YEAR END PUZZLE: GOODBYE 2008

As 2008 comes to an end and the New Year dawns, take time out from bringing the lump of coal into the house and wailing out verses of Auld Lang Syne and have a go at this final SWORD brainteaser of the year. What is it?

PS. Happy New Year from Woodsy!

ERASERHEAD: SWORD RUBBERS

Whilst I was laid-up with flu in early December superblogger WOTAN, via the fabtastic Japanese toys collector Terry Harle, sent me these amazing Poject Sword-based UFO rubbers (or erasers in some quarters) by Takeuchi of Japan. Featured before on the blog, this time I wanted to post a decent scan of the backing card in all its glory. Of obvious note is the huge Thunderbird 3-type ship flying over. Less visible but more interesting are the two vehicles in the bottom left corner - we can just see the armature and treaded wheel of what is probably a Spacex-style MEV and the front of a Project Sword- style MOON CRAWLER (or SPACEX SURVEYOR). Overall I like this artwork a lot and it fits well with the front cover art of the Project Sword annual from 1967.

The lower scan is less satisfactory but you can see that the top rubbers are Scouts 1 (boat) and 2 (jet). Was there ever a 3 in this rubber series? The bottom ones are - left to right - Space Glider, Scramble Bug, Probe Force 3 (x2) and 2. Where there any others in the series? Probe Force 1 would seem logical.

Unlike the other vehicles here, which appear in many guises, I would say that the rubber versions of the Scout 1 and 2 are the only other manifestation of these SWORD vehicles outside of the Century 21 toys, annual and comic strips. There are no Tarheel Scouts or Spacex Scouts. They are unique. Or?

PROJECT CHRISTMAS: SPARE PARTS

Well, the inlaws have left, all the turkey's gone, the last of the blue cheese and crackers have vanished and the final few chocolates are scattered about the house waiting to be discovered sometime in 2009! Xmas 2008 has been and more or less faded ( OK, the decorations stay up till the 6th) and life has begun its return to normality. Yes, there'll be a brief interlude for New Year partying but it doesn't really compare with Xmas as a celebration. The wackiest thing was my Sister tracking Santa's progress on the net!

Still, its just fab to be off work for another week without a doubt! And there are still some great films on - I've had a lazyday tv film fest today - a treat after entertaining inlaws for a week: The Animal (hilarious), Uncle Buck (the late great John Candy), Superman Returns (not a patch on Chris Reeves' films) and as I type, Jurrasic Park III (minus Jeff Goldblum). I have been looking out for some old black and white monster/space films on tv but, except for the mighty RKO King Kong, not a sausage this Crimbo.

Still Santa brought me some nice prezzies. Some old space books, the history of Marvel comics, the history of horror videos, a dvd of the old BBC creepy play 'A Warning to the Curious' and my personal favourite, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics Omnibus!

At some point over the festivities I also managaed to win a few spare PROJECT SWORD parts from Ebay US (pictured above). Once they arrive I'll see what I need and then offer the rest to New Year blog readers for trade for other spare parts/bits. I haven't a clue what the small white space jet in the picture is yet but I'll post some better pics once I've got it. Watch this space!

Enjoy the rest of the festivities...

PS. SPARE PARTS AVAILABLE - UPDATE

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

It was my birthday today so the festivities have officially begun with a bang! When you get a chance raise a glass with me and toast to a great Xmas and healthy happy hopeful 2009 for everyone.

Thanks for all the great articles, pictures and comments this year. I've enjoyed doing the blog and have every intention of continuing it in the New Year.

WOTAN BIULDS A NUCLEAR FERRY FROM SCRATCH

From superblogger WOTAN:

