HYPNOGORIA SUMMER SPECIAL 15 - It Came From Beyond the Chiller Cabinet Part III

In the final part of our history of the Great Ice Lolly Wars, we look at the 1980s, with icy snack tie-ins to the likes of Star Trek The Motion Picture, Superman The Movie, and of course the original Star Wars trilogy, but also discover how yogurts turned into monsters! 

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HYPNOGORIA 170 - Tardis Tuners & Zone Boxes

In this episode we pay a visit to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat to investigate some very rare and rather weird items of science fiction merchandise! First we ask what exactly was a TARDIS Tuner? And why had it never actually appeared in Doctor Who? Then we investigate the  Zone Box, a piece of tie-in tat for The Twilight Zone that is as bizarre as it is obscure! 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - HYPNOGORIA 170 - Tardis Tuners & Zone Boxes

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THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - The Great Ice Lolly Wars

Welcome once again dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Well then, since we last spoke a remarkable thing has occurred! For in the possibly ironically named Great Britain, the first signs of something resembling summer have manifested! Something rare and wonderful indeed! Furthermore forecasters are predicting a long hot summer and newspaper editors are I understand already dusting "Cor wotta scorcher!" headline layouts. Of course, it's probably all tosh but while there's still some sunshine knocking about, it's time to return to the cryogenic vaults of the 'Orrible Old 'Ouse and discover some curious relics from the chiller cabinets of days gone by... 

Now last summer, we had an extensive look-back at the history of ice lollies down the ages. We charted the rise and fall of these chilly summer treats, and discovered how various strategies were used to flog variously mixes of flavoured liquids and ice cream frozen onto sticks. And along the way we met a great many icons from pop culture and cult fiction who were pressing into service in the Great Ice Lolly Wars! However we didn't cover quite everything... But before we embark on a freshly thawed chapter, here's the original series of posts all collected together for your reading pleasure! 

Part 1 - It Came From Beyond the Chiller Cabinet! Welcome to the Ice Lolly Wars! 

Part 2 - Sky Ray the Space Age lolly! 

Part 3 - Doctor Who and the Sky Rays!

Part 4 - Exterminate! How the Daleks became ice lolly salesmen! 

Part 5 - The No Strings Attached Years - Gerry Anderson themed lollies!  

Part 6 - We Can Refreeze Him - 1970s cult TV tie-ins 

Part 7 - Monkey Business - King Kong, the Emperor of Ice Cream 

Part 8 - A long time ago in Chiller Cabinet Far Far Away - The age of the blockbuster tie-ins! 

The 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat #08 - The Tatlight Zone

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of tat. A journey into a dubious land whose boundaries are that of the imagination of tired marketing executives. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible of Tat!

Yes, welcome once again dear friends to this marvellous repository of the weird, the wonderful and the wonky! Now then, on our initial tours of the collections of questionable ephemera here, we've had a gander at some items that were rather fondly remembered. However, now it's time to take the gloves off, and delve into some of the darker recesses of the 'Orrible 'Ouse, and sample something that is not so well loved. Or even well remembered... And quite possibly deservedly so! 

Now I must confess I never owned the item in question, but in my defence, from my researches into the matter, I'm not entirely sure anyone ever owned one of these! For it is not very often that one discovers some piece of tie-in tat that isn't listed multiple times on the likes of Ebay. But I am getting ahead of myself... Follow me, let's take a quick trip back to the Dark Ages. Well, the 1980s at least... 

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a world that didn't have the internet. Yes, I know, hard to believe, but it did happen. Anyhow, if you were a devotee of the weird and wonderful, the pre-web could be a somewhat sucky place. For in all probability the town where you lived didn't have a games shop, or a comic book store, and even if you wanted something relatively mundane, like the latest copy of House of Hammer, or Starlog, or Fangoria or Starburst, you had to traipse around many newsagents to find one. Now given this state of affairs, marvellous mags like the seminal journals I just mentioned were always full of ads from assorted mail order companies; places that would happily sell you tomes, comics, soundtrack LPs, models and all kinds of tie-in tat. Indeed, in future excursions in the 'Orrible 'Ouse we will no doubt be looking at some of these fabled items of tantalising mail order swag.

