Frank Bellamy licks the Daleks into shape

Shaqui and I had some email correspondence recently after I alerted him to the fact that Frank Bellamy had produced some Dalek material for Wall's Ice Cream around September 1975. Even research in the Unilever Archives showed me they do not retain any part of this series except the front part of a wrapper!



"The Dalek Death Ray wrappers was a revelation - I was kicking myself for not recognizing the style but then the repro is mushy at best and I didn't think Bellamy would do stuff like this!" Of course when he says 'mushy' I don't think he was making a pun - these wrappers were covering ICE lollies, after all and had a tendency to make the wrappers mushy! However, in his usual helpful manner, he supplied some examples so we could see what they looked like.

Shaqui tells me that Wall's Ice Cream published two series of Dalek material in the first half of the 1970s. The first series was called 'From the world of the Daleks...', while the second, non-Bellamy, one is called 'The Incredible Daleks...' The titles from the first series are:

The Grenium Invisibility System

Daleks and the Ancient Britons

The Swamp Creatures of Terroth

When the Daleks Flooded the Earth!

The Cyclops Z-Ray

A Dalek Deep Space Battle Cruiser

Dalek Officer

Transmol

Shaqui then told me something that I didn't know about this series: "The other interesting trivia note for the Bellamy series is all bar one ('Dalek Officer' although I think some notes come from some cutaway seen but the approach is quite different) are taken from the 1976 Dalek annual: 'Terroth' and 'Flooded' are based on the two strip stories, while the 'Cruiser' appears in a text story. 'Transmol', 'Z-Ray', and 'Grenium' are from one of those 'amazing Dalek facts/technology' features, while there is a mention of Daleks on Earth in AD42 in another."

Concepts for Bellamy work from this annual - Artist unknown

It should be stressed that no Bellamy artwork appears in  Dalek Annual 1976, and this would have been published at the end of Summer 1975 for Christmas sales in 1975. 

An eBay seller helpfully put some of these up for sale and here is one to show what the back looked like complete

Front and rear of a Bellamy Dalek's Death Ray

Bellamy had correspondence with Eric Fletcher of "Scheme", (presumably the agency creating the designs for Wall's). In it he mentions that "we could sit the creature with the fangs on a sort of 'all-seeing' eye." Could this be the design Alan Davis has on his website? Why was it not used?

 Lastly, in the correspondence mentioned above, a series called "Solar System" is mentioned. Did Bellamy do it? - We have no other reference to it

Peter Cushing liked to read Bellamy!

'Ian from The Receptacle Group', as he wants to be known, recently posted an article that made me smile and with his permission I have adapted it here for you!

The film, Doctor Who and the Daleks, was released in 1965 starring Peter Cushing as the cinema Doctor (Hartnell was on the TV at the time) . In the opening scene, the camera pans around the Doctor's living room. First we see Susan reading 'Physics for the Inquiring Mind' by Eric M. Rogers. Then we see Barbara reading 'The Science Of Science'. And what’s the Doctor himself reading?


Eagle and Boys' World Vol.16 No. 12, 20th March 1965.


As the Doctor puts down the comic, we see that he has been reading 'Heros The Spartan' from the centre pages, which of course was illustrated at that time by Bellamy.



And then we see him reading the next pages, 12 and 13, before he stands up when Ian arrives.

Anyway.. according to Mark Campbell's 'Dimensions In Time & Space' book, the movie was filmed from 8th March to April 1965, then the premiere was 24th June 1965. This issue would have been on sale in the newsagents from 17th March to 23rd March, in the middle of filming, so it could well have been picked up specially for this scene, filmed during that week?

You would have thought that Terry Nation would have wanted a copy of TV Century 21 to be advertised in the movie, what with the Daleks strip appearing on the back cover of that comic. [Issue 9 would have been out at the same time as this issue of Eagle]. Although I suppose its best as it is, otherwise kids and Doctor Who fans would have been saying that how come the Doctor didn't know about the Daleks when he'd just been reading about them!

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Thanks for this Ian, great stuff, and for Bellamy fans, here's the actual strip that held Cushing's eye. It's part 4 of the last story of Heros that Bellamy did (he was followed by Luis Bermejo) and Bellamy has used many, almost psychedelic, colours for backgrounds.. The story was called The Slave Army