Mucking about with SWORD box art, here's the first of an occasional series of Project Sword toys I wish Century 21 had actually made. Both part of the SWORD stable, we have here the wonderful MOON CRAWLER. The picture I've used is the classic double-spread seen in the SWORD Annual and due to my limited skills it looks a bit squashed. I've lost half of the SWORD logo's too! It captures the spirit of the thing though! The Moon Crawler is a bit of a pin-up really - it appears on loads of toy and model boxes - like the brilliant unlicensed UFO TANK and the Imai UFO Star/ Doom Base series, in which it appears as a small model (anyone got a picture?)and is the basis of the SPACEX SURVEYOR toy too. But it has never been made in a larger scale with its own big box. Until now! The beautiful toy pictured is a customised Spacex Surveyor by the multi-talented WOTAN, which was showcased in an earlier posting.
The lower picture is of what PROJECT SWORD called the BEETLE or the SNOW TRAIN and later re-named THUNDERBIRD 7. This one is in armoured mode where the heat-shields are up making it look like a yellow pupa (continuing the BEETLE theme). In an attempt to link the box art to an actual existing toy I have opted for the Imai Thunderbird 7 model kit as the source. You can see the Japanese artists's signature. I think it works really well largely because it's full of action. I particularly love the BOOSTER ROCKET flying out of it's back. The Imai TB7 biult-up model kit came with a remote control, which I feel sits well in the SWORD range. It even came with a small plastic BOOSTER ROCKET (section 14 on the model sheet)! The BEETLE/SNOW TRAIN/TB7, in its more commonplace unshielded mode had its 15 minutes of fame in the 1968 MAKE A MODEL book-kit by Century 21 but a proper plastic toy would have been sooooooo much better. I'll settle for the Imai model with a SWORD box!
Now, what else should they have made.....?
No comments:
Post a Comment