One of the most elusive and distinctive models of the SWORD range is the Nuclear Ferry. Presumed to have been never made and lost in the mists of time, a photo of a battered model of the Ferry was spotted on Yahoo Auctions in Japan late last year in the dying hours of the auction and as the listing was a domestic one, the chances of securing this most unique of toys slipped away into the rays of the rising sun. Presumably snapped up by a discerning collector even though it was listed as a 'space rocket' in damaged condition, it did feature a box and control line battery pack. At the time it was found, i was mid way through a pet project of my own - to build my own ferry based on the available information and illustrations that were then known. A few years earlier I had been lucky to find the only extant model of a carded Spacex ferry - and as it had always been my favourite of all SWORD spaceships, I set out to build a large model. Mattel/Matchbox had produced a successful line of rescue toys in 2002 which had an interchangeable action feature and among these was a (roughly) 00/HO scale (about same size as a golden astrounaut) X-33 Lifting Body/Shuttle. This, i felt was ideally suited to form the hardest part of my model, the sleek shuttle at the front. I decided not to make anything too model-like and stick to the clean toy lines. The fuselage of the booster was made from a tennis ball tube and the collar was a gasket from a gas pipe! The only difference i made was adding a long distance comms antenna at the back to balance the rear end (and to give a nod to Discovery in 2001). A few sprays of paint and a little photoshoppery later, i present the Nuclear Ferrys Thor and Ymir arriving in Mars orbit before debarking to land the X 33 crew shuttle at Thetis Base. I also made a less successful spacex scale model which i might show at some point in the future.

Awesome Wotan!

LARGEST STARS IN THE UNIVERSE

I love the majesty of planets and stars. It would be superb to cruise past them in a sleek silver spaceship! Here's a comparison of some of the biggest ones including Aldebaran (as featured in Star Wars), peaking here with the mighty Antares (not WOTAN!). Our Sun is a tiny speck to the left. But Antares is a tiddler really - check out the very biggest of stars in the video clip at the the base of the blog. They're mind-blowingly massive and reigning supreme over them all is the hypergiant Canis Majoris, over 2000 times the size of our Sun! Enjoy.

Festive Puzzler 2

Grif got the last one - again! Well done! Part of the cockpit of the Zero X MEV. Right then revellers, what's this?

Festive Puzzler

First of a few puzzlers over the Festive Season. Have a go at this one if you can drag yourself away from the egg nog and cheese-boards!

My First Photographs of My PROJECT SWORD Collection: early 1990's

Looking through some old family photo's to send with Xmas cards I stumbled across these prints I took of Project Sword craft about 15 years ago. The quality is terrible! Pre-digital bog standard kodak! I feel that the second one down with the wavey green look isn't that bad. I can't beleive I had a hair on the lens in the bottom photo of the Scout boat! I'm sure that blog readers can do much much better than this!

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So - I'll be soon launching a - wait for it - a PROJECT SWORD photo competition!!!!!! Watch this Space!!!!!!!

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Here's an early shot of a young Woodsy displaying my passion for spaceships as I patrol the skies with my cousin Susan in a Space Tank and Supercar at Butlins in the glorious 60's. Check out Thunderbird 1 catching us up! Heaven!

FERRIES EVERYWHERE!

WOTAN has sent these extra pics of the Spacex II Nuclear Ferry carded and uncarded, together with a scratch built white 6" Ferry and a better shot of the carded Lunar Orbiter.

All these photo's have given me an idea for the New Year!

Nuclear Physics

From the atomic WOTAN: In researching the background of the Sword line and finding out about one of my favourite vehicles, the Nuclear Ferry, I recalled an illustration from about 1969 that I had seen as a boy in Look and Learn magazine. Recently, the bulk of the magazine has been converted into a fantastic searchable database on the web, and keywords in hand, I dived in and within seconds found the very picture I had been searching for all these years - top picture above! The article was one of a regular series on the emergent space race and showed the fantastic ship in all its glory, with cut aways showing how the craft worked.

It may not be visible in the text, but the description gives the length of the main fuselage as 125 feet and notes that the shuttle is held on the frontal dome in flight, and swings down, 17 feet to connect to the base of the freight module. This then detaches and is flight capable. (This feature also seems to be apparent in the Century 21 toy - middle picture above - as there is a visible seam at the rear of the conical front section of the toy, but does not appear on its tiny Spacex cousin - bottom picture above.)

Near the bottom of the illustration is a signature - McCall - Robert McCall, being a renowned NASA and space illustrator and fellow blogger and publisher Rob Godwin aka DARTH told me that he once met Mr.McCall and he was quoted as having "just dreamed the craft up" and it was not one of NASA's future projects. Looking at the illustration and comparing it to the box artwork from the SWORD toy (middle picture above), obvious similarities can be seen and again on the Nuclear Ferry Watch Backing Card spotted on ebay the image is blatantly plagiarised once more. It could be confidently suggested that Mr.McCall is the father of the Nuclear Ferry and all its future imitators.

