I found these in my blog archive. Featured before but not together. I think the two pages are part of the same article.
Note that the Lunar Climber is mistakenly [but intriguingly!] linked to Project SWORD in the top page text.
Note also that in 1969 the idea of 'SWORD collectors' was already around!
If those pages are from the same issue (the Moon Shot page doesn't carry a date), then what happened is that Century 21 got some "free" editorial attention because they took out a paid double-page advert. That's how trade magazines work, Woodsy. :)
ReplyDeleteBest -- Paul
there's an updated post coming about this article and editorial Paul. I'd love a copy of that edition of Toys International!
DeleteA question, what does that note "Tick No. -- for full details" after every article? A brochure order number?
ReplyDeleteI would imagine so, Arto. Must've been an order form with numbered tick boxes in or with that magazine, so you could order multiple brochures (or product sheets perhaps) in one go. Useful service, and I imagine a nice selling point for subscriptions. :)
ReplyDeleteBest -- Paul
Thanks Paul, that would lead us to assume that there indeed were individual product info sheets to order. So where to find those C21 ones, has anyone ever come across one?
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that struck me in Sid Simmons' comment about SWORD is how actively they wanted to link the toy range with the new and upcoming inventions in space technology. Whereas some of the toys - assumedly - pre-existed and were recycled as Swords, others were all-new concepts in toy form. The Manual encompasses both of these aspects of the toy range, which presumably was intended to go beyond that and the Scouts that followed. So what happened to that original idea?
No idea on either of those questions I'm afraid, Arto. Perhaps our more knowledgeable hosts might have an idea about those.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts (as they are) re Simmons' statement is that he might just have been spinning a tale to induce toy shop buyers to stock up on Sword as being scientifically sound and based on reality (or proposals for same). Sounds much more serious (to a grown-up, certainly at that time) than saying quite a lot of it is sci-fi fantasy.
Best -- Paul
SWORD ccould be seen as having different public faces ion the late Sixties Arto maybe: the one in SOLO, the one in TV21, the one in the Annual, the toys themselves and the as you say Paul, the economics if it. C21 was a business making money after all. I can't help also thinking too Arto that the whole 'canon' of SWORD stuff was imbued with that unique spark of rocket fuel so typical of those few years at the end of that decade, a heady cocktail of real NASA mechanics mixed with a belief in a white-hot future full of planetary colonisation and nuclear ferries. I suppose Gerry Anderson captured the zeitgeist better than anyone else.
ReplyDeleteAs regards SpaceX and SWORD, I see them as a continuum of this same spirit. I would love to see SWORD toys reduced to SpaceX size and vice versa. It would round things off nicely.