The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Arcade prize dinos!

 

As I write this, I'm 2 days past the deadline for my weekend post, and I still don't have a dino blog for this month. To get in one more thing, I literally dug through storage for something I could use, which brought me to a trio of dinos I had considered on and off for a while. Behold the glory of the megalosaur when I got it, ca 2017!

Now, as always, there's backstory, in this case involving some people I've been out of touch with. The upshot is that for a while, I was going to an old-fashioned-ish arcade/ restaurant/ general purpose rec center on the far end of the metro area where I live. Of course, they had impressive collection of junk prizes, of which these were in fact the most conceivably valuable. So, of course, I collected quite a lot of other stuff before I gave a thought to saving up points for these. Here's the pair of dinos I got on The Couch Mark 2.

"Grr. Raarr... Come on, this only works if you get into it."

As it happens, in years since, I've seen the predator of this pair listed as the "worst" dino, presumably by people who have had the good fortune never to encounter the Hideous Abomination in the wild. I have to say I like it. Obviously, it's bad, but it has a charming kind of obsolescence. In many ways, it feels like something out of the Crystal Palace, if anything a little more accurate than many of that time. It falls into the description of a megalosaur, especially for the time frame when that was a semi-generic designation for a therepod. The prey is harder to classify. It also would look at home in the Victorian era, even somewhat forward-thinking for the time. It isn't an iguanodon or a hadrosaur. In most respects, it looks like a hypsylophodont, which was presumably what the crew was going for whether they knew it or not. What's startling is how meek and seemingly terrified it is in both form and posture. It's the perfect prey. But then there was something else in the bin that took a little more digging to find for this post. Here's a pic.

It might look like a missing link between a pig and a walrus, but it took only a little inspection to be sure that this was indeed a dicynodont, one of the many creatures that is not only not a dinosaur but more closely related to us than the dinosaurs (see my zombie synapsid post, and for that matter the adventures of Chelsea the (bad) social worker). It's not great, but it's a rare enough thing to find a synapsid other than Dimetrodon in a prize bin, so I snapped it up. Here's a couple more pics.

So beautiful, and so hideous...

And that's just enough to fill out a dino blog for the month. What I like about doing this feature is that I always have flexibility whether to go long or short. While I'm at it, here's one more completely ridiculous thing I fished out... Yes, that is a friction toy.

Oh, and that would be a velociraptor skull in the background; that is quite good.

That's all for now, more to come!

Mystery Monday: The Marx Moonship!

 

It's time for my 2nd planned week of posts this month, and it happens I have something backlogged. As an extra twist, I had already prepared both pics for a blog post and a video on the matter more than a week ago. Rather than do an immediate post, I included a photo with my Space Guys adventure demo. I used the intervening time debating what to do, and of course decided nothing until it was almost too late. What I settled on was to put up the video first, and use this post to follow up with a deeper dive. This was indeed a long, strange trip worthy of a feature that started with a figure I needed 30 years to identify. To kick things off, here are pics of my unassembled Marx Moonship.

Now for the details, for this adventure, I actually started off with the bare outline of the facts, which is more than I have often had to work with. This is a reissue of the Moonship, one of a ludicrous number of accessories originally included with Marx's Operation Moon Base playset in 1962. I had already featured the two other most noteworthy specimens in a previous post outside this feature, the space station and the Flash Gordon-y tower thingy. Unlike those venerable fixtures, however, the Moonship did not have an afterlife in the later Marx playsets. As further recounted by my lapsed correspondent Steve Nyland/ Space Trucks, the original Moonship has long since sunk out of sight except in astronomically expensive complete examples of the Moon Base playset. 

