20 Minutes Into The Future

  • October 23, 2022

I recently bought these:

It’s a full set of Max Headroom stickers from 1986. Although not labeled as such, these were a Topps product and are mostly based on the TV film that introduced the character, although some images clearly come from The Max Headroom Show.

I was surprised to learn these existed since I’d never heard of them, and while wax packs do exist, I can’t find an image of a box anywhere. I have read claims that the set was released in very limited quantities in the USA only, and another online article claims it was sold as sets only (which can’t be true since there exist wax packs on eBay). It’s a mystery!

The first two-thirds of the stickers resemble fairly standard Topps-style trading cards from the mid 1980s, only they would be mostly meaningless to non-fans since the images seem to be in random order and the backs contain no text; instead being dedicated to two large ‘puzzles’ of Max:

The remaining quarter are foil stickers, which are reflective, slightly embossed and very impressive for a 1986 set. However five of them are extremely unusual, especially if you’re familiar with the character:

These look like poses the actor that played Max (Matt Frewer) did to test the prosthetic or perhaps to be digitized for marketing purposes. I’ve never seen these images on any other Max Headroom product and they seem out of place here!

The backs of the foil stickers contain the origin of Max taken from the film:

This is curious for a few reasons. Firstly I don’t think the film ever screened in the USA (and in fact Max himself didn’t catch on here until about a year after the rest of the world) and secondly it doesn’t say much at all about Max himself! Once again this would have been a confusing product for non-fans.

These didn’t cost me much (<$20) and the stickers are in perfect condition so it’s a fun curio for my collection. I’d love to test and see if a sticker still worked, but I don’t have any doubles so I’ll never know. Likewise I doubt I’ll ever know the true history of this weird product. Do any of you remember these from 1986?

  • Posted in Collecting
  • Robert

The Big City

  • October 16, 2022

We spent the last few days in the city, and lots of fun was had. Here’s a few random snaps.

As with last year we booked a room with a balcony. The weather was (mostly) beautiful and we ate most of our meals out on this balcony.

A random shot of action figures in a comic shop. I didn’t buy any, but lots of other stuff was purchased!

You can’t visit NYC without buying some hot roasted nuts. We always get cashews and they’re delicious.

Only the day we arrived was there any rain, but I probably just held this umbrella just to enable a funny photo 🙂

Random stickers seen on the streets, mostly on scaffolding or electrical boxes.

Don’t know what this was about, but there were signs warning people not to carry weapons onto Times Square. We saw lots of heavily armed police as well. Maybe this was in preparation for a protest?

Corn from the Saturday street fair. It was great 🙂

  • Posted in Trip
  • Robert

Day At The Museum

  • October 14, 2022

We’re in NYC for Kristin’s birthday trip, and today we went to the Museum of Natural History next to Central Park. We’ve been here before but not for many years, so we were looking forward to the visit.

The museum was enormously popular – we had to join a long line to get in – and once inside we legged it to the Hall of Minerals so we could enjoy it before the screaming throngs arrived. Our plan worked, and we had the gallery almost entirely to ourselves.

There were gems and precious stones and amazing mineral specimens everywhere! Some of the largest and most spectacular examples ever known are there to see, and it was incredible just seeing the variety and abundance of beautiful stones on display (like the tourmalines above), including the famous ‘Star of India’:

They had gems and minerals in both raw and cut versions, and many displays on every aspect of minerology (I liked the science of how gems interact with light). If you like rocks – especially pretty ones – be sure to visit one day 🙂

With the minerals and gems done – and after a break for a (grossly overpriced) lunch – it was time to admire the museum’s famous animal dioramas.

There are dozens of these in various sections throughout the museum, featuring mammals and birds and sea life and even humans. They consist of lifelike taxidermy set in a foreground designed to replicate real life, backed with a painted background. They are eerily realistic, and I can see now why a popular movie was made with that as the plot!

We watched a video about how these are made, and I was surprised to find that almost everything is fake. All the grass and leaves and flowers and snow is fake, and yet it looks incredibly real. I loved these exhibits and if I lived in the city I’d see myself visiting regularly just to sit on the benches and admire them.

A gallery about Earth featured lots of volcano facts and one of the oldest rocks known (over 4 billion years) and hidden away in the back we found a seismograph connected to a pressure plate. Of course I had to try and generate a good signal….

I’m sure you’ll agree the slight injury to my upper sartorius muscle and the subsequent agony I experienced every step during the one-hour trek back to the hotel was absolutely worth it for the satisfaction of knowing I moved the seismograph needle a few millimetres.

And then the dinosaurs! The fourth floor of the museum is essentially dedicated to dinosaurs, and there’s hundreds of skeletons and fossils on display. It’s beautiful and fascinating and undoubtedly the reason the museum draws such large crowds.

A great many of these are real skeletons (as opposed to casts, which are common in other museums) and the museum has owned some for over 100 years. They’ve got one of the biggest known skeletons on display (a titanosaur) and many tiny ones as well. From dinosaurs to prehistoric sea life to early mammals (including prehistoric kangaroos) there’s an incredible variety on display.

Apparently only 15 T-Rex skeletons have been found, and some of those are only bits and pieces. Naturally the museum has the best one on display, it’s the showcase of the entire exhibit (and maybe the entire museum?), and it’s swarmed by people trying to take photos just like mine above.

It is an extremely impressive sight, but not too far away they have an arguably more impressive item: a cast of what is believed to be the most famous fossil in the world, the ‘Berlin specimen’ of archaeopteryx, which paved the way to our current understanding that perhaps dinosaurs didn’t truly die out, they just evolved into birds:

It’s impossible to walk these halls and not wonder what these creatures were like. How they looked, walked or swam? What they sounded like, how they behaved and what they ate? Why did they have spines and plates and sails, or long long necks or tiny feet? How did they live, and how did they die? The displays frequently remind the visitor that very little is known about dinosaurs, and even theories (which constantly evolve) can never be tested.

One of the most thought-provoking comments I read today is that there are a many questions we all have about dinosaurs that we don’t know the answers for when applied to animals still alive today. Dinosaurs therefore will always be beyond our understanding: monsters and myths, surviving only as fossils. We can only ever guess and wonder at their reality.

It was a full day at the museum, and this doesn’t include everything we saw. If you’re ever in NYC put this place on your list; I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.