Lost in Space ?

Back when I was a wee nipper and living in Liverpool, there was a local shop called Walters on Park Road, Dingle. This was the 'discount store' of its day in 1965/73 and besides selling all manner of random stuff like kitchenware, houseware and nick-nacks, jokes and toys, Walter always had a prominent window display of space toys. I got my Booster Rocket from there one wonderful xmas after harrassing my beleagured mother every day for a month previously. I saw the Prospector and Moon Ranger sat in the window surrounded by the cheap LP box sets and all sorts of other imported Hong Kong toys. Walter probably picked up a lot of old stock or end of lines and sold them off cheaply. 

Every day, while my mum did the weekly shopping, Id stop by and gaze in wonder at the delights in store. I left Dingle in 1972 when the family moved out as the area was redeveloped, but we often came back to visit relatives and the bus stopped nearby. One day as I arrived outside Walters window for my fix of unobtainable goodies, I saw a blue-boxed space set perched in the display where he normally sat the Sword toys. 

As I recall, this was an orange-yellow tracked moonbus with the rocket launcher from one of the smaller LP tractors perched on the back. It would have had the usual orange rocket, silver aliens and odd plastic rocks that always appeared in these sets, but all I can recall is gazing at the amazing sight of the moonbus. Ive never seen one since and it was only recently when the blue and red version appeared on the blog that I saw it again after all these years.

Even the red/blue version has managed to elude me and still sits high on my hitlist, but the yellow rocket-firing version still plagues me, awaiting the 'eureka' moment when it reappears from the ether once more.