your gloved finger could get into that trigger guard) and the fake 1x power see-through optical scope on top.  The M-240 Machine Pistol was sold under many incarnations but mine usually came packaged in a simple cardboard box ... I want to say that the tag / logo was "Johnny Combat" but I can't be sure about something that was over 40 years ago for me, personally.

Pulling the trigger of the M-240 activated a simple sound system which made a sound like a stuttering horny yak that had fallen down a well.  I can't say it was what a real machine pistol would sound like but it did make a fairly decent "rat-a-tat-tat" sound and on cold Winter afternoons, pulling on that trigger was nothing short of glorious because you didn't have to scream out machinegun like sounds with your own lungs and that kept you warmer longer ... and your lungs from burning from the cold Winter air.

The main problem with the Marx M-240 Machine Pistol was that the area where the barrel attaches to the main body was prone to weakness, cracking and breaking.  If you took a pretty realistic death roll, you had better protect your M-240 Machine Pistol from hitting the ground too hard or ... crack ... you suddenly had a snub-nosed machine pistol and back in those days we didn't have stuff like epoxy or Superglue so it was back to the Quartermaster (parents) who disposed of the damaged / destroyed M-240 Machine Pistol (in the garbage) and went to the local Woolco, Kmart, Roses or Zaires to purchase / assign you a new one from the ordinance locker (their wallet or purse).  These things retailed (way back then) for about $3 but you have to realize that $3 in 1973 was about $10 to $15 today so while they were cheap they were not cheap and the Quartermaster (parents) would not be pleased if you repeatedly twatted up your issued weapon of choice.

It was years, nay, decades before I remembered the cherished Marx Toys M-240 Machine Pistol and about ten years ago I lucked up on one on Ebay and bought it pretty cheap (like $20).  It works wonderfully and is almost brand new.  Right now it is in storage but I have a dream of turning one section of one wall in my study / man cave into an arsenal displaying all of the cherished (toy) firearms of my youth ... the M-240 Machine Pistol, a plastic "rapid fire" M-16, the Marx M-16 with pull back bolt and reciprocating red tip, the Marx submachinegun with same reciprocating tip, and a host of others.  I'm getting there, slowly but surely and each new purchase is an adventure in and of itself.

To the kids growing up today who are being socially programmed to hate guns and to think of guns as evil objects all I can say is that my childhood was better than yours ... it was so much better than yours because I didn't spend my childhood getting indoctrinated on how to be a whiny, thin-skinned sissy who complained about getting grass stains on their clothes when they played or worried about getting hit by the dodge ball when it came my turn to be the target.

That's one of the problems with this once great country ... we don't educate our children any more, we indoctrinate them in pre-planned social behavior.  We teach them that wrong is right and right is wrong.  We breed out of them any kind of aggressiveness and assertiveness and in the name of being gentle and fair we've raised entire generations of useless human beings who can't fend for their selves and can't think for their selves.

Pity that.

Processed Plastic Company "Star Patrol" figures remembered!

Back in the late 1970's when STAR WARS first came out, a lot of toymakers were caught by surprise ... George Lucas had not only created a supernova in the science fiction film genre but he created a bottomless pit (full of money) in the space toy genre.  


Like I've said before, my early years were spent playing with Hasbro's Action Team 12" G.I. Joe and "green army men" mostly from companies like Processed Plastics and Marx.  When STAR WARS appeared on the scene, I quickly transitioned from G.I. Joe and army men to Kenner's STAR WARS action figures.  Oh, I remember the "Early Bird" set (mail order for Luke, Leia, R2D2 and Chewbacca) and waiting for the figures to hit the stores locally.  Then I remember spending the next year and a half trying to find the three hardest figures of the first twelve to ever get; Sand People, Death Squad Commander (why would you name a child's toy that?!) and the Jawa.

Memories.

Well, George Lucas showed everyone that science fiction could not only sell at the box office but it could sell at the toy department as well.  Lo and behold, Processed Plastics, one of my old friends and childhood toy provider, noticed this fact and produced a line of "space" themed army men under the "Laser Team" and "Star Patrol" name lines.  The figures were pretty cool, for space army men, and you had your stereotypes as set by STAR WARS a year or so before.

STAR PATROL (with X-Wing Rocket) - a bag of fun and good times
from Processed Plastic Company, Montgomery Illinois. 
At $1.47, it was a bargain to any child.

