Tanks A Lot

I recently clocked this Missile Tank pictured above on fleabay. It immediately struck me as the same toy as the unlicensed UFO Missile Tank seen below. Just the toy's colouring and the box style/ box art are different. You'll remember the UFO version, it has a SWORD Moon Crawler, lifted from an Imai box art, featured bottom left on the box top and sides. As usual it's chicken and egg as to which came first.

The worldof tinplate has several missile tanks and the most similar in design is the Modern Toys MS-58 shown below.

One final thought concerns the large fly-swat-like radar on Missile Tank above. It does remind me a little of the Moon Ranger's pictured below, which we now feel pretty sure what was influenced by the earlier Space Rangers, both grey and Yellow versions, made by Nichimo in the early 1960's featured below.

And thinking about big plastic radars always brings to mind the classic Major Matt Mason Firebolt Lazer Canon with its big red one as seen below. I saw a whistle on feebay, pictured below too, a few years back, which, with its cool radar, seemed like a miniature version of it.