That brings us to the present specimen. It has been offered online for a while now. What is obvious is that the craft is black instead of blue, and the mold for the upper half was substantially modified, turning what looked like tail fins on the original (I have thought of them as retractable) into a more filled-out and decidedly redundant set of wings. It is also apparent that this was done to make the craft look more like a stealth bomber, which was in fact a part of the tailless/ delta wing lineage that presumably inspired the original toy.  That puts the origin of these things around the 1980s, if not later. The modified design is also missing two openings that appear to have been part of a firing mechanism for a pair of rockets/ missiles, which fits the controversies over such things in the early '80s timeframe. The most curious part is that these are coming out unassembled in sealed bags, with the included missiles still attached to the frame. This means either that someone is making these things from recovered molds, or (as I have opined to be far more likely) they have just been sitting around for an indefinite amount of time. The bottom line is that even the person or persons selling them probably don't really know. Here are a few pics of the unassembled components with the Truckstop Queen, who hasn't been coming out much lately; she's still definitely bigger than the thing she's being a reference model for, but it's much closer than usual.

And here's the absolutely awful missiles, which fall right out without the springs.

Another detail here is that the nose piece (actually half of one since it's only in the upper part) is definitely an addition. My initial assumption was that this was a replacement for a lost piece, but when I looked into it, I confirmed that original specimens are simply open at the front, reportedly so kids could aim through a corresponding hole at the back. I very seriously considered knocking the added piece right out, but I quickly concluded it's not going anywhere without using a knife. I will also mention, there is a horrendous amount of flash on the modified leading edge of the wings. After accidentally putting a notch in one trying to remove it (after all the photos were taken), I took a file to them. It helped, but they're still rough. Here's some shots of the assembled plane, usually with the nose visible. You may notice a couple ships to one side that will figure below.

Wow, you can really see that flash...

Now for the actually interesting question, just how did Marx get the idea for this conceptually very advanced design? It really does anticipate the space shuttle, and in fact is in some ways more  sophisticated. With my usual encyclopedic random knowledge and further research, it wasn't hard to find precursors. The bare idea of a triangular tailless aircraft was put to use in the Vulcan bomber among others. The further idea of turning such a design into a returnable air-to-space craft can be traced at least back to the semi-infamous Silbervogel Nazi drawing-board superweapon (see Jalopnik, if anything), which I turned into the Tottenkarte for the Exotroopers adventures. (I just might have to reuse my joke scenarios from that anti-series for the Space Guys adventure to make sense.) Of course, there were intermediate outgroups in this conceptual lineage, most intriguingly the Convair shuttlecraft concept from about the same time the toy came out. The picture that emerges is a toy that did incorporate some very good ideas, without coming out too far ahead of its own time.

Then there's one last thing. Ever since I discovered its existence, I have been absolutely certain that this was the basis for the arrowhead ship in my immortal arcade prize collection, which I had already traced to the Diener Space Raiders line. Here's a pic to illustrate my case. The funny thing is, in many ways, the prize ship fits what I've been picturing better than the original.

And this is where I wrap this up. This really has been fun, despite the frustrating Wall of Nothing on many of my questions. As I said in the video, If you like Marx space stuff, get this one while you can. That's all for now, more to come!

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs Special: Field Museum unboxing!

 

I'm a day late with my second off-week post, and I'm taking a break from other things to cover another chapter on my big vacation. I previously covered a selection of Mold-A-Rama dinos I got during my trip to the Chicago Field Museum (see also the space capsule and broken plane). As a follow-up, I put in an order from the museum's online giftshop for stuff I either didn't find in-person or wasn't confident I could stuff into the only suitcase I could afford to carry. As it turned out, I only got 2 out of 3 items I ordered, but those two were enough to fill out a post and also a video. Here's a few pics of the main attraction, a Tarbosaurus bataar from CollectA, with a 1/72 Dino Riders Diplodocus for reference.

"Why does a dinosaur 5-10 times my size need guns???"

As noted, this is supposed to be a representation of T. bataar, T. rex's closest relative and probably the second-largest carnosaur of the very late Cretaceous (see my T. rex Vs post and video). While it lived somewhat earlier than the last known Rexes, it's clear that it was a parallel lineage rather than an ancestor, with some features more "advanced" than T. rex including even smaller arms. It coexisted with animals including Therizinosaurus, Saurolophus and Deinocheirus, which got it a place in my misbegotten first novel (see also the Lego dino post). It was, at least through the 1990s-2000s, probably the best known tyrannosaurid, represented by a range of good-quality adult and juvenile specimens. Per conventional wisdom, the largest T. bataar individuals were about half the size of Rex, but the fans are not yet convinced.

