I love a good space-age crane and this Project SWORD one is a cracker. It has fabulously Thunderbirdesque stabilisers and is lifting a SWORD Moon Ranger into or out of a huge quarry. It appeared in TV21 June 1968 in "A Message for Hancock".
I can't think of many toy space-age cranes but there's a nifty miniature one in the UFO set of tiny plastic vehicles, which were made by Diener I think. Or is it R&L? Here's a piccy of a loose bundle. They really do remind me of the small SWORD plastic toys I have from Japan. Anyone got any of these UFO toys?
Or other piccies of spacey cranes or even crane toys readers?
I have a few of those pieces , but not the crane.
ReplyDeleteI do not think they are Diener, for they are made of hard plastic instead of rubbey eraser material - I may be wrong..
Thanks for the post.
I was a bit of a demon crane builder with my Meccano and Lego back in the day...that's when Meccano and Lego were just your basic sets/pieces without all those specialised bits you get these days.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Corby, Northants, the site of some of Europe's biggest Iron Ore quarries for the local steel works and we had a couple of the world's biggest walking draglines right on our doorstep...I used to go round my friends house and watch one of them from his bedroom window.
You can't grow up near those mechanical monsters as a kid and not want to model them.
Loved those old draglines...incredible machines!
My dad took me to see the Mammoth, at the time the worlds largest floating crane ( circa 1969) lifting new dock gates in Liverpool. Stunning thing
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff Bill...never saw "The Mammoth" before but just looked it up...wow! I love those things!
ReplyDeleteHere's a model of one of the Corby draglines...similar jib design.
http://www.ourcorby.org.uk/images/uploaded/scaled/DSCF2057.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Sundew_dragline.jpg
The Corby draglines got decommissioned in the late 70s/early 80s and one was left to rust away for years. (Second link)
Despite all the warnings we used to go play on and in it. It was an awesome thing to explore. The inside of the housing was like the innards of some huge ship. Very dangerous place looking back on it!
I have some of those ships, the crane is VERY cool. It looks like it may be intended as a robotic unit as there is no decernable cockpit. I too don't think these were made by Diener as there are no markings. I think this is just one of those toys that gets re-molded over and over as I have found versions that are slightly different made in Peru.
ReplyDeleteOK - I'm old enough to remember the original sets and confirm they were definitely R&L. They were the last premium I can remember and came with Coco Pops, Fruit Loops, Honey Smacks and Frosty Flakes in I think 1980 or 1981 in Australia. They were obviously a cash in on Star Wars and more likely the Empire Strikes Back (one of those ships looks suspiciously like a twin pod cloud car). I loved these when I was a kid but somehow managed to lose a full set (grrrr). What you have there though are bootlegs - the crane itself had a little handle at the back which is missing probably using the old moulds.
ReplyDelete