So, the Star Patrol figures included a Han Solo type character (complete with space helmet and poised ray gun), a Chewbacca type character (big hairy alien with a big laser rifle), a Darth Vader type character (ominous death knight type with raised energy sword / lightsaber), Princess Leia type (skirted space chick in high boots standing next to a computer console), R2D2 type (a square, thin robot on two legs), a space monster (a cross between a turtle and a lobster and I swear I'd seen it before in some kind of '50's campy movie), and finally two Apollo era astronauts looking way out of place with the rest of the figures. 

The Apollo astronauts were simply blown up examples of the two astronauts that came with one of Processed Plastic Company's other space toys - the three stage Apollo rocket with blast off capsule (I had probably 3 of those growing up).

One of the more interesting rip-offs of this offering was the "X-Wing Rocket" - a blatant rip-off of the X-Wing fighter from STAR WARS.  But what is an "X-WING ROCKET"?  Well, to put it bluntly, it's an F-16 with an extra pair of wings and all four wings are raised / lowered into an "X" pattern.  Processed Plastic had previously issued a large scale (1:48?) plastic toy of a F-16 jet fighter, complete with opening cockpit (the whole top of the front of the jet actually opened) and detailed pilot (I was and still am a big fan of cockpits, pilots and control systems in toys and models ... I hated toy planes and models of planes that didn't come with detailed cockpits or pilots so even at a young age I was kind of a toy snob / connoisseur with high standards for what I would play with or what I would spend my childhood time letting entertain me).

Processed Plastic Company F16 ... you'll note the two, count them, two Vulcan cannon gun ports, one to each side whereas the real F16 only has one ...

Well, not really wanting to tool up another toy design when they had a perfectly good futuristic looking shape to begin with (and the F16 is called the "Viper" by its pilots, a homage to the three engined Colonial space fighter seen in Battlestar Galactica (the old series, the good series) so the guys at Processed Plastic Company took their F16 Fighting Falcon  toy, added a pair of wings (four total), shifted those wings to an X-configuration, renamed it to be an "X-WING ROCKET" and ta-dah!  Instant shelf filler geared towards the kid who just couldn't get enough space toys in their life.

 Here's a prime example of this toy, still in the (slightly shelf worn)  box, still with the K-Mart "gold key" sticker on it.  I recently picked it up on Ebay for $7.99 (and about double that for shipping and fondling).  Now it rests in my study as another reminder of one of the greatest childhoods that any kid ever had.

I remember these toys, as a child, being brand new on the toy shelves of stores like Woolco (RIP), K-MART (almost RIP) and others.  This was a large size, say 1:48 scale toy of the much smaller toy included in the LASER TEAM and STAR PATROL figure bags.  A lot of people didn't know about this toy but if you're a fan of the LT or SP toys and you thought that the little rocket plane that came with it was unique, I'm here to tell you that Processed Plastic made a much, much larger toy of it ... complete with opening cockpit and detailed pilot (so it passed my standards of entertainment for a toy plane).

But I never owned one of these ... by the time that Processed Plastic was filling the shelves with these toys I had moved on to other interests ... like fast cars, girls and heavy metal music.  Still, it's an interesting artifact from the supernova that STAR WARS ignited ... the X-WING ROCKET, also sold in a larger scale as the "Rocket Fighter" - the short range space fighter.  It mounted two Vulcan cannon ports and four big, fat Sidewinder missiles (which were removable for play).  I have two of these now, this boxed one and a loose one that is red and white with play scuffs, missing decals and faded chrome on the missiles.  When people visit my study, it's one of the first things that they see and they invariably have to hear the story behind this toy that they've never heard of.

If you're a fan of the old Processed Plastic "STAR PATROL" or "LASER TEAM" figures, there's great news!  A company has acquired the molds for these toys and is both reproducing them and selling them again!  Amazon.com has the goods and here is the link as well as a picture.  Go get a bag of them and decorate your desk at work ... it's sure to invite comment and discussion from others who knew these toys and remembered them well.

 

Reissued Classic Tim-Mee Star Patrol Figures

Big damn heroes

Patience is one of the most important tools you can ever have at your disposal in life but especially when you're after something on Ebay and after several months my Ebay search netted me a reasonably priced copy of Bandai's "Heroes of Space" (featuring authentic former NASA astronauts).  The price tags on the box are for KB Toys ($17.99 scratched out and $9.99 written in), below that is a Toy Works price of $4.99 and on the left side of the box is yet another price sticker from Savers, showing a date of 2/23/11 and a price of $3.99.

I paid $19.99 for it on Ebay.  Seems a bit much since this toy has evidently bounced around a  few resellers in the last two decades and hit almost rock bottom for its price but consider that $19.99 is probably a little less than what this toy cost brand new, it is still in the box complete, and I have it in my studio now so ... the price is right.

