I've missed the Ferry

Woodsys recent poll on which was the best C21 toy ever made made me answer the Nuclear Ferry. As we all know, its a design based upon a real life concept vehicle proposed by Ling/Temco/Vought in the sixties for a nuclear powered freighter. But the combination of massive rocket booster coupled with super streamlined shuttle was for me oneof the most distinctive models i'd ever seen as a boy and immediately went to the top of my wants list after I saw it in the SWORD manual. Since then, ive been unfeasibly lucky to be the proud owner of the first version of the toy to be found and have been in a position to compare the actual model to all the various pieces of Ferry related artwork that have appeared. As it is a distinctive shape, it has appeared many times in TV21 and other comics and in various ads and packaging. Just when I assumed id seen it all, the ever-givin Philo Toad uncovered one of the TV21 Sword text stories 'Sabotage' from June 1968 and the header artwork featured a glorious monochrome painting of my favourite ship. Im not sure if its a Malcolm Stokes or a Ron Embelton piece, but its dynamic and beautiful.

As if this wasnt exciting enough in itself, the Gerry Anderson Complete Comics History website includes an interview by the Toad herself with Mike Noble.  Mike illustrated the Look-in strip adaptation of japanese puppet show 'Star Fleet' and one of the panels featured a very distinctive looking ship being escorted by the X-Bomber. When questioned about the similarity of the ship to the SWORD and Spacex toys, Mike cited the original Life magazine appearance of Robert McCalls seminal Nuclear Ferry painting. So thats two 'new' pieces of Ferry artwork for me to drool over in a week!