Sometimes I miss the obvious and have to revisit an item again and again to get the idea. When I found the Tomy Ranger 7 Rocket at auction in Japan recently, I immediately picked up on the fact that it was coloured in a similar fashion to the large Sears version, with a blue nosecone. This and the fact that it states on the box that it has a 'smoking effect' engine led me to assume that it was essentially the same toy, although it did leave me with the usual 'chicken and egg' scenario. Darth, the proud owner of the larger Sears model, reports that there are no Tomy brands on the toy, just a 'Made in Japan' trademark.
When I recently compared the three toys together in pictures - as the Wotan Archive is sadly without any of these amazing toys in reality - its possible to spot other features that the Sears and Tomy toys share. Namely a black ring or collar on the main fuselage and slightly blunter nacelles on the wing tips, compared to the smaller C21 version. The Tomy one would be around 50 cm tall based on the rather blurred ruler seen in the photograph on the auction, but again, not having either of the toys myself I cant check.
After drooling over these plastic wonders once more, it occurred to me that the rocket had made another appearance too - in Regent Toys Project Moon press ad from 1969. The rocket shown on their advert shares the same colour scheme as the Tomy one, but does not mention the special 'smoke' effect or evn the SWORD branding. Regent Toys used a Toy Mail Order list and may have been a clearing house for older stock, so perhaps this 'Apollo Rocket' featured in the ad is one of the imported japanese versions rather than the C21 Project Sword toy ?
Great research Wote! See what you mean about the Tomy and Project MOON rockets - they look the same. Why would they get hold of Tomy rockets instead of Century 21 versions? I suppose all the parts were interchangeable - fins, tops etc. So the Moon rocket could be a hotch potch but it does look like the Tomy one. How very odd.
ReplyDelete