Batman Flew My Glider Home

That final shot of my SWORD fleet the other day, Moonships and all, got me thinking about the very first bits and bobs I 'collected' back at the start of the Nineties! I had just left my twenties behind and landed a cool job in Leeds. And then I discovered old toys like the one's I had as a kid! It was a revelation. They were exciting times. Everything was new to me - Model Mart, Toy Fairs and the amazing Toy Shop Newspaper. Aaah! Happy days. The first thingy I ever found, which kicked my bug off, was a battered dinky SPV in a junk shop round here called The Anything Shop. Spirit duely fired I went to my fist evening toy meet in Normanton and found, wonder of wonders, my first SWORD vehicle! A boxed Space Glider [aka 'The Spark'], pictured above, which cost me the princely sum of £27. We were together again after 23 years! My collecting tastes were very wide at the start, a regular corvid was I much to my better half's irritation, as we lived in the smallest house in the world! Mucho Batman, KAPOW!, and any space debris I could find came home with me. It was heaven finding cheap stuff - all junk shops, jumble sales, charity shops and the occasional toy fair bargain. I remember my first Model Mart 'mail order' item [ a decade before Ebay in the UK] was the mint bubble boxed Corgi Juniors Batmobile [bottom pic in the centre]. I opened it on the 7.30am bus going to work in Wakefield. Sheer bliss! It was from a pioneer of mail order vintage toys, TV Toy Zone, who issued beautiful toy catalogues full of Anderson and TV related wonders. Sadly they moved into modern action figures when they became the more swish Toy Heroes.

Alas, I don't have any of the stuff pictured anymore [all swapped and flogged] except the SWORD Glider [old 'Sparky'] and Annual. I never knew at the time that the wingless rocket in front of the Glider was probably a Blue Box Space Rocket or similar, which we've featured on't blog many times. The photo's were taken by a photography friend of mine at the time - a proper camera with film, light meter and flash! I've scanned them for your viewing pleasure.

Pictures of anyone else's early [or current] collections are always welcome for posting here on the moonblog.