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'The Moon Crawler is one of my favourite designs from the whole SWORD range
and I can't understand why it never made production - for those who have never seen the Annual (shame on you - go straight to ebay!) heres the illustration. The
design seems to be another NASA also ran as something very similar appears in the
early sixtes book Man on The Moon in an illustration by an unamed artist ( picture 1). Then in
the early seventies the vehicle pops up in the failed second series
of Spacex/Golden Astronaut toys (picture 4) which saw very limited release due to the demise
of Tri-ang round about the same time. An almost identical vehicle to that
featured in the annual with slightly different radar and jointed arms ( picture 2). The name
again culled from the NASA databanks; Surveyor 2 after the first successful US
soft landing probe. I recently had the fabulous good fortune to acquire
two Surveyor models and from the two make a 85% complete one using some remnants
from a third model I had as a child.Then, in a move which will no doubt infuriate
Spacex purists and collectors alike, I took the remaining body and
wheels and used them to custom build a Sword Moon Crawler - an on-going project to
make a childhood dream a kind of reality. The picture ( 3 ) of the two vehicles is
slightly photo-shopped as I haven't repainted the wheels, only the old body shell
and the Surveyor itself is still missing one arm.
Nice one Wotan, another wonderful piece! Woodsy
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