The Dinky Space Fleet

One would be foolish to go up against the Dinky armada in the late 1970s.....

Kal-if-fee!

Forgive the deeply nerdy title, after years of getting outbid, I finally landed an AHI Mr Spock Bop bag for a decent price. I was shocked to see how small the box really was! Curiousity over this piece made me whip it out of the box and inflating my Vulcan sparring partner.

Spock does indeed look punchable but at only 3 feet tall, it's hardly a fair fight.

Speaking of fights, there is absolutely no way I can get this thing back into the box without destroying it. Anybody good with origami?


More AHI links:

 

The human adventure is just beginning...

Star Trek : The Motion Picture holds a special place in my heart but the rack toys don't hold a candle to the cool stuff companies like AHI put out for the original series. AHI made a myriad phaser guns, flying enterprises and parachuting spocks,  Larami gave us ...wallets.

Wallets that are exactly the same  in every way to the Buck Rogers, CHiPs and Mighty Mouse Wallets they produced that year. Although two points to Larami for using all those cool aliens developed for the first film on the packaging. I particularly like the ensign that looks like Steven Wright.

And yes, I do own this and have contemplated using it in regular life.

 

Check out our upcoming book!

Scenes from Toyfair 1976

If there is a toy company that I would like to have a catalog from, it'd be Shindana, they made some neat-o toys in the mid seventies and their president had the world's greatest sideburns.

A shot of the 1976 Azrak Hamway booth shows the two different sizes of Mr. Spock Bop Bags. It's funny to read an article where the person has no idea what Star Trek is...

British Phaser

I'm a sucker for purty toy packaging and these shots of the UK version of the Star Trek Phaser just had me drooling. It's so nice that I'll forgive the dye job on Shatner's hair. Thanks to Ebay seller retrotoyboy for letting me use these.

More Trekky things to look at:

Dreams of Glory

Ok, I would so totally use a set of these on my bed today. This picture also features one of my favourite things, the use of toys in the child's bedroom set. For some reason, I really like that extra detail, I probably need to get out more. That's the Dinky Toys Enterprise by the way, one of the cooler 70's Star Trek Toys IMO.

Nothing says "1976" more than the Six Million Dollar Man and Evel Knievel, the matching curtains are just too cool. That's an Ideal Evel crash car on the nightstand BTW. I slept in a hammy down bed which you couldn't get kids sheets for, so I had to settle for pillow cases, if you had these, I envy you.

Colouring Book Theatre : Star Trek

Today's colouring book comes from Sharry aka Hardygirl and it's one I'm excited to have here.

Star Trek was always on when I was growing up thanks to my sister's obsession with William Shatner, I was convinced as a kid that it was a filmation saturday morning series like Ark 2.

In the 70's most Star Trek merchandise was aimed at kids, there was something really charming about that.

The book is titled "Planet Ecnal's Dilemma" and it's by Whitman, one of the higher profile players in the trillion dollar colouring book industry. It's also one of the nicest books I've seen.

Sharry tells me the story begins with the enterprise going to the planet Ecnal who has asked the Enterprise for help because their planet is dying. I hate to be nerdy but check it out, they got Sulu right. That sounds weird but I have a Power record where they made him black.

Again, nice detail on the crew, Deforest Kelly must have loved how he was defined by his wrinkles.

It's rare in mid seventies Trek merchandise to get so many details right, if you look at old Gold Key comics at the time, the Enterprise has flames coming out the back and the bridge has large devices on it with humungous dials and levers.

The crew discover that planet Ecnal is dying, what could be causing this?

Spock does some science stuff to figure it out and for some reason dresses like a pharmicist from the 50's.

Turns out it's another alien race (the Lerows) draining the life energy from Ecnal, these aliens look a little over budget for the original series but right in place with the animated show.

Kirk takes off his shirt, makes love to their women and blows up a computer, I won't bore you with those pages, it all works out in the end. Thanks Sharry for this awesome book!

Got a colouring book you'd like to guest review? Drop me a line!

Previous Colouring Book Theatre Entries can be found here.

Coming Next Week: Superman!