Rails and space go together like fish and chips. I never really got into them as a kid but there were lots to choose from like Spaceniks, Mighty Mike [over at Sam's Toybox] and Grippidee Gravidee. The Grippidee Gravidee Deluxe Set pictured above included a cool looking space jet, which had a sort of Probe force 2 look to it [bottom right in the box]. The whole set looks huge!
Even better was the Zero-X MEV-like space cab that featured in the Tomy version pictured below. From around 1969 the set came in both single and double cab sets. The cab, called the Space Express, is amazingly like the Century 21 toy and I can't help thinking that Derek Medding's design likely influenced it.
Below's a close-up of the plastic C21 MEV [right], the Imai die-cast MEV [left] [thanks Jim] and the Tomy Grippidee Space Express.
There's a a cool slide-show of the Double cab version on You Tube and an ever cooler image of it on a 1969 catalogue page stuffed with space toys over on the gigantic Alphadrome.
Originally marketed from Tomy By Rovex Tri-ang in 1969 as Spacenik.
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One of the more challenging aspects of the whole world of Grippidee Gravidee toys, aside from getting them to operate properly, is playing with a GG set that employs 2 vehicles running simultaneously. It looks cool on the box top photo, but the reality is much different. You have to manually spin the "intersection" track piece to align with the closest oncoming vehicle, and then decide if that vehicle is going to go straight through the intersection or spin to go on a different tangent. And all this decision making has to happen before the second vehicle reaches the same intersection, because the LAST thing you want is to have both vehicles collide. No bueno! And so herein lies yet another unsaid but cool aspect of the infamous GG toys... Have fun no matter what!
ReplyDeleteAh that’s part of the fun!
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