Way back in the day,when almost every newsagent, supermarket and toyshop had nice neat little boxes of space toys, mostly consisting of a little orange rocket, a couple of melted looking plastic rocks and a little space buggy, I was presented with a large window boxed set of what i now know as Apollo Moon Exploring toys. This was a box with four small windowed sections, each holding two vehicles and a selection of spacemen. Over the following 35 years or so, I've managed to relocate and sometimes own the majority of the little toys from this cabinet of wonders. These included the old favourites such as the chrome LEM, bubble shaped moon buggy and Matt Mason Moon Crawler. The orange rocket - which for my own reference I have named 'Thor' and which is effectively the cockroach of the space toy world, turns up everywhere. There appear to be two main versions, the tall and the short. My favourite was always the short. The only difference ive ever seen in this is an extremely rare blue version, which alas ive only seen in pictures.In the box of goodies that I had, there appeared another rarity - a space station built of parts of the Thor Rocket and the Bubble Buggy. My very earliest communications over the nascent internet with Commander Woods and indeed, Paul Vreede comprised a few strangled emails and a photograph of the (then) remains of my collection of various space toys. One photograph still exists (sort of) from back then and is the only remaining picture I have of the base - its the model numbered '21' on the lower photograph.By the time this photograph was taken (mid nineties), the legs had long gone and had been replaced by spare Spacex Moonbase ones, hastily superglued on. Originally, the base was composed of various parts of the Ap Ex fleet - the legs from the saucer, nose from the Thor Rocket, dashboard from the saucer/buggy and the central hull from the tall Thor rocket.Since that heady day, so long ago, my base has disappeared to pastures new. But despite the prolific nature of Ap Ex toys on ebay, books, collections and in this very blog, ive never seen another one. I'd love to find one and also one of the saucers pictured at the head of this article. Although my Ap Ex fleet is far from complete, the missing base is still a thorn in my collectors side, even after all these years. Given that Ap Ex openly plagiarised the Matt Mason range, copying the crawler, the various equipment and vehicles and the laser cannon etc, this would be the equivalent of the Command Centre. Maybe one of these days one will turn up and 1970 will come flooding back to me!
Way back in the day,when almost every newsagent, supermarket and toyshop had nice neat little boxes of space toys, mostly consisting of a little orange rocket, a couple of melted looking plastic rocks and a little space buggy, I was presented with a large window boxed set of what i now know as Apollo Moon Exploring toys. This was a box with four small windowed sections, each holding two vehicles and a selection of spacemen. Over the following 35 years or so, I've managed to relocate and sometimes own the majority of the little toys from this cabinet of wonders. These included the old favourites such as the chrome LEM, bubble shaped moon buggy and Matt Mason Moon Crawler. The orange rocket - which for my own reference I have named 'Thor' and which is effectively the cockroach of the space toy world, turns up everywhere. There appear to be two main versions, the tall and the short. My favourite was always the short. The only difference ive ever seen in this is an extremely rare blue version, which alas ive only seen in pictures. In the box of goodies that I had, there appeared another rarity - a space station built of parts of the Thor Rocket and the Bubble Buggy. My very earliest communications over the nascent internet with Commander Woods and indeed, Paul Vreede comprised a few strangled emails and a photograph of the (then) remains of my collection of various space toys. One photograph still exists (sort of) from back then and is the only remaining picture I have of the base - its the model numbered '21' on the lower photograph. 
By the time this photograph was taken (mid nineties), the legs had long gone and had been replaced by spare Spacex Moonbase ones, hastily superglued on. Originally, the base was composed of various parts of the Ap Ex fleet - the legs from the saucer, nose from the Thor Rocket, dashboard from the saucer/buggy and the central hull from the tall Thor rocket. 
Since that heady day, so long ago, my base has disappeared to pastures new. But despite the prolific nature of Ap Ex toys on ebay, books, collections and in this very blog, ive never seen another one. I'd love to find one and also one of the saucers pictured at the head of this article. Although my Ap Ex fleet is far from complete, the missing base is still a thorn in my collectors side, even after all these years. Given that Ap Ex openly plagiarised the Matt Mason range, copying the crawler, the various equipment and vehicles and the laser cannon etc, this would be the equivalent of the Command Centre. Maybe one of these days one will turn up and 1970 will come flooding back to me!
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