But the trouble was, back then mail order was a long slow process, and for most kids somewhat impractical. For it meant that parents had to be cajoled into parting with credit card numbers or cheques. And naturally most parents took a dim view of their offspring wanting the score to Cannibal Holocaust, a chestburster T shirt, or a life-size poster of Frankenstein's Monster. Plus quite often the mag you were perusing came from the other side of the Atlantic which meant coughing up more for the shipping than the original item. However despite much of the readership being kids without access to credit, or simply being in an entirely different country to the vendor, evidently these mail order outfits did well enough from this fan market over the years for some very strange things to be offered. 

And the one of oddest of all, I spotted in the pages of dear old Fango, way back in 1986. It was an ad that ran several times, and I have always wondered whether anyone bought one. Now this was a little item called The Zone Box, a bit of tie-in tat for the classic TV series The Twilight Zone. Now at that time, the show had just been revived the year before, in 1985, and of course Rod Sterling's original series was still running late at night on many TV stations round the world. However despite its status as a recognised bona fide titan of television, I am still to this day at a loss to explain quite why anyone would need this particular treasure. Here's the ad -

Yes, the Zone Box! Just a box that plays the intro to The Twilight Zone... Why? I ask! Why in the name of Shatner's Gremlin would you need this? I don't even think it has The Twilight Zone written on it anywhere (despite being officially licensed allegedly)! I mean, seriously, who need this thing?!? It's as much use of Burgess Meredith's specs at the end of Time Enough At Last!!! 

Alright, enough exclamations marks now... Perhaps more seriously for any maniac considering buying this outrageous bit of old tat, it doesn't even specify which version of the intro the Zone Box plays - for the original show actually had several different ones. But from the blurb, I'd guess it uses the best known narration and theme combo that opened episodes in seasons 2 and 3. But obviously, having never seen a Zone Box in the flesh, I have no idea... But given that there does not seem to be any floating around for sale on the internet I suspect no one else has either!   

However I did turn up a couple of pictures of this highly dubious item, which do reveal what no doubt many of you older readers have suspected - that it works with one of those old miniature plastic record players. For younger folks, in the days before microchips and assorted cyber-tat, if you had something that made a noise or "spoke", whether it be some doll or a Palitoy Talking Dalek, the sounds were produced by a small turntable which played a tiny plastic record. Yes, proper old skool! Usually they were battery powered, but some operated with a pull-cord to spin the Borrower sized platter. Obviously they weren't very loud, and the cheap plastic discs never sounded anywhere near as good as a proper size vinyl LP. Plus, being cheap plastic they often got scratched to buggery very quickly. So then, I think it's safe to assert that Rod Sterling's famous narration probably sounded less than majestic coming from the depths of The Zone Box. 

I vividly remembering wondering who in Hades would desire such a thing, and indeed who exactly so badly needed to read Rod's dulcet tones on such a regular basis. And looking at it now, I can only marvel at the misguiding thinking that led the makers to actually trademarking the name "The Zone Box" - for I honestly can't imagine a huge demand for this item even among the most dedicated Twilight Zone fans, nevermind a market for pirate knock-offs. And judging by this piece of terrible old tat being virtually unmentioned in the vast expanses of the modern internet, I can only assume that very few were ever sold. Ironically it is a tie-in item that seems to have vanished into the Twilight Zone itself! 

Having said that though, it probably now sells for an absolute fortune. Possibly for the price of a small house. And hence in a twist worthy of the great Rod Serling himself, I'm now regretting not getting one back in '86...

The 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat #01 - Doctor Who and the Gambit Menace!

