At the Turnpike

A loose tinplate rocket gantry platform, above, recently appeared on fleabay. We've seen the gantry before as part of the US Sears Turnpike Line Rocket Base shown below. As I don't own this set I was surprised when the Ebay listing for the loose gantry described it as having been made in Japan. Does this mean that the whole Sears set is from Japan?

 

This sort of makes sense as we know that another version, most likely older, was made by Tomy, the interplanetary Space Rocket pictured below. Tomy is a Japanese company so it's feasible that Tomy made the Rocket Base for Sears. It's strange that the Tomy rocket below was not issued with the tin gantry like the US version. It is of course possible that a Tomy Rocket Base is out there and just waiting to be found.

Further evidence of Sear's link with Japan comes from looking at other toys in the Turnpike Line [why call it that?], some of which I've featured below [from Liveauctioneers]. Many, if not all, were made in Japan.

Even Sear's beautiful Turnpike transport range, shown below, were made in Japan [Liveauctioneers] as were the non - Turnpike space vehicle range made by Bandai, which included the Moon Mobile Rocket Launcher pictured last below.

So it would seem that the US Sears Rocket Base was made in Japan. If someone has this set I would be grateful if you could confirm this. This naturally leads to another question: was the Century 21 Apollo Saturn in some way made in Japan or were the same molds used? From the comparison below [from left to right: Sears, Tomy, C21] it's clear that the C21 version was smaller and as such it's unlikely that the same molds were used. They are quite clearly the same design though.

All the pictures of the three rockets have appeared before on the blog courtesy of Rob and Emily Godwin of Canada.