A transit of Venus occurs more often than An occasion when I find a rare space toy lately, so I was especially pleased to find a toy I have only ever seen twice in my not inconsiderable lifetime. As a boy, I had a set of three space toys which mirrored the design of the Topper Cape Canaveral Rocket Base; a transporter, rocket gantry and the missile bank. Recently, I came upon the missile bank in a Spacex junker lot and after some negotiation on price, managed to buy it.
This particular toy also does service in the earlier Apollo Moon Exploring series, but with the missiles substituted for radar dishes. This version was not issued by Imperial, LP or Multiple, but by Blue Box. Blue Box were a favourite toy dealer of mine, who produced roadwork sets, cars, army and planes and issued a lot of the LP series in their iconic blue window boxes.
The piece was a little knocked about, with one launcher missing, so I fabricated a new one and from a distance, it fits nicely. The little rockets also appear on a Telsalda Rocket Firing Armoured Car too. (far right with later longer version missile )
I just need to get another example of the rocket transporter lorry and thats a big hole in the wants list plugged!
Wait a sec, is it normal for it to also have the three radar dishes (identical to the ones atop the mobile hq)? I ask because I recently acquired a massive spacex lot and it had this base in it but no missles. It had a lot of the dishes in it though and I was going to use them to fix up all the mobile hq's of mine missing them but if that's where they go, then I need to rethink my plans. I'm just used to seeing it with the three missles atop it.
ReplyDeleteWhat else was in your massive SpaceX lot Lance? I'm intrigued having just read this!
Delete