THUNDERBIRDS DART GUNS

This highly unusual THUNDERBIRDS dart pistol - above - appeared on Ebay in the last week, being sold in Belgium. It's clearly a knock-off of the officially licensed 1960's Lone Star Rocket Firing Space Gun (below, courtesy of http://www.vintagethunderbirdstoys/). The flagrant copying of the TB2, both at the top and bottom of the card, are clearly visible and you can almost see how they have simply slapped a Dalek over the TB3 picture! But, do you know, I love this knock-off. The dark space background is wonderful for TB2 (and unlikely as I'm sure that TB2 was earth-bound) but what really makes it for me is the juxtaposition of a Dalek and the TB2 in one place! This is very unusual and reminds me of a DC/Marvel Superhero crossover where Batman meets Spiderman! Both contemporaries in the swinging Sixties and regular neighbours in TV21, I'm sure they never actually came together on TV or moreover on any other toy? It's strange how the toy is simply called ROCKET GUN AND THUNDERBIRDS, opting to miss out on the selling power of Dr. Who in the title. The black and white drawing of the space boy in the bottom left corner is also odd - sort of reminds me of the motif in the Dr. Who Disintegrator Gun comic advert. I must admit I had a bid on this but it was a reserve item and remains tantalisingly unsold!

There is another knockoff of the Lone Star gun, the PILEN PISTOLA ESPECIAL from Spain. I can only find one image of this similarly wondrous derivative, on the marvellous METROPOLIS TOYS site. The image is copyrighted so please view it on their site. Pilen avoid any mention of Thunderbirds but have slapped one of the Tracy brothers over a space-scape patrolled by a more plausible TB3. However, it is still the Dalek version, which does it for me!

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PS. Steve from www.vintagethunderbirdtoys says "Interesting. The Pilen dart gun is significantly smaller than the Lone Star version. I wouldn't give the Pilen one house room. I assume the Dalek/Thunderbirds one is a re-card of the Pilen".