Being fond of building up dioramas’ I always like to give them some sort of scale. As a kid I used to buy the pocket money Airfix kits which were usually 1/72 scale, The aircraft ones usually came with a little pilot which helped to give a general idea of the size of the model in life-size.
I do tend to deal in imperial sizes rather than metric when in comes to imagining the size of vehicles and buildings so apologies to our European readers.
The Project Sword line came in many different scales.
Probe Force 2 & 3 use the same scale pilot in each toy which looks around 1/35 scale. Assuming the pilots have an average height of around six feet tall then P2 would be thirty five feet long and P3 would be around twenty six feet. Probe Force 1 which is longer than it’s sister ships has nothing to scale from, but assuming it’s the same scale it would work out around fifty two feet.
The Task Force rockets all have pilots which look around the 1/72 scale and all the toys are eight inches in length, so that would make them all about forty eight feet long, longer than the two smaller Probe ships!
The Scout Force ships don’t really have anything discernable to calculate a scale, apart from what looks like a door hatch on Scout 1. That looks to be just under a quarter of an inch so I’d say the toy is something like 1/350 scale. That would make it roughly one hundred and fifty feet long!
Scout’s 2 & 3 I’d guess are in the region of 1/44 scale so that would make them about sixty feet long. So even though these are smaller toys they would work out bigger compared to the others full size.
The SWORD Dyna-Soar Space Glider has a wingspan of five inches and a length of eight inches. The pilot looks larger than 1/72, but smaller than 1/35. The real Dyna-Soar is thirty five foot long with a wing span of just over twenty feet. Based on that the scale of the SWORD Dyna-Soar would be in region of 1/48 scale.
The SWORD Space Glider, based on the Northrop M2-F2 is eleven and a half inches long and just under five inches wide. The real M2-F2 is just over twenty two feet long and has a nine feet eight inch wing span. Based on that the toy glider is scaled at around 1/24.
It’s not surprising to find that the SWORD Land Fleet all come in different scales to each other.
The Scramble Bug is eleven and a half inches long. The driver is larger than the Dyna-Soar pilot but smaller than the two Probe Force pilots. That puts the scale between 1/48 and 1/35. I’d say if the Bug really existed it would come in at around forty feet long.
The SWORD Moon Bus, based on the size of the two astronauts in the cabin would make the scale around 1/32 which calculates the length of the bus being around twenty four feet.
The Moon Ranger has the largest figure of all the SWORD Fleet and plenty of other items to scale off. Based on the size of the driver I’d say it was somewhere in the region of 1/24. The toy is eight inches long so a real life version would be sixteen foot in length plus the shovel.
If we take the height of the hand rails circling The Moon Prospector and assume it’s half the size of a man then we have something to take a scale from. The rail is an inch high so a two inch figure would put the toy in the 1/35 category, same as the Probe Force. With it’s stabilisers attached it’s a foot long and nine inches wide, so that makes it thirty five feet long and twenty six feet across.
The Booster Rocket is obviously supposed to be a huge spacecraft - I believe the original design for the proposed ship was supposed to two hundred and sixty feet - far too small if you take it that a crew would pilot it from the Space Probe front section. So it’s Hobson’s choice on this one. At 1/400 it would be six hundred feet long. A man would have only just enough room get into the probe. - 1/500 it would be seven hundred and fifty feet. A more plausible size for a two man crew. At 1/700 it would be over a thousand feet long and plenty of room for a Probe crew.
There's three Sword toys I don't have so I have to use a little more than imagination on these.
I don’t own The Nuclear Ferry but after seeing Bill’s fine example I’d hazard a guess at it being scaled at 1/144 based on the figures in the crew section. I’d say it was around eigteen inches long so at that scale I’d say it would be about two hundred and twenty feet.
And again, I don’t own an Apollo Rocket and never having seen one in the flesh that one’s going to have to sit on the back burner.
The Cape Kennedy Play Set , another toy I don’t possess. We know the size of the actual Apollo Saturn V, a daunting three hundred and sixty three feet. I’d imagine based on seeing Woodsy’s actual box cover and photos of the toy I’d say it was possibly scaled at 1/200.
Obviously these are just educated guesses based on what I see to scale off, If any of you think I’ve made an error of judgement please feel free to put me right.
Brilliant scoop, its a real sore point this andd a major failing in the toy line. I think it clearly points to the lack of cohesion in the line and does support the idea that sword was cobbled together from a disparate series of hong kong toys. Incidentally, in the final story in the annual, theres a small panel which shows the prospector and scramble bug together which supports the scale theory.Also, the original mars probe which spawned the booster rocket had six men crammed into the silver shuttle!
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff Scoop...very interesting indeed.
ReplyDeleteCheers Bill. Yeah, I think you're right about the origin of the line. Even as a kid I could see things were in and out of scale.
ReplyDeleteWith a six man crew the Booster Rocket is looking like it'll be scaled at 1/700 - a thousand feet long!
Cheers eviled. Yeah, I do like knowing how big these vehicles would be in real life.
ReplyDeleteSame here Scoop...I have also always been a big fan of those cutaway diagrams/pictures that show the interiors of spaceships and large vehicles etc.
ReplyDeleteIt adds to the realism for me if I can see that the probes, ships, large mobiles have different areas in them....living/leisure areas, sleeping quarters etc.
Plus I love seeing how they fit all the necessary things in a limited space.
Great Scoop! It's not that different from other toy and model lines though. As a kid trying to make sense of Marx 35mm & 54mm Little Green Army Men, and trying to make them appear as if they belong next to MPC or Rel 60mm soldiers was always a little frustrating.
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