Some more 60s Doctor Who Toys

During the early part of the second lockdown, I put together a few more silly 60s Doctor Who toys. All of them are based on actual products. 

I love the packaging designs from that period. Not constrained by the ideals of a brand bible, they had free-reign to do what they liked. 

Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it was a cheap generic design. Other times it was a work of art. Nothing was ever the same. 

Here's a few of the ones I did. If you know your merchandise, you'll probably be able to spot the source material...

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Doctor Who Trump Card Game Redux

Back in the late 70s, the British toy firm Jotastar produced a set of trump cards based on Doctor Who. I had a set. I seem to recall I purchased it at a gift shop at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Weston-super-Mare. Now, the quality of Doctor Who merchandise at the time wasn't exactly at its peak. But this pack of forty cards were something else. The instructions gave the game a more verbose title "Doctor Who and the Legendary Legion Trump Card Game" (Note the absence of the word 'Top'). The so-called legion turned out to be a selection of heroes and heroines from history that included four cowboys, Sherlock Holmes and Thor. Not too sure if they consulted a historian for their "legionnaires"! In amongst their number was the eponymous Doctor Who and, predating its sentience in the much later 'The Doctor's Wife', the TARDIS. 

It was in the selection of villains that the set really started cooking with gas. Culled from all of the first four Doctors' eras. these included: Sensorites, Cybermen, Gellguards, Davros, Mechanoids and the Wirrn amongst others. There were also Ogrons and Sea Devils but confusingly, their names had got mixed up.

 The illustrations were somewhat perfunctory. I can only assume the uncredited artist had been told to concentrate on making them colourful as opposed to accurate. The Ogron/Sea Devil was turquoise and looked more like a balding dog whilst the Sensorites were resplendent in their bright orange jump suits. Some of the artwork seemed familiar too... (Where's my Weetabix cards?) I remember noticing that the drawing of Sherlock Holmes heralded from a US Marvel Comics adaptation of 'Hound of the Baskervilles'.

Game play was the same as the branded Top Trumps game. The major difference being that you had three choices of attack instead of four. "Mental Ability", "Weapons" and "Special Powers" - the latter meant that many of the historical figures were a little low in that area. 

You can tell that, despite having a veritable archival smorgasbord of old monster, I was disappointed by the set. Compared to the actual official Top Trumps, they looked pretty shit to be honest. No snazzy plastic keep case to store them in. Jotastar pushed the boat out with a flimsy cardboard box decorated with a doodle of a seemingly blind Tom Baker. 

Fast forward to the present day... A bit bored last weekend so I delved into my file of unfinished projects and ideas. I had wanted to produce a new Doctor Who Monster Book - visually based on the old 1976 one but updated to feature series 11 and 12 of the current run. That would take too much time and involve the fag of writing which I usually abhor. Then the Jotastar trump card game came to mind... Brilliant. I can do that... and maybe even make the illustrations a bit better with new series stuff. So that's what I did over the past few days. Here is a new set of cards in the style of the 70s originals. It would be nice to be able to actually produced a genuine set but costs would no doubt prohibit that. You'll just have to settle for these images. 

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A Possibly Garbled and Maudlin Post continued...

I'm not too good at the writing side of things these days however, today being my birthday seems quite as good a time as any to announce this publicly as it saves on explaining it to folk individually - again and again. Although I'm normally a private person. I usually let my humour speak for me. Making people laugh is easier on the soul than making people angry or upset. I want to be open about this. I have had a habit of bottling up my feelings and suffering in silence - believing that I can solve them myself... without bothering other people and wasting their time with my petty problems. And look where that got me!

Today I am 57.

In just a few years, I'll be drawing a pension. I still feel young inside though the physical parts are beginning to wear a bit thin and I'm starting to prefer tea to coffee.

Just over a week ago, I received a letter containing the results of my ASD testing which had taken place a few months earlier. I mentioned this in an earlier post. It confirmed what I had suspected for a number of years but had done nothing about despite the effects on my mental health.