Now for this guy, he comes from a manufacturer I've found to be rather notorious among paleo collectors, previously sighted as the manufacturer of my very anatomically correct Uintatherium. Before finalizing my order, I found a review of the same one from 2010, which confirmed that this was going to be old on arrival. Indeed, an inspection confirmed a copyright date of 2009 (printed in a way that flattens out the chest). The old sculpt is further indicated by the incorrect orientation of the arms, though that still turns up in far more recent dinos. I also noted several whitish spots where the paint had worn off, presumably either in shipping or just from clonkings during very long storage. Here's a pic of the underside.

What interested me was that the height was listed as 1.5 inches, which would have been so unusually small as to offer potentially greater collector value than a big one. I unpacked it with several toys already prepared for reference. It was immediately clear that this was much taller than that, though still smaller than usual outside of the bagged sets. Here's a pic of the thing with a Galaxy Laser Team commander, previously confirmed to be 2" exactly, and the original/ mini Processed Plastic version, which is about 1.5". All in all, the GLT astronaut comes out at about the right size.

I think the amall size contributed to And here's some more reference pics, with the 1" Dino Rider people. I also threw in a toy soldier from a much larger group that I got mostly from a bulk bag and partly from capsule toys about 10 years ago, many of which look like WW1 infantry. Ironically, a 1.5" dino would have been a good fit for these. Not that I was planning a gruesome battle scene...

And here his with Sidekick Carl and the Construx driver, aka Agent John Carter. It might not be clear here, but the Construx guy is exactly the same height as the dino, which comes out as 3" pretty much straight up.

All in all, this is still a very good dino.. It is at least a dynamic and reasonably modern pose. The "real" probllems are quite subtle. The skin is a bit wonky, like a plucked chicken, and it's a lot rougher than it really should be at this scale. The shape of the head also feels like an awkward compromise. Yes, T. bataar had a proportionately longer and narrower head than Rex. However, the difference wouldn't be this pronounced except on a young individual. This is where the small scale helps. You can call it a juvenile, a T. bataar, an Alioramus, etc, and it will fit the science.

And while I'm at it, here's the other half of the order, a ludicrously gigantic Quetzalcoatlus!

And how about a few more pics from my trip?

Maximo!!!

Mazon Creek!!!

Sue!!!

Winston???

Pareiasaur... almost in frame.

And the man-eating lions... or possibly framed.

And that's all for now, a lot more to come!

Futures Past: A return to Philip K. Dick

 It's the end of an off week, and I've been debating how to round things out. I decided it was time to follow up on a post from a while ago, on Philip K. Dick. Last time, I was looking at two particular Philip K. Dick anthologies, one of which I admitted ridiculously limited familiarity with. This time, I'm back for a rematch, with a marginally better grasp of what I'm talking about, and I'll be going through in more detail some of the best, most interesting and in some cases most frustrating stories from Philip K. Dick, starting with some from the first volume of his collected stories.

"Beyond Lies The Wub"- This one is best known as Dick's first publication, in the July 1952 issue of the notorious Planet Stories (the source for the image above). Last time, I allowed it as a "classic" with obvious reservations; now, I'm ready to admit I was still doing it a disservice. An expedition to Venus buys a creature called a Wub from the natives, which looks like local livestock. It proves to be an intelligent and very talkative creature that wanted to come along. Alas, the captain wants to kill the creature, not because it's a potentially dangerous organism that might have ulterior motives, but because he wants to eat it. It doesn't sound like much from a synopsis or even a casual reading; on closer examination, however, it's an early glimpse of Dick in top form and an unnerving tale to boot. This is true tragedy and horror, where the comic twists only add to the perversity of the proceedings.

