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Police-Box-Traveler — Dapol Doctor Who Collection
Published: 2010-02-10 08:45:08 +0000 UTC; Views: 6049; Favourites: 27; Downloads: 84
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Description
With all the new style Doctor Who toys floating around, I thought that people should remember that back in the mid to late 80's and through the 90's there was another line of toys for Doctor Who manufactured by the now legendary toy company Dapol.I had teased at taking pictures of my entire collection and even comparison shots of them all which is why, after a brief amount of time I have finally taken an extensive picture gallery of my entire collection.
Thing about these toys is, they were so very inaccurate. I mean...the console is huge and only 5 sided. The scales between Doctors are appalling, they only produced three articulated Doctors and the fourth Doctor figure they produced, that being the 2nd Doctor was an unarticulated statue...so...why bother with them you ask?
With the benefit of twenty years experience it's easy to look back at the Dapol toys and say "Oh my god! What were they thinking?", but love them or hate them there's no denying that the Dapol figures were quirky. They were certainly of their time in a period when Doctor Who was perhaps at one of it's lowest ebbs, the public at large didn't even know it was still there and cared even less and even some die hard fans were sniping at it, along came a company that was prepared to put its money where its mouth was and celebrate the greatness of Doctor Who.
The Dapol figures are like the classic series itself, cheeky in their quirkiness and up front about their limitations. What they sorely lack in quality they exude in enthusiasm.
You could never get away with releasing something like this today but for a kid in the 80s desperate for his hero to fight alongside Luke Skywalker on the planet Skarro against the combined might of Darth Vader and the Daleks, they were exactly what the Doctor ordered.
And for that they will always be fondly remembered.
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Comments: 37
did the fourth doctor come with a scarf? the ones on ebay and on the packaging dont have a scarf oh him
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No, they never made a scarf unfortunately. I would up making this out of a sample of fabric that had all the colors I wanted on it and then just put a wire inside and folded it over and closed it with fabric glue. Worked very effectively too. It has all the colors I wanted plus a few that aren't there normally, and has an inaccurate pattern which suits the Dapol style very well considering their track record.
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huh. why make a fourth doctor with no scarf?!
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Because they are Dapol, lol. I mean, why make a 5 sides Tardis console when the console is 6 sided? Why is the 7th Doctor taller than the 4th and the 3rd Doctor taller than everything else? Why did they make Davros with two arms? It's kinda their mark of quality. They just manage to get things MOSTLY right but there's usually just something that is glaringly wrong. It's terrible, but it's also part of the charm of the toy line in a way.
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Ah! Thanks so much for posting this! I found a few of these a while back, and I had no idea who made them or precisely how old they were. (Though given the size and quality, I had guessed mid-80s...)
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Yup, though a good bulk of them were produced through the 90's ^_^ Glad I could help
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Back in the day my Dapol figures were very very special, just having a Dalek figure back then was such a indulgent thing for me.
Great collection
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Ohhh, they're still very special ^_^ Even though the new Character Options figures are FAR superior they just don't have that...sense of childhood these old Dapol figures have. XD
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OMG might be missing the one character I've got... MEL. LUV THIS!
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I had two but there wasn't enough good parts between the two to make one good Mel XD Besides...I like Ace best XD
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Hell of a good description.
Awesome collection, my friend. Can't ever forget the classics. That alone would be an unforgiven mistake.
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Well, I can't take all the credit for the description. A gentleman in England wrote a wonderful article and so I used some of that and my own words. XD I don't consider it cheating because this is about the photos and not the write up.
Thanks! It took me ages to find the best examples I could get for this. ^_^
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Well heck, either way. XD
That's true.
You made good choices. :3
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Thanks! Sorry for the LATE thinks but I've been preoccupied. XD
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lol yu have everything xD
i can't remember how old i was when i watched these (maybe ten) but it was pretty awesome ^^
we couldn't believe someone wanted to continue the new series in this generation, and they've done a mighty fine job
i love Doctor Who <333
so sad that David has regenerated D':
Tom Baker was mah fav in the old series
Jelly Baby?