I have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The report that states this is nineteen pages long and came with a lot of other material about the services available to me as well as a recommendation to seek further assessment for ADHD – which to be honest is probably the prime reason - as opposed to the ASD - for not achieving some of my personal goals and aspirations over the years.

Although the diagnosis has drawn a line under my quest for answers, it has left me somewhat bereft. I am quite certain that I sought a reason for my constant mental breakdowns too late – preferring to seek a cure to the immediate problem rather than investigating the ongoing cause of it. I now need to adjust my lifestyle a little to put some more coping mechanisms in place – especially in the workplace.

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life!” goes the saying. So be it. But now the baggage of my past no longer has a mystery attached to it.

Thanks again for all your support. It's certainly got me through some dark times. Strangers can be so nice sometimes.

A. x

Doctor Who - Season 24, 25 and 26 on Target

I know what you're asking... Where's season 23 - the 'Trial of a Time Lord' one?  Well, I already did it some time ago - before all this lockdown Covid stuff - about two years ago. You can find it here. 

The design of these covers harkens back further to the original Target line which feature a simple text 'logo' in a uniform black across all the titles. Why have I reverted to this? Well, I'll let you into a little secret. The remaining seventh Doctor titles were all done first... Hence the sudden switch to the neon logo from season 25. These were the ones I started off this new batch of covers with before going back to the fifth and sixth Doctors. In fact, I ended up doing all those in reverse for some reason. God alone knows why... My brain works funny when it's being creative. Logic and order seem to be thrown out of the window... 

Anyhow, here's the entire run of Sylvester McCoy adventures - placed into one post because there's only twelve of them. I hope you like the variety of style they represent. 

Season 24

Season 25

Season 26

Some of these covers are available as 'exploded' versions on RedBubble.

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Some Other Cult TV VHS Rental Tapes...

Switching back to the Super Space Theater post from day or so back, I failed to mention that the feature compilations of Gerry Anderson's show were also released for rental by Precision Video. Precision seemed to have complete access to the ITC back catalogue and their releases included many of the studio's motion pictures as well as television titles. The TV ones included ready-made 'movies' of 'The Persuaders!' and 'The Prisoner' produced by ITC back in the early 70s for foreign and syndication markets. The Super Space Theater productions were an ideal fit for them and I recall eagerly renting 'Invasion:UFO' from a local store to get my first taste of 'UFO' in nearly a decade. I also managed to acquire 'London Conspiracy' - a feature film of 'The Persuaders!' culled from the episodes 'Greensleeves' and 'A Home of One's Own'. I still have the tape - contained within its unique plastic cassette box which mirrored the design of a music cassette box but larger... obviously.

As well as their odd boxes, Precision also had a light house style to its cover designs - again similar to that used by music cassette producers. I've managed to replicate that design template and applied to a couple of unreleased titles for a bit of fun. One of them is 'Legend of the Champions' (based on 'The Champions' obviously!) - the only Super Space Theater title that wasn't part of the Gerry Anderson oeuvre.

I've also re-created the design style for another VHS rental company, Guild Home Video. I seem to recall they had a few TV titles in their library including an early release of the HTV children's drama, 'Children of the Stones'. I've applied that template to a made up 'Department S' feature. (Actually the artwork for that ended up looking like it should've been on the cover of a World Distributors annual or colouring book... Not that that is a bad thing. I might knock that up when I get some free time.)

Finally, I also mocked up the Channel 5 video design and for a bit of fun took the mickey out of Gerry Anderson's failed pilot 'The Investigator'. I'm a rotter...

(If you want to read the text, the images can be clicked on to enlarge.)

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If you appreciate the incredible effort and imagination I've put into this silly excursion into silliness, then you can show your appreciation by purchasing me a coffee via my Ko-fi account here. Thank you.