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Retro Fan #21 July 2022 (magazine review).

Scott Shaw! rolls off this issue of ‘Retro Fan’ looking at his time when he was involved in the advertising campaign for Pebbles cereal using the Flintstones giving some insight into his job. His end comment that it was safer to eat the box than the cereal shows how sugary it was.

I was mostly too young to see ‘The Untouchables’ (1959-1963) when it first came out. I think I have a vague memory of the opening credits. Will Murray explores the Robert Stack starring series and how it had to extend beyond the real team’s 3 year prohibition tenure and generally playing with American history.

Of course, the cover indicates an interview with actress Julie Newmar, principally her work on the 1960s ‘Batman’ TV series and her absences being because of her other film commitments. She’s also had me wondering where were all her zips were in her costume.

‘Astro Boy’ is something that also slipped by in the UK, although writer Bill Spangler covers all three Japanese anime series, although not showing the robot boy shooting a cannon from his bum. I agree with him, the mind boggles on that concept.

Mike Eury examines the Slinky spring toy and seeing how many of these were sold in the USA shows how a simple toy can make big bucks.

I will have to reveal a bit of self interest here with Bob Greenberger’s piece about the 1972 series ‘Search’, as I was part of the group that urged Warner Bros to release the series and its pilot episode, ‘PROBE’ (it’s an acronym so needs to be capped) on DVD. Bob’s part of the group as well and really should have let at least one of us go over it for mistakes. I’d better do this for the record here or the group will wonder what happened to my eyesight. It’s not John Meredith Strong but John Christopher Strong.

Grover wasn’t an electronics expert and he was actually designated ‘Stand-By PROBE’ not ‘back-up PROBE’. The guest star list missed out on a lot more famous people like Bill Bixby, Capucine, Edward Mulhare, Stephanie Powers, Peter Mark Richman, Albert Pohlson, Alfred Ryder and Anne Francis amongst others. Leslie Stevens phone book must have been the best in the world on whom he could call. Details missed included in the UK, ‘Search’ became ‘Search Control’ because we already had a series called ‘Search’.

No mention of Dominic Frontiere’s theme music which everyone remembers. Nor, come to that series like ‘The X-Files’ and even ‘Alias’ have paid homage to ‘Search’. There was a lot more after a little conflab but I hope others will follow in my wake. Lots of good photos though.

Scott Saavedra recounts his time when he visited a USSR exhibition in the USA in 1977. Not sure you would be that keen on Russian televisions neither when you hear about the number of times they caught fire.

I do have to wonder at the names of some of the writers as Michael Knight has a look at the full-size Monkeemobile, pointing out that the supercharger on the bonnet was real but not used because it was too powerful. Love to see someone work out just how fast it could go. There were two of these cars and is now making me think I ought to get a Corgi version in my collection.

Finally, Andy Mangels has a look at the various animated versions of Tarzan over the decades. Subjectively, you would think a man in a loincloth would be fairly easy to animate but, as Filmation Studios Lou Scheimer points out, Tarzan was very athletic and always moving and ended up being rotoscoped.

As always, a heavy dose of nostalgia and take your pick which will appeal to you.

GF Willmetts

July 2020

(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82 page magazine. Price: $10.95. (US). ISSN: 2576-7224. Direct from them, you can get it for $  (US))

check out website: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_152&products_id=1643  

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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