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Well, ALMOST everything yeah XD I didn't get many of the rare stuff I had seen and many of the more inaccurate colors I didn't bother with when it came to the Daleks and such XD
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Thanks! I'm still uploading the comparisons of the then and now toys. XD May be a little longer. I still need to photograph the Tardis and...I would LIKE to do one of the interior but I wanted to try and match the Classics to the original Dapol stuff as much as possible.
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Drool...
I always wanted one of those Tardises...
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They really are nice pieces. ^_^
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That is, when you don't drool on them, right? :3
And your Tom has a scarf. I'm quite jealous.
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I have three, one to admire, one to play with and one to drool on XD
I had to make that XD I looked for a sample at a wal*mart that at that scale would be able to pass off as the scarf XD I put a wire in it to be able to position it. I posted a better view of it in my gallery and will be posting a comparison to the new Character Options version they released last year. ^_^
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Argh... No wai! Share! By the way, as to the issue of the pentagonal console, I remember reading once that only the Time Lord operator knows how everything works, which is why it can look different and still, well, work. So, it's all good.
I commend you on your knitting skills, Madame Nostradamus. In the contest Dapol wins, though, right?
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They aren't THAT rare to find XD Actually I suppose if i count all my parts i technically have four XD
As for the pentagonal console, yeah that would work IF the Tardis had only five sides, but as a replica of the console it's wrong. Besides, every other console in the series history had six XD Supposedly the reason is that there were supposed to be six Time Lords per Tardis and a rather large crew which is why the ship was so huge inside.
Well, I didn't knit it, just cut it and put a wire in it and glued and ironed it and put it on the figure XD
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They seemed to be in the pre-eBay world when I got them. Dr. Who, K-9, Grey Dalek, Ice Warrior. That is the extent of my pre-eBay collection. Maybe I was too young to really look.
Were there six sides in the wood Tardis? This I do not remember. And it's one of my favorites, too--you'd think I'd remember in that case... I don't know about that operations slip. It's too R2D2. After all, he came up with it. If there was supposed to be a crew, they wouldn't have made it so easy to get lost inside there, I tell you!
Well, witty just the same, even without the knitting bit.
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I know i was. I Do wish i had known back in 98 or so how rare some of those pieces would be XD Would have made it easier to get some of the ones like the clear Dalek and such XD
Oh, there were six sides to all the Tardis consoles. So if by the Wooden one you mean the one from the 96 TV movie, yup. six sides to that one too.
O hthere was supposed to be a crew. Rememer the Doctor stole the Tardis after all and only had his granddaughter. However that was a piece of retconning from later series.
Thanks ^_^ I'm glad you like it ^_^
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There was a clear Dalek? Damn, there truly were no bounds to their tom-color-ey.
Oh, no, that's the--um, how shall I put this...--steel library one. I knew that one had six. I was thinking Tom's wooden one, the one that supposedly resembled the family house. The console was so small I never noticed. But there are six. I looked it up in a book.
What's the crew good for though? Here, us three will explore, you seventy make sure nobody touches the ship. Which is cleverly disguised anyway.
You're quite welcome, sir.
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Yeah, the clear Dalek actually did make an appearance in the series though. It was used as a fully formed maturation chamber for people they were converting to Daleks.
You mean the one in the secondary Console Room. Yes, even that one had six sides, just no rotor column that bobbed up and down
Well by that logic what good is a crew to any ship? You think it's easy for the Doctor to maintain the ship by himself? Regardless if it's disguised or not you need maintenance personal and a shift rotation for it just like any ship. what about research scientists and historians and records keepers. Hell, the six main Time Lords can't do it on their own...well, I mean they CAN, but why should they when they have people to command to do it for them? The Doctor is an exception after all. He's hands on and what many of the Time Lords consider to be a meddler so he doesn't need a crew in his view, and that is after all the reason the Tardis is so uncontrollable and worn down by Tom Baker and Peter Davisons era.