Welcome dear friends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Now this creaking old edifice contains a good many items that were produced in thrall to the great God Spin-off, and a further good many of those are items produced with the aim of extracting money from small children. Or at least, their parents. These days any sort of property with a demographic that includes legions of ankle-biters will have a range of tie-in action figures leading the charge at the frontline of the merch. But it wasn't always this way. The trailblazer for this brave new world of spin-off toys was of course the original Star Wars, and after the massive success of the Kenner/Palitoy action figure range, any movie or TV enjoyed by a sizeable number of children would transform their characters into a line of plastic homunculi. And before you could say "by the Power of Ponyskull!", this approach was developed further in the 1980s with the emergence of franchises and properties that were created to just flog toys in the first place. 

However while Lucas and Star Wars are often hailed as the creators of this toytown trend, spin-off toys had already been around for a while already. However in the years before we had heard the phrase "may the Force be with you", action figures based around cinema or TV properties were something of a different proposition. In the post-Deathstar years, the Star Wars approach of pocket sized figures at pocket money prices became the industry standard, along with the canny approach to turn every possible character into a doll, even if they had only lurked about in the background - Death Star Droid I'm looking at you. But in the pre-Stars Wars toy stores, any figures you found based on your favourite TV shows or movies were likely to come in a wide variety of different scales and sizes, and often be limited to only a handful of characters. And a perfect example of this simpler era of tie-toys comes in the form of the Doctor Who figures released by Denys Fisher in the late '70s.

In 1976, the Time Lord had been travelling for over a decade on the telly, and his current incarnation, the Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker, was proving to be the most popular yet. And so, the venerable British toy makers Denys Fisher released what would be the first proper action figure version of the Doctor. Now since the show's beginning, it had been popular with kids, and there had been many tie-in toys and much merchandise, such as books, comics, jigsaws and board games. However up until 1976, the only figures or dolls you could buy were various toy versions of the Doctor's arch enemies, the Daleks. However thanks to Denys Fisher (and Mego in the US) now you could buy a nine and half inch high Fourth Doctor, complete with hat, scarf and even a sonic screwdriver! But wait, there was more! You could also buy a Leela, complete with hunting knife, and an in-scale version of the Doctor's beloved robot hound K9. There was a range of enemies to pit your plastic heroes against in the form of Daleks, Cybermen and the K1 Robot (AKA the Giant Robot), and topping off the range was a replica TARDIS. 

Now don't get me wrong, these were a great range of figures and are now highly prized by collectors. Certainly I was delighted to get a Doctor, TARDIS and a Dalek one Christmas. But there were several features to this range that make them worthy of inclusion in the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat. The first is an odd little detail about the Doctor himself, or rather his miniature toyshop version. Now at first glance, it's rather nice to note that  the costume was very faithful to the Doctor's onscreen ensemble, and they did really try to have a figure that looked like Tom Baker. But I always found that my Fourth Doctor figure reminded me of another small screen hero - namely Gambit from Brian Clemens' The New Avengers, as played by Gareth "three types of the finest coffee beans" Hunt. 

And the funny thing is, many years later I discovered that there was a very good reason for this. For around the same time as the Denys Fisher Doctor Who range was being made, they were developing plans to do a range of New Avengers dolls. featuring plastic versions of Steed, Gambit and Purdie. The figures were to feature a karate chop action, and while some ads and promotional material did surface, the range of toys never really materialised, probably due to the New Avengers disappearing from our screens in 1977. And as far as toy historians know, only Joanna Lumley's character from the show, Purdy, turned up in action figure form in the shops. 

However, not wanting to waste a lot of development time and money, the sculpt of Gareth Hunt's bonce was cunningly recycled to give the Fourth Doctor doll a noggin. And it was, if you'll pardon an absolutely shameless pun, a gambit (boom! boom!) which worked rather well, as it certainly looked enough like Tom Baker to fool most kiddiewinks. However it would perhaps explain why the Doctor's plastic hat never quite fitted on his head well enough for my liking...

However the range holds further and stranger anomalies... Come back to the 'Orrible 'Ouse next time, to discover what wonders the Denys Fisher TARDIS had to offer!