"The Skull"- Possibly the first Dick tale to deal with religion, and already showing his uneasy relationship with Christianity. A convict is offered a pardon in return for killing the founder of a cult, centuries in the past. The best that can be said is that this probably didn't seem as obvious in 1952.

"The Defenders"- And this gives us an even more definitive Philip K. Dick "twist", except that the big reveal is that things are a lot better than they seem. Humans in underground bunkers rely on robots to continue fighting a war that has wiped out the surface world, but the machines are reluctant to let them back in the loop. It's an interesting take on artificial intelligence, but it just doesn't feel quite right for Dick.

"The Piper In The Woods"-  A psychologist is sent to investigate why the staff of an outpost on another planet keep deserting. It's subversion even more harmless than "The Defenders"; next...

"Meddler"- And another time travel tale. A top secret project has been looking into the future, but when the future keeps looking worse, they must send someone to the future to learn the fate of humanity. What starts as a fascinating and forward-thinking take on history, fate and the observer effect ends as a routine monster yarn. The only surprise is that Dick couldn't do better.

"To Serve The Master"- Now I'm into The Philip K. Dick Reader with one I mentioned last time. Centuries after an apocalyptic war that most have forgotten a young man discovers a damaged robot during his errands for his impoverished colony. The bot tells him of a time when machines did the work and let humans live in luxury, until killjoys decided to do away with robots. Finally, the boy helps repair the bot, only to discover that his elders have been keeping back the other side of the story. I have rated this one highly because its exceptional brutality and an especially sympathetic protagonist, but it's another tale that feels just a little off. To me, it feels like a rare occasion where Dick let his antiauthoritarian leanings overcome the natural directions of a story. As usual, there is one side that is clearly lying and one side that could still be wrong. The problem is that there is no logical reason for the side that won to be silent until it is possibly too late, beyond the fact that it provides a dilemma for the hero.  What's disappointing is that in a Dick story, the police, politicians and other authority figures are normally sincere and rational even if they are in the wrong. Worse the outward plot convenience undermines the very themes that set it in his body of work. The point of propaganda is that you don't just keep your side from hearing an opposing view; you tell your version first and loudly and often thereafter. Dick of all people knows this better than anyone. Without that anchoring reality, it's little if anything more than a poignantly beautiful misfire.

"Exhibit Piece"- A nice one I don't believe I had read until after my original post. A man living the Eisenhower suburban dream starts to see signs that his world isn't what it appears to be, and he just might know more about it than he admits to himself. This is a satirical tale that feels all the more savage in light of the surge of 1950s nostalgia around the time of Dick's posthumous renaissance, now fading into more distant memory. It also offers an apt window on the overlapping worlds of collectors, model builders, and history enthusiasts, always in uproar over minutiae at the expense of deeper truth.

"War Veteran"- A visitor from the future arrives amid tensions between Earth and colonies on other planets, telling a tale of a war that will end in disaster for Terra. This is another Dick tale with a happy ending that is poorer for it. Given his known clashes with at least one editor, that might well be the case. Even allowing for that, I suspect that this is one that the author didn't know what to do with. On top of that, it's definitely longer than it needed to be.

"Shell Game"- Now this is what counts as a good and fun Dick story. The shipwrecked descendants of a starship crew are ever vigilant against attacks from Earthmen sent to bring them home, even though they never seem to find conclusive prove that the invaders were real at all. Meanwhile, a search of the wreck reveals that its original destination was a colony dedicated to treating the insane. It's an absurd yet intriguing premise, engaging characters, and dialogue that "works" even if it's not particularly good, in short, everything Dick was about.

"Explorers We"- Moving on from the stories in the collections I discussed last time, this just might be the most completely despairing of all the author's stories. The first expedition to Mars returns to Earth, but nobody is happy to see them. At face value, it's almost routine for Dick, yet very effective and even more vicious than "To Serve The Master". The imitation humans believe they are human, the humans won't believe they are anything but a threat, and everything that we see is certain to happen again.

