The Black Hole: A Pop Up Book

Here is a really nice copy of Walt Disney Studio's The Black Hole, A Pop-Up Book I found recently. The book is from 1979, and the cover price was $4.95. It is in really great shape considering that most kids pop up books are trashed within a day or two of the kid reading and playing with it. I know this from experience, as my 2 year old son has most of the flaps etc torn off in a matter of minutes! This copy has only one scene with a ripped part, and even then, all the pieces are there, and with a little tape, I was able to reconstruct the Black Hole on the last page of the book, good as new.
Here you can see the cover of the book, along with the first two pages of the book, which feature a great pop up of the U.S.S. Cygnus, the huge mystery ship which is hovering on the edge of a giant Black Hole at the beginning of the movie.

More Black Hole

I found another great Black Hole item the other day. This one is the illustrated adaptation of the exciting Walt Disney productions film The Black Hole. Its from Golden and published by Western Publishing Company, Inc, 1979 with a cover price of $1.50. Its the size of a magazine, and looks like a comic book inside with typical comic book artwork and text.
Text from the inside front cover: Imagination, Black Holes, and Disney. Do black holes really exist? Can we travel to, through, and beyond them? What will we find if we do? Nobody really knows! It took some brilliant imaginations (Einstein and his contemporaries) to come up with the concept, but that concept is still just talk.
Scientists tell us black holes are formed when a star burns out, and collapses on itself. it becomes so dense that it exerts a tremendous gravitational pull, so great that nothing, not even light, can escape!
Nobody has ever seen a black hole. They are the ultimate monster man's imagination has produced. Some scientists claim that black holes will eventually devours the entire universe.
Walt Disney Productions has taken this monster and made it frighteningly real, in the movie "The Black Hole." The special effects show us, up close, what it might be like to journey to a black hole.
Disney has always made use of special effects and animation to make the unbelievable seem true. In "Mary Poppins", Mary's combination of live action with animated characters added a dreamlike quality to the film.
Fifteen years later, in "The Black Hole" special effects play an equally important role in giving the deep space setting a chilling sense of reality. Suddenly the scientist's dream has come alive as a terrifying truth!
A new automated camera has been developed to give the models of spacecrafts more realistic movement though the stars. The models look so realist, that you will believe they could fly. In fact, as you watch, they become fully functioning spacecrafts, carrying you vast distances away from Earth, and across the galaxies. And once again, that most magical element of all - imagination - has got the better of you!
Imagination. It's the thing that makes a shadow into an evil creature about to pounce - that turns a neighbor's squeaking footsteps into an approaching intruder, and it's the element that allows us to be so frightened, thrilled, astonished, and entertained at the movies.
Black holes do not exist as far as we know, but as log as imaginations do we can travel with the crew of the Palomino as their journey becomes our journey, and the story of The Black Hole unfolds.

Black Hole Collectables

"A journey that begins where everything ends!"
The other day while searching though some local thrift shops I found two great Walt Disney "the Black Hole" items. The first is the Walt Disney Productions' "the Black Hole" coloring book from Whitman, and dated 1979. Amazingly, this coloring book is in mint condition and completely uncolored, which is not something you see very often from coloring books you find at thrift shops! I'm not sure what the original price of this item was, but I paid a whopping 25 cents.
The second item is the 1979 novel written by Alan Dean Foster, from Del Rey Books, with a cover price of $1.95. This one cost me 50 cents.
Strange that I found both items at the same shop. I wonder if they both came from the same home, perhaps belonging originally to another "the Black Hole" fan.

Little Golden Book Monday #2

It's Monday, so here is another of the Little Golden Books from my collection. Today its Walt Disney Productions' Black Hole. Not wanting to get left out of the movie space race following the success of Star Wars, everyone wanted to get into the scifi business. Disney put together this live action movie which didn't set any box office records, but as a kid, I remember thinking this was such a cool movie! Maximillian was the coolest robot villian even... much cooler than those silly Stormtroopers from that other space movie.
After renting the DVD a few years back, I realized that this movie didn't really hold up all that well. I guess you had to be a 12 year old boy to really appreciate this movie. For those of you who can't get enough of this movie, you can purchase the soundtrack on the iTunes store.
Something else that I did not realize until I scanned the cover and had a look at it recently, it turns out this book was actually made for robots to enjoy, as the cover states "A spaceship Adventure for Robots". Who knew!?