Sunday 19 February 2012

Hawk, Eyed

During the archive inspection, Commander Woods commented that one of the Tarheel Nova Rocket series had been spotted from another maker. Apparently, Tarheels neighbour Durham Industries made the green Hawk spaceship. I was a bit surprised at this, as I had been aware of it for some time, as I had the Durham Nova along with a Tarheel ship too. The following blurry photographs attempt to show the two trademark insignia on the base of each ship.

The Nova series took various elements of Thunderbirds and part of the SWORD Probe Force Two to create three new ships. The green Nova is almost identical to the Triang Rocketship Hawk, apart from the TB2 style tailplane.

4 comments:

  1. Funny that the few Durham cousins of the Tarheel range having surfaced by far (Nova Hawk, Space Glider) share the same colour. Durham Is Green!

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  2. Do Durham Ind make any other toys ?

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  3. Quite a few actually, from miscellaneous superhero toys to Smurf trains and whatnot. Interestingly at least some of the Tarheel Astroid Robots were cloned by Durham as well.

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  4. Try googling images for Durham Industries or Durham Ind toys and it's amazing how much comes up. They were far more prolific than Tarheel. I personally love 'Durham' green Arto. It appeared on a lot of Tarheel toys too like their Circus Train, your fabulous Space Glider and those wonderful green engines at the rear of the red Task Force 1. Other than the cross-branding of each others' toys and despite Durham and Tarboro [Tarheel HQ] being virtually neighbouring US cities in North Carolina I've never seen any formal paperwork that links Durham and Tarheel Industries together.

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