"Holy Quarrel"- Just one more, and one of my personal favorites. The nuclear arsenal of the United States is under the control of a computer whose judgment is unquestioned, until it directs an attack on our own soil. The only apparent explanation is, it doesn't like gumball machines. What's truly amazing is that this 1966 story was written relatively late in Philip Dick's career and arguably at the very end of his term as a regular contributor to science fiction magazines.  Just when he was winning highbrow respect with his novels, he took the time to write a tale as completely silly as this. Hey, you gotta be you.

That just leaves the question, where does all this fit in whatever I've hoped to do with this particularly misbegotten feature? To me, there is a "myth" of Philip K. Dick that I cannot find in his actual work. Pop culture has wanted to make Dick an intellectual, a prophet and a visionary, which he was by all means, but not a fallible writer who could be wrong, dated or just goofing off. I tie this especially to the fact that his fame has rested on his novels rather than his stories. Make no mistake, his short fiction is absolutely great, yet it is unquestionably a product of the 1950s-'60s pulp market. That, in turn, should never have been a bad thing, and probably wasn't except to the brand of self-conscious, self-doubting sophisticates who wanted science fiction to be in but not of mainstream pop culture. I hope my lineup will provide just a little more perspective. (While I'm at it, here's a couple links for others' reviews, on "To Serve The Master" and "Holy Quarrel" respectively.) That's all for now, more to come!

Image credit American Literature.

Futures Past: Museum of Science and Industry Mold A Rama souvenirs

 

It's time for the Thursday post of the week, and I decided to do more on my vacation. Last time, I covered Mold A Rama dinos from the Field Museum. To follow up, I have a little more material. Here's a pic of a Mold A Rama space capsule, shown above with the Dinoland T. rex and the Truckstop Queen.

I got this one from another Mold A Rama machine at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry space center, where I took a video of the machine in action. It is reportedly the largest item produced for/ by these machines, which I can well believe based on height. It is, of course, based on the 1960s-era space capsules, which were frequently depicted in toys and other items that are expensive now. In that context, this is definitely worth the price if you have the opportunity to get it. It's one of at least five Mold A Rama machines at the museum. Here's pics of the other one I got with the capsule, photographed in the hotel room for reasons I'll get to in a moment.

And here's the actual machine.

This is, of course, a very 1950s/ '60s fighter jet, which I find strikingly similar to the Tim Mee jets. It is in many ways the most impressive of the little collection I built up, made of a silver plastic with what looks like built-in marbling. (Unfortunately, as previously seen with the reissue Marx Kronosaur, this has a tendency to look awful if you don't know what you're looking at.) Here's a couple more detail pics from the hotel.

Alas, this was the one that broke on the way home. The damage was a broken-off tail fin, I'm sure in part because of an unnecessary gap between the root of the tail and the engine exhaust. (A few image searches confirmed that the whole style of combining the tail with a giant nozzle for the engine was really something that was being phased out by the '60s.) For extra humiliation, before starting this post, I took another video of me trying and failing to fix it. In hindsight, I might have been better off using the glue to fill the gap rather than sealing the crack. Eventually, I did finally get the fin to stay on for the moment. Here's a pic of the repaired jet on The Couch Mark 2.

On the whole, the whole museum has a "retro future" vibe, which is why I'm writing about it here. The space center in particular is a showcase of 1960s tech. Even beyond that, it shows the same techno-optimism that found its highest and most infamous expression in the 1964 World's Fair. (Why not see the first installment of this feature while you're at it?) It's easy to say that "mainstream" society was outgrowing such things even then. The flip side is that the same easily deconstructed visions of lunar colonies and Mars expeditions that proliferated in the 1950s and 1960s were still going strong when I was an impressionable kid in the 1980s. Judging from the space center, the spirit of probably unwarranted optimism is alive and well even now, and kids at a place like the museum are the audience that should have it. And how about some more pics of the museum?

Yeah, they have a submarine.

And a toy...

Space art, the final frontier!

The space igloo!

Apparently a working gravity detector!

To boldly sit...

I don't think this is their most profitable machine.

And a big train layout!

Now this is just wrong...

And Snoopy for the win!!!

That's all for now, more to come!