Memories are made of this..

 Since the blog began two long years ago, Ive been priveledged to see and in some rare cases, actually own toys that I long ago assumed I would never see. The SWORD Nuclear Ferry, a personal grail of mine, was located and generously donated to my collection. The Submarine Aircraft Carrier had been washing around my childhood memories after I saw it in a closed shop window in the mid sixties and then it was recognised and found by Barry Ford as a toy he had as a boy. 

Blog reader AndyB sent us a description of an incident from his own past where he spotted the elusive SWORD Moonbase in a shop as a boy. After Woodstock posted his research into JR toys and following on from an earlier article about LP spacecraft, AndyB mailed Moonbase the following:

"Note you are looking at old JR toys. A bit off the subject, but I had an LP tracked space explorer as shown on your blog, AND a small rounded space craft which I am sure was the same manufacturer, but you have not shown. It used the same blue and red plastic and chromed astronauts. Even as a kid around 1965 I was sure they were the same manufacturer. Enclosed is a sketch - only a general guide, as it is entirely from memory".

                                   

Woodstock then circulated the sketch to see if it jogged any memories amongst the blog faithful. Almost immediately, Paul Vreede sent in the attached image culled from an ebay auction from seller Ykessa. Paul said that he'd spotted the toy some time ago and pointed out that the background card does have a LP logo displayed on it.

Image courtesy Ykessa Auctions [via Paul Vreede}

This is a great and exciting example of how memory can actually be relied upon and gives us great hope for finding rare toys in the future. Andyb's sketch is almost exactly the same as the toy and has filled another blank in the space toy chronology.

I had a similar moment some years ago after the Philosophic Toad presented me with a scan of a rare Spacex advert that had been in a childrens comic showing the never produced models from the second series. I had found the advert myself back in 1971, roughly chopped it out of the comic with my plastic scissors and kept it. Unfortnately, being a kid at the time, my archival procedures left a lot to be desired and the flimsy newsprint paper became ripped and eventually disintegrated. I had found two ads from a series of four and managed to preserve one slightly better, despite scribbling all over it with magic marker. Years later, I discovered the remains of one and the whole of the second and tried to recall what the ripped one had contained. 

As luck would have it, the one that fell apart had contained the only known illustration of the ultra rare space station and when I described it to my friends, nobody knew what I was on about. Taking the whole advert that had survived the years, I scanned it into Photoshop and attempted to sketch in the blanks. Having pored over the ad, wishing I could one day find the fabulous space station, I had a fairly good recollection of what it looked like. I sketched up a rough draft of what I remembered and patched up the rest with parts of the more complete advert.

Below is the original sketch with the part shown in red that had survived the ravages of time - on the right is the actual advert as found by the ever resourceful Toad.

So maybe one day all mysteries will be penetrated and the mists of time will part to reveal all the lost toys of our childhood and blog readers the world over can rise and shout -

" SEE, I TOLD YOU!"