Nice one WOTAN! Watch this space for WOTAN's fabulous scratch built Nuclear Ferry!

Will Osborne Space Toys: Spacex II, Elf Tracy Island, Marx

Above - Spacex II Booster Rocket backing card rear Above - Spacex II MOLAB backing card rear Above - Spacex II Lunar Orbitor backing card rear

Above - Spacex II Lunar Orbitor and Apollo Tracker backing card rears and Boxed Moon Base Set ( foldable plastic lunar plan not shown)

Above - Spacex II MOLAB backing card front and Lunar Orbiter front (with toy, astronaut and badge)

Above - top left: Elf Toys Tracy Island Prototype with Dinky die- casts: Top right - Elf Toys Tracy Island actual toy with JR21 vehicles

Bottom left - Spacex boxed Superset with hard plastic moon surface; Bottom right - Linemar space vehicle

Above - top left: MARX Lunar Exploration boxed sets: Top right - 2001 NASA remote- control Glider

Bottom Left: MARX Moon Grabbers: Bottom right - MARX Moon Grabber Train Set

Will Osborne, a good friend over many years and a keen Space toy enthusiast, has sent me these pictures of part of his brilliant collection of Spacex, Thunderbirds and Marx toys. The original pictures are colour photocopies and prints, some of which I recieved many years ago. Enjoy!

DYNA SOAR BOX ART

I've been researching space art and artists on the web in an attempt to work out which artist might have painted the covers for the Century 21 PROJECT SWORD box art. Probably the most well-known design of the SWORD range is the DYNA- SOAR (top picture) and as you'd expect there are a lot of illustrations of it on the net, a few examples are shown above. None of this really brings me closer to the answer though. WOTAN thinks the box artist was Ed Valigursky and I'm inclined to agree. Does anybody actually know?

WAR OF THE WORLDS

Treated myself today after work to a viewing of my old VHS copy of George Pal's movie vision of HG Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS. Like The Day The Earth Stood Still and This Island Earth, there are loads of sci-fi icons in the film - the wonderful saddle-shaped alien craft with roving 'rediffusion' eyes, the wierd purring sound that the alien ships make, the desperate music and the amazing jet-wing (above) that drops A-bomb on the visitors. Like the DYNA SOAR, I love the shape of the jet-wing ( was it ever made as a toy?).

The excellent CED Magic has this to say ' War of the Worlds makes effective use of archive footage of the Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing when it is shown dropping an atomic bomb on the Martians. The above image appears 24:36 into Side 2 of the disc. There were only two jet-powered YB-49 aircraft built and both ceased to exist over three years before this movie was made. One plane crashed on June 5, 1948, killing all crew members including Captain Glen Edwards. The other plane broke into two following a landing gear failure on March 5, 1950 and was scraped. Edwards AFB in California, the site of many space shuttle landings, is named in honor of Capt. Edwards'. CED have a great page on WAR OF THE WORLDS too.

The film also features beautiful martian artwork by the space artist Chesley Bonestell, who actually appears in the credits.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

I went to see the remade THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL last week. I was excited as the original 1950's version is one of my favourite sci-fi films. So much of the film is simply iconic - the world-destroying robot GORT, the silver space-ship, KLATU's completion of impossible atomic equations on the blackboard and most iconic of all, the scene where GORT is prevented from detsroyong the world with the words KLATU BARADA NICTO - a phrase I always keep handy just in case I run into the big silver guy!

Needless to say, the modern remake, as is mostly the way, was nowhere near as atmospheric, probably because it was in colour. Keanu Reeves didn't make a convincing KLATU but he tried. GORT, however, was excellent - huge, powerful and relentless - trouble is we just didn't see enough of him. MORE GORT PLEASE!

I found the above picture on the net with child star BILL MUMY clutching the original GORT head! Bill was the boy Will Robinson in the seminal 1960's LOST IN SPACE TV series.