The copyright on this toy is apparently 1990 so it's over two decades old (and part of the renewed interest in the 20th anniversary of the Moon Landing back then).  I vaguely remember seeing this toy when it was new (I think it was offered in the local Books A Million store) but I had no interest in it then.  My interest now is purely art, I have a thing for astronauts and the space program, part of my interest in macabre art.  Anyway, I've seen this set going for nearly $100 on Ebay so getting it for a fifth of that price is a bargain.  I'd already picked up the Alan Bean figure a few weeks back, sans helmet, and turned him into "Palinurus" (aka "Skully") which was supposed to be the dead astronaut mascot for my art studio "Spontaneous Necessities" ...

Here's a quicky of "Skully" ... the oversized skull gives him a SuperDeformed kind of caricature look that I'm not sure I'm happy with or not.  In a few months when the Halloween super stores start to reopen and the local craft stores stock skeletons and skulls and other good stuff I'll take Alan Bean with me and fit him for something more his size.  As it is, the pack of skulls that I have seem to be about 1:6 scale or the size of a 12" action figure.

In hindsight, maybe he shouldn't have taken his helmet off on the Moon ... that tends to ruin your complexion.

The goal of this project was to produce a "dead" astronaut toy that was somewhat realistic.  It became more of a superdeformed mascot but I think I'm going to steer the project back to the original goal.  The three astronauts are going to get skulled and detailed while the loose figure will probably get more of the mascot treatment.

Knicker Bocker guns

Recently while looking on Ebay I came across an auction for three old Knicker Bocker brand toy guns.  The price was right, at just ten bux plus shipping and fondling and so I picked them up as the only bidder.  The problem is that all three are broken in some form or the other ... the six shooter at top is missing its trigger guard, the big "auto-mag" on the bottom is missing part of the back side of the barrel (other side not shown, exposing the rusty spring that used to propel what looks like a sizable suction cup tipped dart) and the middle pistol is missing its trigger ... among other things.

I purchased this lot for the middle pistol because something about it stirred a childhood memory ... these guns are all from the late '60's so they were probably well played with by the time I was old enough to enjoy them in the early '70's and I swear that when I lived in Jackson, MS from late '74 till the late part of '76 that one of my friends had the middle pistol and that I played with it at some time or the other during one of our many neighborhood games of "guns".  

What makes the middle pistol so unique is that it is a combination toy ... it is both a spring loaded dart pistol and a water gun (hence the dual trigger array).  The water stream is pumped out from the front top sight of the pistol while the dart would have loaded into the open barrel (even now I can still remember the sound of that dart spring being compressed ...).



The middle pistol is damaged in many ways ... it came with no dart, it has two holes straight through it (near the medallion) which makes me think that it once was shot with a BB gun at close range and some of the filigree etching on the barrel is partially melted and smeared meaning this toy got near a source of heat at one point in its long career.

And just how long has this toy gun been around?  Well, looking at the various stamps on the pistol I find the following information:

KNICKERBOCKER

NO. HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.

PAT.NOS. 2,678,753, 2,724,528

OTHER PATS PEND

On the left hand side of the pistol is a long gold "plaque" which reads "THE UNTOUCHABLES".

On both sides of the handgrips are a pair of medallions with some kind of Colonial or Quaker type town crier holding a banner in front of him with chains dangling on each end.

On the lower part of the left front of the pistol is perhaps the real mystery ... there is stamped script here which reads:

LANGFORD PRODS. INC 1960

DESILU PRODS. INC.

Now, if you are not familiar with DESILU Productions then let me just say that it was a company owned by the husband and wife team of ... Desi Arnaz and Lucile Ball (of the "I Love Lucy" show fame).  If anyone ever had one of these or has any information on this toy, let me know as I'm curious about its origins, "The Untouchables" name plate and this toy's relation to the DESILU Productions studio.

1960?!?!

This pistol could be nine years older than I am!  It's when I hold an old toy like this in my hands and think about it that I wonder ... was this a birthday present or a Christmas present for some little boy?  Was it cherished?  Was it desired?  Did it give hours of play to some child in a town or neighborhood far, far away?  Each toy has its own set of stories and that's what makes toys, especially old toys, used toys, special.  This toy gun could very well be 52 years old ... and it's still neat as hell to look at and hold and think about.

As for why I purchased this lot of broken guns, it was the middle gun, the mystery gun, which really caught my eye.  The waspish shape to it was pleasing to the eye and since I was on my Leif Ericson cerebral safari (see previous post), and since I had decided to mock up some 1:1 scale examples of sidearms for that postulated universe, seeing this pistol made it a natural for a sidearm in the LE fiction that I had cobbled up.

