Collection Booster

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

As Douglas Adams wrote in Hitchhikers Guide, space is vast. Infinite. That's something we can take for granted now, but other things we also tend to take for granted, such as the limits to a collection of toys. Just when you think you have finally nailed that elusive final element that wraps up a series of toys or models and you can finally relax, sit back and admire them, something pops up and resets the boundaries once more.

So it was with my personal favourite, the Booster Rocket. I had the Sword version and was lucky enough to find the Spacex version, many years ago and had happily sat back assuming that was the extent of known models of this particular spaceship. Naturally, this was upset by the appearance of the beautiful Hover version of the SWORD ship in 2009. I've yet to add this to the Wotan archive, but im cautiously optimistic! But it was a recent and quite earthshaking discovery by Woodstock of a series of previously unknown models in Mexico. They were what appeared to be cereal premiums in the style of the R & L Kelloggs Space series, but reflected the designs of Ed Valigursky in the Life 'Man in Space' book. Just seeing a new series of space premiums was exciting enough, but to find they included an 'atomic rocket' in the series was amazing. All credit to Woodstock for spotting the models, as they were shown on the sprues, so it wasn't immediately obvious what some of them were. Having previously dealt with the seller for a set of repro Kelloggs Totem Tribe premiums, I assumed the sets would be repro too. Luckily I was able to buy one of the Atomic Rockets directly after the main ebay sales had finished and was delighted to receive it some weeks later in the mail.

The model arrived with no instructions or explanation, but being quite simple, it was fairly straightforward to make, apart from the fact that half of the fuel tanks were not molded in the round and had no obvious way of fixing to the body. The design also reflected the design in Valigurskys art, so the engine was a truncated nozzle. I set to with the Milliput and built up the lower halves of the fuel tanks and a couple of pieces of Lego provided an excellent engine radiator and exhaust nozzle to reflect the large SWORD design. There are some molding defects in the plastic, but a quick spray of ZERO X blue car paint and voila!

A tiny, but very welcome addition to the Booster Rocket collection. Just need to find the rest of the series now....