RAGNOROCK ORBITAL INTERCEPTOR 1975

Paul - im having a trawl around for moonbase kits, found this model RAGNOROCK on Fantastic Plastic, which I used to have - it would have fitted neatly into the Probe Force series - had a lot of toy-like play value and was about the same size as PF2. Had a removeable Rocket Support Ship and Nuclear Reactor! Fab! WOTAN.

BRAINTEASER UNSOLVED!

SWORDHEADS, despite a couple of attempts, this puzzler remains unsolved. What is it?

EXPLORING THE MOON AND SPACEX / GOLDEN ASTRONAUT

I love this little set currently on Ebay USA - 'EXPLORING ON THE MOON'. There's no manufacturer given but I think its MPC. Can anyone confirm that? I'm amazed to see the SPACEX/ GOLDEN ASTRONAUT Mobile HQ and the Cricket as part of the set. Were they really part of this set?

ELDON SWORD 2 BY WOTAN

And continuing the SWORD 2 theme, superblogger WOTAN has sent in this:

From Eldon toys, in 1970 comes an absolute beauty of a toy, such simple lines and innovative design slot so easily in to the SWORD fleet I've taken the liberty of re-badging it as a semi-official vehicle. Bearing a striking resemblance to the Sword 2 ATV fom the first story in the official Annual, the Eldon Amphibian is a really cool toy. Controlled by a handset comprising a small bellows, air pushes a sliding switch inside the cab and controls movement and steering. Huge ballon tyres and a built-in rear propellor mean this mighty machine can easily navigate across wide expanses of water as well as scrambling over rough terrain. Eldon toys are famous for a number of other cool sixties toys such as Billy Blastoff and Touch Command Computer Trucks.

Right on WOTAN! Any one seen any other SWORD 2 doppelgangers? Woodsy

NOMURA SWORD 2

I absolutely love this 1961 NOMURA Sears Exclusive Rocket Launcher currently on ebay USA (ebay link). It looks so fabulously SWORD! There is even a You Tube Video. The overall look reminds me a lot of the SWORD 2 vehicle from the 1968 PROJECT SWORD ANNUAL (top pic).

BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS

Just watched the 1950's Beast from 20,0000 Fathoms on DVD. Excellent! The first professional collaberation between Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen. There would have been no Jurassic Park without films like this. The final scene where the Beast destroys the Coney Island funfair is really great. The extras are fab - explaining how the two Rays helped form the Rocket Society in 1940, a group of like-minded sci fi buffs and scientists. Must have been great to be part of! Recommended film.

TASK FORCE 2 VARIATIONS

There are 2 TF2 variations I know of - the red one by Century 21 (top pic), which came in a card box and the yellow one, made by both Century 21 and in the US by Tarheel (bottom pic). The Tarheel version came on bubble card and just had the Taskforce transfers but no Sword logo - see picture earlier in the blog (did Tarheel TF1 and 3 come on cards too?).

Anyone know of any other TF3's? Is there a blue one out there?

MOON PROSPECTING BY WOTAN

Here's another brilliant article sent in by WOTAN.

1970 Rolls Around Again: The Project Sword Moon Prospector has to be one of the most unusual toys ever made. Even for a Gerry Anderson related toy, its an odd design to make with a child in mind - no visible figures or driver,apparently random action, long booms with tiny wheels (which broke easily!) and no obvious front! This aside, its obviously a concept culled from the NASA stable. As earlier articles have shown, this was a definite contender for an unmanned lunar rover and is not far removed from the later robotic vehicles which were actually placed on the Moon and Mars. Here I'm showing a picture (top) from a children's Space Flight book, from around 1961 showing what could conceivably be the actual illustration that gave rise to the Prospector. Although it is an odd design, toy makers clearly saw the potential in mirroring the odd machines NASA was proposing and Jack Rosenthal saw fit to file a patent on his Triang Spacex toy of the same name in November 1970 (bottom pic). Besides the famous SWORD vehicle ( second from bottom pic) and the Triang Spacex version, the Prospector was rolled out in the LP Apollo Moon Exploring range and was also 'plagiarised' by Roxy for the Moon Traffic series of Spacex-styled toys (second to top pic). But, are there any more....

BRAINTEASER

Grifs got the last one too! Scout 2 engines. C'mon guys, give Grif some competition! What's this?