Since my early days of looking into and collecting SWORD and SpaceX I've been aware of the knockoff miniatures by Hover. An old contact caled Mark Mclellan sent me two pictures of his carded Space Adventure and Space Glider [top left pair]. The mighty WOTAN also had a loose blue Space Glider and amazingly a loose Lunar Rover. Some time later when Ebay came along I found the Moon Base set from the series [bottom pair]. But frustratingly I've never seen a full carded set of the vehicles, so in the spirit of Blue Peter I've got stuck in and ..here's a set I made earlier! The top right threesome are my poor attempts at imagining what a carded Hover Lunar Rover, Scramble Bug and the Blue Glider might look like.
But better still would be pics of the real McCoys! Anyone?
WOTAN Butts in:
Heres a real blast from the past - probably about ten years ago when I first found the internet and made my initial forays into email, I sent Mr Woods a series of duff photos of my spacex and other stuff. This was the first time I had found anyone who actually knew anything about Spacex since the early seventies and formed the basis of a lasting friendship. A day or two later, I got a call from a rather entusiastic man in Holland who Woodstock had forwarded the photos to and since then I have been great friends with Mr Paul Vreede too. From such small beginnings.. Paul V subsequently carved up the series of photos and created the composite photo above, complete with numbers. This is the only extant photo I have of the Hover Rover, with its wooden base. Just for sake of completion, here is a key to the numbers:
1. Small Army Cricket
2. Blue Box AP EX Shuttle copy
3. Sword Badge
4. Spacex Badge
5.matchbox rocket
6.Roxy prospector
7.Hover Lunar Rover
8.Hover Glider
9.-12 LP Moon Vehicles
13.LP Rocket Transporter (rip off of large deluxe version)
14.LP Rocket (4")
15.-18 -assorted golden astronauts, aliens
19 small astronaut from large blue LP rocket
21 Ap Ex space station - with spacex Moon base legs glued on!
my rover more or less fell apart and had to be fixed to a wooden base by my dad. Years later it ended up in McClellans collection too. Scramble Bugs all fell to bits too. Glider survives, without needle. I bought them all around 1974/5 in a newsagent/sweetshop in Liverpool. They were all 5p each and sold from a glass jar, loose like sweets. The owner had put them in the jar for ease of display, but me and my mate tipped em all out to get the only glider in the lot! I later saw the saucer in another (closed) shop window, loose again, for 2p. Never got that one and have never seen a carded or boxed set of either.
ReplyDeleteA long shot, but i wonder if there is any conncetion to the NX-01 shuttlepod and the "Ap EX shuttle copy"
ReplyDelete