Whistle And Ill Come To You

Fresh from the shores of Australia comes this marvelous little premium, the R & L Tootprobe Shuttle. Spotted earlier this month by the ever watchful Woodstock, I managed to win this sucker on ebay. Apparently part of a small line of premiums including an F1 Racing Car and a plane, this cool little two piece kit is also a shrill sounding whistle.

Despite being really tiny, a lot smaller than I anticipated, at about an inch and a half long, it's well detailed. Following the form of early shuttle concepts, its unusual in that it hasn't been modelled on the standard NASA shuttle design we are all familiar with and gone for the more streamlined approach. Probably dating from the early seventies, judging by its shape and the design of the other premiums in the line, it's the first time i've come across this line of premiums.

R & L or Rosenhain and Lipmann made most of the cereal premiums from the sixties and seventies from a factory in Melbourne, Australia. In the late seventies, the owners sold the company and operations moved to Mexico. Today, a lot of classic cereal premiums are made available in repro form at the mexican operation.
The Shuttle sits well with the original Space Age Kelloggs premiums, which included the space station, Molab and Rocket Transporter.