So ... please welcome the latest addition to the kitbashing section of the work bench: the Federation WASP sidearm where WASP stands for Wide Application Service Phaser.  The name matches the design and with a little sanding, a little filing, a little filling, some greebles and some paint the WASP is going to be the standard issue service sidearm for the Federation crews in the Leif Ericson universe.

Stay tuned, this project will be coming to "Grey Stuff" soon.

Well, I'm off on another cerebral safari ...

It's been a really busy ten days and I haven't had time to sit down and do much more than sketch out some ideas and do a little bit of thinking.  I was at the end of my wick, basically, and just needed some time to veg.  A week ago Friday I did manage to stop by my local hobby shop on my way home and finally picked up my AMT Leif Ericson Galactic Cruiser model kit.  I won't go into a lot about this kit because what I could say has been said before and maybe said better by others.

The Leif Ericson had a very interesting history including its relative failure as a new line of model kit for AMT way back in the late 1960's.  Fast forward to the mid-'70's when the LE was re-issued not as the LE but as a "Interplanetary U.F.O. Mystery Ship" which looked a lot less like anything traditionally associated with UFOs and more like something from the Gerry Anderson TV Series "UFO".  In fact, I've often thought that the LE had a lot in common with the SHADO SkyDiver ... and that if you put the LE in an ocean it would have fit in a universe pretty much like the one that brought us the SHADO SkyDiver and of course Irwin Allen's "Seaview" submarine from "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea."

 

Anyway, way back in 1978 the first time that I had this kit (or knew of it) was as a 9 year old newly anointed sci-fi fanatic and the LE was given to me in its second format ... the AMT glow-in-the-dark "Interplanetary UFO Mystery Ship" (because UFOs and Bigfoot and ESP were all big / hot topics in the 1970's).  I received this kit along with the AMT "K-7 Space Station" model kit as a Christmas gift at a Christmas party at my dad's place of work (then First Magnolia Federal Bank where he was VP).  

 The original kits I received at that Christmas party oh so long ago ...

I'm really glad that these kits have been reintroduced and are affordable because with no real canon background (and a rather limited background as it is), a kit like this is just waiting to be fleshed out.  There's a lot of talk over on the Starship Modeler discussion forums about this kit but most if not all of that is simply about the LE itself.  Some of the discussion was interesting but when it was decided by group to have the evil alien race in the LE "universe" to be called the "Zork Empire" I had to throw my hands up and walk away.

That was years ago and my interest in the LE was put on the back burner amid other projects (like writing about 1200 pages of the adventures of my life).  Fast forward a few years and Round 2 has bought up the molds from AMT and re-released a cherished childhood memory.  The Leif Ericson is now available in two flavors; Original and Extra Crispy (or LE and Ghost Ship).

 

Original recipe (with original artwork, lighting kit, ooolala!) 

 Extra crispy recipe (missing a few pieces that the original LE kit contains)

Isn't life grand?

Anyway, lately I'd started thinking about the Leif Ericson / IUFOMS again and decided to finally do something about it.  I had some spare time one night so I sat down and just started typing out a history of the LE universe, real stream of consciousness type stuff.  Three glasses of sweet tea and one hour later I had basically almost 30 pages of history, notes, things I wanted to do with the model, technology, political and social movements, etc. and of course a worthy protagonist for the LE ... and it damn sure isn't the Zork Empire.

Zork?

Gah.


In fact, I've pretty much thrown out everything about the Leif Ericson and the Strategic Space Command other than the name of the ship and the design of the ship as well.  Two of the things that I threw out first were the scale debate and the duck-looking scoutship.  If you sand off the lightly pressed portholes in the ship you can make it any scale you want and I'm thinking that it's more of the 1/600 scale rather than the 1/500 that everyone is so happy with.  As for the mini scout ship ...

Quack-Quack!  Now with Doric style landing gear!

Starting from scratch has been the best thing about this project because it gives me a chance to combine a lot of scratch-building and intellectual projects that I've been meaning to get to together under one focus.

So, with the new re-release of the LE (and my probable purchase of at least two more examples of this kit) work begins on a new intellectual diversion and cerebral safari for me.  Look for updates on the Gray Stuff part of my webplace.  Here's a hint ... I'm building the bad guys first and I'm building them from scratch just because no one else has been building the bad guys.  


Why?  


I like to do stuff that other people aren't doing and I like to do it first so that others can follow in my footsteps but then that's just me.