Economy of Scale

When I first found the Tri-ang Spacex series, it wasn't just the toys themselves which impressed me, I loved the packaging too. The little shots of other models on the back of the cards promised a world of fabulous space travel, with rockets zooming through multicoloured ethers and vehicles exploring the variegated landscape of other planets. Whilst the pictures beamed back from the live lunar landings were dull and grey, the Spacex world was bright and exciting.

I always loved the photos of the MEV2 and Prospector, rolling amidst strange, rock formations and collecting samples. The great thing about Spacex too was they were pocket sized, so it was easy to carry at least one vehicle around and sometimes sneak one off to school. In my primary school was a large tarmacced area of yard and at sometime in the process, water had crept in under the tarmac and a hole had subsided, about a foot across. As this wasn't really too much of a problem for the schoolyard, it wasn't filled in and gradually became populated with moss and other small weeds. When I came upon it one day while wandering about the yard, it reminded me of the landscape on the card back, a crater filled with coloured lichen and moss. I managed to smuggle an MEV in one day to explore the little hole and had a great time recreating the scene in my head. Real pictures of the planets and the lunar landscape still seem dull and unexciting now, as in my mind, space is colourful and exciting, just like those little card backs.