A regular summer pursuit of mine was playing in the garden with my space toys. Seeing the early spring sunshine recalled the days spent firing off catapult launched missiles and promptly losing them again in the neighbours hedges and on surrounding roofs.Nowadays, being a responsible adult, Im resisting the urge to pull back on that elastic band and hope for the best as I have managed to restore my small collection of rockets via ebay.
Chief amongst my favourites were Quercetti Rockets - a regular holiday purchase from shops at the seaside along with kites, frisbees and gliders. Whilst hunting down complete models of my lost rockets, I came across a very unusual pneumatic rocket by an unknown maker. It came with a large metal and wooden hand pump to compress the air inside the 'nylon' rocket in the manner of the Merit Lunar Rocket from the sixties. Its a similar shape to the Merit rocket, but has a rubber cap on the end to both cushion the landing and to accept a rather neat propellor shaped satellite! Ive never tried it, but I would imagine the rocket would come hurtling down to earth after releasing the little payload as it reaches its height, which would then twirl safely back home.
Quercetti never let crash landings become a problem with their rockets and always included a parachute! The Tor Junior and Tor Missiles reached a set height and a lever system popped open the body to release the chute. The big daddy of the range, the Mach X came with a double catapult, a foot stand/launcher and a separate chuted capsule. This was actually marketed by J. Rosenthal toys in TV21.
The Tor Missile also came equipped with a rare accessory pack, the Rotor. This is a simple propellor based satellite which can be used either as a stand alone satellite or as a braking device for the missile. Again ive never been brave enough to see if it works!
Lastly, an little curiosity or two. Rocket shaped Salt and Pepper condiment sets in plastic! Between them sits a single piece, hard plastic A1/V2 missile painted in the style of the test rockets used by the US Air force at White Sands using captured Nazi technology. This has no visible makers marks of any kind. Can anyone shed light on the mystery rocket ?
Now I know what I'll call my imaginary rock band - The Lost Rockets! Much better than V2 and the Von Brauns!
ReplyDeleteNo idea what the mystery rocket is - looks a bit V2 like.
I can' identify the mystery rocket either. But I do like those condiment rockets!
ReplyDeleteI had one of the missile Tor 'slingshot' rockets as a child and yes the launcher did find applications for sending other payloads aloft !
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