Question: When is a Dalek death ray not a Dalek death ray?
Answer: When it's a Dalek 'blast gun'...
Confused? All will become clear...
Latest in our little series of confectionary/food products to carry the Who label - the 1970s Walls Dalek Death Ray lollypop. I nearly remember these - I recall the wrappers but not the taste... I don't think I ever ate one. Who knows. Apparently the lolly was chocolate and mint... my favourite... damn, I so want to eat one of these now (perhaps it is triggering some latent memory!).
The reverse of the wrappers contained a 'episode' from a story or fact file type information. There were two stories published over the life span of the product, the first 'From the world of the Daleks' and the second called 'The Incredible Daleks'. As far as I can establish, each story had eight parts, and there were at least three 'odd' fact/info type backs - win a Dalek, make a Dalek and the annotated Dalek (image, bottom).
The two stories can be distinguished by the banner on the top of the reverse side. The frist series is predominantly green, the second red, as shown above.
In digging around for bits for this post, I've found out that popular Who artist Frank Bellamy (see earlier posts) illustrated the cover wrapper and first 'story', which I never knew, and seems to be news to many people. There's a bit about it on the Frank Bellamy Checklist Blog, and you can find scans of the illustrations here. Unfortunately the story text is not included.
You'll also find scans of wrappers at Dalek-mania and on the RichardWho collectors site, for example here.
One of the wrappers featured an annotated Dalek, complete with blast gun. Now wouldn't it have been a bit better to call it a death ray?
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