Wotans Bones III

This is the moment when things really took off. 1969, man lands on the moon and Triang Spacex Interspace Miniatures land in my 8 year old hands. Its a moment I recall with almost eidetic clarity, Saturday afternoon, brilliant sunshine of the eternal summer of childhood and im splashing about in a paddling pool - red pvc ring, pale blue base with big paintings of Viking longships all over it - while my mum sat in a wooden deck chair my dad had made, next to me. Probably my sisters were there, doing teenage stuff, but it was an idyllic day and we were all expecting my dad to come home from the works outing in Blackpool. My dad was a joiner and worked hard and played hard. Some of his work is still visible in old Liverpool, he often took me around the town pointing out which pubs he'd shopfitted and which bits of woodwork were his. The bar in the Philharmonic Pub near Hope street is his. Anyway, the door opened and in he walked, looking every inch like a tree brought to life, striding across the yard smelling of woodshavings and pipe tobacco. Making straight for my mum, he casually handed me a small brown paper bag and proceeded to chat to her. Drying myself off as best I could, I fished into the bag and pulled out an amazing sight. Up to this point, i'd saturated myself with SWORD. The toys I had, the manual, the badge permanently pinned to my jumper and the annual, with the main spread of Zero X stuck to my bedroom wall. But here, here was one of those moments when the world stops on its axis, a Matrix bullet-time moment when everything slows and I dropped between the gaps in the moments to study the small orange spaceship tacked to a colourful card and accompanied by a tiny gold spaceman. Totally awed, I snapped out of it and asked my dad where he'd got it. 'Oh its from Woolies on the front, picked it up while I was waiting for the tram.' was his swift reply and then he turned back to my mum and carried on chatting. Clearly tired after his bender with the rest of the Walkers Brewery shopfitting staff, he wasn't really in the mood to talk toys. I popped it out of the pack and was immediately struck by the fact that it had train wheels and was made by Triang. I tried vainly to question him, but he was hungry and had clearly missed being away from my mum for the night.Consequently, it wasn't till some days later than I divined that the toys were sold mainly in Woolworths and there were lots of them! In the next few months, due to the fact that they were literally pocket money toys, I badgered my dad each week and instead of comics, received two of the toys every saturday. They arrived in memorable combinations - Cricket p1 /Tractor T5, Reconaissance 2 / Pleasure Cruiser, Needle Probe /Hawk etc. My favourites were far and away the Moon Prospector because of the Sword connection and the MEV 2 because it was a classic moon exploring vehicle, the like of which graced may of my favourite space books.
The following holidays, Bonfire Night, Xmas and Easter rewarded me with the Spacex Major toys, each in lieu of fireworks or chocolate or riding high on santas list.

The Space Patrol 1 has now lost all its wheels after many crash landings on the concrete yard. Its golden astronaut has become lost in the legions of similar figures which have passed through my hands in the following years, the missile tubes have collapsed after I fed matchstalks into them after I lost the missiles the same weekend that I got it and have been badly repaired in my youth with body putty. But the ship represents a massive influence - the sleek shape, the unique engine nacelles and the bold colours. Its odd to think that had I been a reader of TV21 at the time, I may have come across its origin in the Dalek strip, as Ron Turner drew the Guardian ship as past of the series, art imitating life, so many years before the blog would appear.