Friday, July 21, 2017

THE BLACK HOLE "Press-Out Book" (1979)

Here's a cool artifact of the 1970s, a Black Hole "Press-Out" Book, with fold-up paper spaceship models from Disney's 1979 outer space epic.

The book was printed on a light cardstock, and you'd press-out perforated images of the various Black Hole ships like The Cygnus and The Palomino, and fold them into cool little replicas of the cinematic spacecraft.

I kind of want this book now, though I doubt today's kids would find it much of a diversion. Not many people - adults or children - seem to build models anymore, of any kind. Why bother when everyone'll have a 3D printer soon, I guess?

Countdown: this is Space: 1970 post #995...

9 comments:

  1. OMG! I had one of these! The Cygnus was a bit flimsy, but the Palomino was reasonably sturdy. I seem to remember some figures with it as well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Google 'papercraft.'

    You'll find no shortage of stuff to print, cut, fold, glue, and tape.

    There's some preprinted stuff available, particularly for Minecraft, but most of it will be in the form of PDFs for download. And if you want SF stuff, go to DriveThruRPG, where they have all sorts of that sort of thing for making miniatures dioramas/game scenes.

    And if you want something 3 dimensional, check out Hirst Arts, which makes silicone molds for making little plaster bricks and tiles for the same purpose.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I had this, too! Wow, I had totally forgotten about it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't know if I had this, but I loved building paper models from similar books when I was a kid.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've got the "Star Wars Punch-Out-and-Make-It Book", which is pretty much the same type of thing. There was also one from which you could construct a paper model of the U.S.S. Enterprise from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had one from Star Trek II where you built the bridge , complete with crew member standees and a "working" viewscreen.

      Delete
  6. I just found this at a garage sale a couple years back along with the Black Hole tray puzzle. The pic has Maximillion coming at the heroes 9 feet tall. Not very movie accurate but cool nevertheless.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had one of the coloring books with that same giant Maximillian image on the cover.

      Delete
  7. I had this very book and enjoyed it as a kid. Yes, the Palamino was very sturdy and the Cygnus was hard to put together. I seem to remember having to use clear tape to finish it. In the fog of my memory, I recall that it came with a bridge diorama with the crew of the Palamino and the villains. You can see an image of the Cygnus bridge on the cover. I believe that was it.

    ReplyDelete