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Wait, was that in the Revelation? Yeah, the one I HAVEN'T seen. Phooey.
Didn't have much of anything. Did have a nice cabinet though. And some much needed railings! But it proved you don't have to ring bells with mallets to travel through space and time. All in all it was a very nice "desktop theme".
Kirk managed with only senior officers in a broken old rust bucket (officially, that is) all the way to Genesis, until the Klingons with their smaller and faster ship got to them. The Time Lords are utterly inefficient bureaucrats by nature anyway. They probably expected a job for three to take forty. The rickety thing was bad to start with. Even Cushing's Tardis worked better. By Tom's days there was a dedicated Randomiser circuit. Saves the trouble of breaking the fluid links or denting the bearings where they keep the Zeiton to have a pop-in-and-go adventure.
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Yeah, try here: [link] just go to his playlists and it should be the 2nd or 3rd page in I think.
It has some nice chairs and wood paneling and stained glass windows and the all important view screen. XD and a door... [link] really can't as for more than that XD i never cared for that "desktop there" gag really XD
Yes but you have to keep in mind that the type 40 was obsolete by the 1st Doctors adventures. If I recall my history right the Doctors Tardis belonged to his grandfather and then to him but was taken from him and then he stole it back to go into his self-imposed exile. Quirkiness was almost a standard feature on that Tardis by the 4th Doctors incarnation and that was 750's years later. I think they were using type 70's by then. XD
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Ooh, rather cheeky...
And the "dematerialisation code" happens to be the BBC's telephone number. According to Tom. Yep, there she is. Got a picture in the Tech Manual too. Though, it's much better to see it in action. Why no PC joke love? It's allowing the Tardis to take any whimsical shape they can dream up. Even the... coral thing...
I know that the Type 40 was obsolete, hence "rickety". Doesn't mean it has to be controlled by hundreds of Time Lords, but they would think so. Certainly true that the Tardis would be quirkier by then, too, after Jon dismantled it piece-by-piece and rebuilt it. The history does go something like that. The stealing part is certainly true. Stole Susan away too, good thing she didn't mind going. It worked well enough at the time and it's still working well enough. And it's supposedly the last one as of the last release. Supposedly. But whatever they come up with it's all for the story, right? Have to debilitate the Tardis somehow to get things to happen.
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Yes, but to make such an pop culture reference like that is just poor taste to me. XD
I never said it was controlled by hundreds of Time Lords, just six. The rest are techs and researchers and historians and probably field researchers to go out into the local populous to observe.
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Well, it's not like it hasn't been done before. Frequently.
Aha, you oily devil you! You meant of course that it is piloted by six, six people in the control room. But I doubt the presence of dedicated field researchers anyway. Time Lords hate leaving their bubbles. I remember reading about how organized they were when they travelled, so much so they never really did anything with the temporal excursions they made. Which angered the young Doctor, having admired Salyevin, had conversations with hermits and such. The Master got along fine without companions, too. But still, we seem to be syncretizing points but for some reason persisting in perpetual argument. You're saying there were six. I'm saying you don't need six. Really, I think the two ideas stand together well enough, especially if we can agree as to how bureaucratic the Time Lords were and how capable Dr. Who is.
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Yes but just because it's been done before and frequently doesn't make it right.
No, I mean six Time Lords. The field researchers aren't Time Lords in the strictest sense. I realize you say you don't need six and that is true. After all the Doctor is fully capable on his own as is the Rani and the Master all pilot their own Tardis without anyone else. I am saying that a Tardis is typically or traditionally crewed by six Time Lords. One that is the lead and the Tardis belongs to that one. the others are I believe, a sort of trainees from the Prydonian Academy. The rest of the ship is crewed by those that are of course Galifreyan but are not Time Lords. Techs and such that i already mentioned. Unfortunately my geocites reference guide I had found no longer exists so I can't reference the source of the information anymore.
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Wow...3, 7 and oh! 4th Doc's costume looks so nice
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Just wait, this is just the teaser image. I'l be uploading the rest to the Doctor Who Club soon. TONS of images on the way.
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