No bloggiversary would be complete without at least one mention of the SWORD Holy Grail, the fabled Century 21 MOONBASE SET as pictured in the PROJECT SWORD MANUAL above. My first snifter of a part of this toy was back in the early Nineties long before Ebay made things easy (and less exciting!), when I sourced all of my SWORD toys from a single London collector/dealer called Chris Avis. Tenacious to the last Chris found me every last one of my first flush of SWORD toys including the Cape Kennedy Set and Apollo Saturn. Back then I doubted totally the existence of the Nuclear Ferry and Chris didn't find one. This chimed with my childhood experience too when neither me nor any of my chums had one. How wrong I was as the uncredible events of late 2008/2009 proved and now we know of at least two Ferries!
I never expected Chris to find a Moonbase. It had never appeared in any of the TV21 toy ads for SWORD. He didn't, but he found what were allegedly, he was told, a group of the Spacemen that appear in the Moonbase picture! I was ecstatic and hopeful of even greater discoveries! You must remember that back then in the early 1990's, way before the internet in the UK, my knowledge of vintage toys was based on my own childhood and the great but few toy magazines around in the Nineties, namely the mighty US Toy Shop and the equally important Model and Collectors Mart (sadly and inexplicably no longer with us). Once the dust had settled and the deal done, Chris could only find two of the 'Moonbase' astronauts, of which I bought one. I wasn't aware of LP or MPC then so it was only years later when I realised that my 'Moonbase' figure was mass-produced, found in many sets and was indeed made by LP as stated clearly on the base. Der! Pictured below is said LP spaceman - still with me, a chromed LP clone I got last year (sold as a cake decoration) and a close-up (well, sort of) of the figures in the SWORD Moonbase picture in the manual, none of which look like our man!
The trail went cold until around 1996 when two things happened. Firstly I bought a copy of Dennis Nicholson's Gerry Anderson Memorabilia Guide, quite simply THE bible of anderson merchandise, now out of print and long overdue for re-issue (colour please!). Dennis covered SWORD and printed all the drawings of the toys as appeared in the Manual. Excitedly I contacted Dennis about the Moonbase but alas, he'd never seen one either. However, the Guide also mentions an IMAI Project Sword Moonbase Set, containing a 'moon prospector, a moon crawler and scramble bug'. Given the number of Japanese kits that contain these particular vehicles, such as the Imai Doom Base, I'm more hopeful that this kit is out there somewhere!
The second thing that happened in the mid-1990's (unsure when) was that I placed an ad in the free-ads of Model and Collectors Mart magazine about SWORD. I was completely bowled over with the response and I can trace back to this ad my three most enduring SWORD/ SPACEX relationships: WOTAN, Paul Vreede and, perhaps the SWORDfather, Will Osborne. From a Toy Shop family, Will's first-hand experience of space toys proved to be revelation and his passion inspired me. Significantly and much later, in 2007, Will told me about a toy dealer named John Churchwood who had had contact with Century 21 and excitingly, may have acquired a display example of the Moonbase set. This was the first real lead I had ever come across and was keen to follow it up. Fortuitously I had become a member of the excellent Space 1999 Eagle Transporter Forum last year and came across and got involved in a thread concerning John Churchwood. Through this brilliant network I was able to find out that John's daughter had carried on in the toy business standing at Toy Fairs. Through this stroke of luck I was able to contact John's daughter, who has very kindly given me permission to post her reply here:
"I (don't) think the moon base was made. Having said that, I don't know for sure whether anything was given to my dad. It is possible. To the present I have seen nothing remotely like it and I would be surprised if I found it now.I think these Project sword toys are amazing. They were being designed in the early/mid 1960s and their designers were not just imaginative but almost clairvoyant. Their concepts and guestimates at future designs were farsighted and gifted. Did they know what the space shuttle would look like back then, I doubt it but the Space Glider's likeness is uncanny.If I find anything even remotely like a moonbase I will let you know. In the meantime I will have a look at the website and if I can be of assistance in the future please let me know."
And so we come full circle, from no moonbase, to a possible moonbase and back to no moonbase. It remains as elsuive now as it did back in the early 1990's when I started looking. The ultimate SWORD mystery. For now, the late great Ed Valigursky's original vision (below) keeps the dream alive.
Man and Space 1964: Woodsy Collection
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