The Late Chocolate Egg post

It's been a couple of years since I did some faux chocolate eggs. Last year, it was lockdown-time and I had other things on my mind so I dug out the old favourites like the Giant Maggot egg and the Alpha Centauri egg. I nearly did the same this year but thought better of it. 

But what to make them. Something totally different from Doctor Who. Sapphire & Steel is always popular so I did a World in Action one. THEN followed it with Sapphire & Steel...

The other two came naturally. Particularly pleased with The Tomorrow People ones. Which would use choose? Blue or Green?

If you've enjoyed this or any other of the 300 odd posts contained within this very silly blog, then you can show your appreciation by purchasing the author and designer a coffee via his Ko-fi page. You'll also find a gallery of what he considers to be his better work. Just follow this link. 

Retro Active in SFX

For the past six months or so, SFX has been publishing some of my odd pieces of cult film and TV merchandise. When Darren the editor approached me to do something for SFX, I was a bit lost for words. I wasn't too sure I could come up with new stuff on a regular basis. Doing it for an irregularly updated blog on an ad-hoc basis is a different kettle of ball games to producing content to a regular deadline. I said 'yes' with much trepidation - only on condition that I do them in batches of three just to give me time to think about them in sets of three. And also to give SFX some in hand in case I have 'designer's block'. The first three were duly thought-up, constructed and sent off.

I kept a bit quiet about Andydrewz's publishing debut. The depressive in me is always cautious about nice things as they have a habit of slapping you in the face when you become complacent over them. 

Flash-forward and today is now and I've just dispatched a third set of three pieces for Retro Active (as SFX has called my er... column(?) ) They seem to be going down okay. At least, I've not had any bad notices passed back to me.

Here are the first two designs that made it into the magazine - The Fantastic Journey board game and a Tomorrow People jaunting belt.

The board game is a simple reworking of TV's The Fantastic Journey into the Denys Fisher/Parker Bros licenced board games of the 1970s. A few things to note: I included the flying saucer from 'The Invaders' on one of the action cards. The show used stock footage of it in one of the episodes to represent a time machine from the future. Although, the board is divided up into zones, it wasn't until I'd finished that I realised it resembled The Crystal Maze. I found that amusing.

The Tomorrow People jaunting belt is a bit more overtly absurd and more typical of the way I tend to put the jokes in the details. The merchandise should LOOK authentic... only until you take the time to read the text, however small. Hence the inclusion of a pen-knife and working junior taser. 

With thanks to Darren Scott at SFX Magazine.

SFX magazine is available from all good newsagents, comic shops and supermarkets. Or you can subscribe to it here.

Vintage TV Viewmaster Reels

Viewmaster. The amazing gadget that allows you to see 3D pictures of everything from Thunderbirds to Tom & Jerry to the Grand Canyon to something called Dr WHO.

Here's a selection from the 70s and early 80s that money can't buy.

The 2017 TV Annuals - now available!

It's that time of the year where the shelves of WHSmith become cluttered with collections of kids books with large print, colourful pictures, desperately unchallenging puzzles and enough content to fill a medium-sized thimble,

Yes, it's the annual "Annual" season!

Here's this year's choice selection from the House of Andydrewz! 

You can get all these titles from your local Poundland or charity shop from January 2017.

Tomorrow People Collectors's Spoons are here... Today!

Yes, we have spoons!

Thanks to a deal with a warehouse in North Korea, I have managed to acquire a limited quantity of tea spoons that I've been able to graft the heads of the original (and best) Tomorrow People. 

And they can be yours.

If you want them...

People who purchased "Tomorrow People Spoons" also purchased...

Ace of Wands bread knife

Timeslip sporks (2)

ITV's Current Daytime Schedule is Nothing New!

Sorting through my old copies of the Radio Times and TVTimes yesterday, I came across this...

Look Out For Look-in Books That Weren't Very Popular At The Time

Look-in Books Newspaper Ad from Daily Chronic (c1975)

LOOK-IN TV-TIE BOOKS

Published by Piccolo Books/TVTimes

c1974-5

Price: 25p

Look-in was sold as the "Junior TVTimes". It had everything - pop stars, comic strips, posters, footballers, Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart - everything as long as it was on ITV. No stuffy BBC rubbish here.

I particularly liked the comic strips which utilised some of the best British artists at the time including Mike Noble, Martin Asbury and John Burns. There seemed to be a policy that the comic strips were based on all of ITV's SF output no matter what the quality or longevity of it was. Whilst we had long-running strips based on 'The Six Million Dollar Man' and 'The Tomorrow People', there were also ones about 'The Man from Atlantis' and 'Logan's Run' (that's the TV series not the classic movie). 

Look-in also published a number of TV tie-in books usually written by the celebrity contributors to the magazine. I still have a copy of 'Is There Life In Outer Space?' by Peter Fairley (ITN's then science correspondent and star of 'Timeslip'). 

Here's a selection of some of their less well-known titles.