MOONSTRUCK: Confessions of a Lunatic

From a very early age, I have had an ongoing obsession with the moon. After sitting watching the fuzzy grey TV pictures of Armstrong's famous first steps and then queing up at Liverpool Museum to see a piece of coal under twin perspex domes, I knew I had to find out more. Unfortunately, my investigations were diverted by the slew of space toys arriving that year and the accompanying displays in shop windows, showing Billy blastoff and Matt Mason striding purposefully across polysterene moonscapes.  

MOON LANDING GLOBE

The clincher for me was seeing the Triang Spacex Superset with the vacform plastic moonscape in the box, I had to have one! Up untill that point I relied on a patch of bare concrete in the back yard as my Tranquillity Base and it really didn't compare. It would be many years later that I would actually get to play with a Spacex Moonscape and since finding one, I have added to my selection of plastic moons considerably.

 A more modern variation is the Dekkertoys 'Paint and Play' Lunar Landscape set, which offers four large vacform moonscapes to  decorate. Twho have large radial craters reminiscent of the Spacex one and the others, a little less imposing sport hills and small mountains. Dekkertoys also issued some of the Apollo Moon Exploring toys in slightly simplified form in a Space Play set, round about 1981.

DEKKERTOYS 1

DEKKERTOYS 2

DEKKERTOYS 3

DEKKERTOYS 4

TRI-ANG SPACEX MOONSCAPE

 The Tri-ang Spacex scape, only available as part of the fabulous Superset 1, is the daddy of them all and cast in a pale blue material, with white accents, contrasting well with the bright primaries of the Spacex toys.

JOHNNY ASTRO

The most recent addition comes in the form of the Johnny Astro base, a Topper toy, marketed and produced under licence by Tri-Ang. A directable fan guided a balloon based lander onto the landing pad or moonscape and this model, although much more well known has eluded me for years! I would love a full set as the natural accompaniment to my other Topper space toys, but both versions of the set always command a good price on ebay.

In a similar vein, Tri-Ang also released the fabulous game Luna-Cy, which gave kids the chance to blast a rocket up to the moon. By hanging a plastic hemisperical moon on the back of a door, the first one to shoot six rockets into the target was the winner. A large injection moulded moon was supplied with two sturdy launchers and an array of cardboard launch mats. Wonderful!

LUNA-CY MOON and Launcher

00/HO BATTLEFIELD DIORAMA

Woodsy discovered this wonderful little piece of modelling scenery, just about 8" long, which featured a battered shell torn landscape, which doubles as a magnificently desolate moon surface!

AIRFIX LUNAR MODULE BASE

Probably my very first experience of a plastic moonscape is the Airfix Lunar Module kit stand. A simple two piece disc, I recall my dad building this kit for me as a boy and me using the base for other less fragile toys. It has four indentations for the LEM pads and Armstrong's famous footsteps at the side. Interestingly, it makes a good base for the Spacex and AHI LEMs too.

MOONLIGHT

The final piece is a novely item, a pvc moon globe with an LED inside, which lights up at the flick of a switch with a nice restful white glow. Just the thing for settling back and dreaming how I might acquire the next piece, the hard purple plastic base of a Mattel Kosmic Kiddle!