As you know I love old Thunderbirds and SWORD knockoffs and here's a great one. I stumbled across it on the net at the huge Gasoline Alley Antiques site. Called SERIE APOLO (ELECTRONICA EXCAVADOR LUNA), it's by a Mexican company called LEDY and is clearly a mix of TB2 pod vehicles and Fireball XL5 figures and scooter. The excellent box art shows three pod vehicles so could we speculate that there are sets containing the other two besides the Excavator shown here? These pod vehicles were also made by BANDAI and have been blogged previously. I just don't know what the silver egg-box is? Anyone?
Hello, I grew up in México and had some of these toys. In fact I sold that one you have photographs from Gasoline Alley back in 1995! I had found it in the toy store sitting there since the late 60's. The place was loaded with vintage toys, mostly made under license by LEDY, Plastimarx, CIPSA, etc. Anyway, the coolest playset IMHO was the actual Fireball XL5. You could open two side doors (Left and Right) on the waist section and it had twin spring-loaded rocket launchers, like the yellow one pictured. The front section of the XL5 rocket could be separated to "fly on its own": It had a sliding door on top and you could open and seat two crew -boy and girl - smaller versions of the ones sitting on the space scooters pictured. It also had all the figures like the Excavador Lunar and the silver egg-box. I think it was supposed to be a lunar life pod or something like that. I have an old picture of me holding my prized XL5 back in 1970.
ReplyDeleteHey, those are great memories of your toys in Mexico! That old toy shop sounds like an Aladdin's cave! If you want to see that photograph you have on this blog then just send a scan to me, Woodsy, moonzero@moonzero.freeserve.co.uk
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