So rather than cover old ground and repeat what we have talked about over the last few years, I thought it would be a great opportunity to showcase my own selection of Spacex toys, most of which have survived the rigours of childhood and some over-enthusiastic teenage attempts at 'customisation'.
From day one, the Spacex Major Nuclear Pulse was my knockdown, dragout favourite toy, as it was so radically different from anything I had seen and also featured satellite spinners, which I had so loved on the various Merit space guns, sending them zipping off around the garden. My only complaint with the toy was the colour scheme - on the card back, the prototype toy appeared in wonderful blue and red livery and on the box it appears in striking lime green, but the toy was always produced in a sickly orange-yellow finish. As a result, long after Triang had folded and with little hope of ever finding more toys, I decided to repaint my original Pulse to match this scheme. The result is shown above. master modeller Kevin Davies built a re-engineered Nuclear Pulse last year in the standard colours and as he was probably sick of me moaning and pestering him to finish it in blue, he very kindly built a second one in my preferred finish shown below!
My first exposure to the Spacex II line and its confusing production history came when my best friend bought me a Booster Rocket for my birthday, way back in the early seventies. Clearly reflecting the Project SWORD line, which I was already familiar with, this toy came as a welcome surprise that the second series had actually been made and was connected to another favourite toyline.
This toy was one of the first to suffer at my customising hands, as my obsession with everything black, spilled over into modelling. It has to be my preferred design for the Booster Rocket, with the chunky spaceplane and flared nuclear engine, as opposed to the SWORD versions fragile extremities.
Sharing a SWORD provenance in another stunning design, the Nuclear Ferry. A delicate and rather small toy, I was surprised when this model appeared a few years ago, still on its backing card. This was a definite bonus, as the tiny red shuttlecraft was still in place, which is often missing from loose models. The toy had suffered over the years and the launch mechanism in the cargo section was damaged and the small protrusion on the front of the passenger craft had broken off.
An elegant and versatile toy, the passenger section can be attached directly to the cargo pod, or underslung in the classic Ferry position.
Another similar shaped vehicle is the diminutive R6 Rescue Craft. This was another cause for complaint by myself, as the card artwork shows a slightly different design to the real toy. The card back appears to show a fluted, chrome engine and a detachable fuel pod, wheareas the toy has the chrome fuel pod, but underneath is a a copy of a reversed Airfix Saturn V J2 nozzle, moulded onto the back. The practical pedant in me, even at an early age, railed against this, as the exhaust was facing into the craft and the fuel pipes poked out. However placing the fuel tank over this abberation made everything look fine and the R6 settled back to become a favourite toy.
Bought alongside the R6, was the NASA Glider, a fairly accurate copy of the research craft used in the sixties and seventies to perfect the shuttle project. Unfortunately, this craft suffered - much like its real life counterparts - at the inexperienced hands of an overzealous owner. The cockpit cover was always quite fragile and the thin hinge which allowed it to open and close, snapped off fairly quickly, necessitating several botched repairs. Then, at a later date, I thought it would be a great idea to saw the wheels off and repaint the whole thing red - don't ask me why - and I made a complete mess of the toy. Since then, I have managed to remove most of the paint and keep the model fairly intact.
Not Spacex, but certainly related and worth a look, is the simple Hover Space Glider. Again, a quite elegant design, which clearly owes a lot to the Project SWORD glider. Its lost the nose needle and most of the painted on detail, but is wearing well for its age.
The second series relied heavily on actual spacecraft to supplement the line, much to my dismay, as having grown up in the Apollo era, I was already too familiar with the US space programme. So the line included two satellites, the Lunar Orbiter - which was responsible for choosng a projected Apollo moon landing site and the ATS, which was proposed as a Hubble precursor. The Lunar Orbiter appeared on ebay, from a seller in Slough, not far from the Triang factory and after winning the auction, I waited expectantly for a small box containing my carded toy to arrive. The seller also listed a Nasa Glider, which I missed out on. Later, the post arrived and to my horror, the toy was delivered in a jiffy bag, torn at the corner and the contents crushed and battered. The secondary aerial had come out of the bag and been lost and the upper booster array had been squashed and the supporting frame broken. As devastated as I was, I made do with the toy and fitted it back together as best I could. Some years later, the resourceful Mr Vreede kindly supplied me with a replacement aerial for the toy, making it look almost new.
Negativity and childhood bitterness out of the way, its time to review the ground vehicles. first off is the redoubtable Molab, a solid and tough toy, larger than the majority of the other vehicles and seemingly scaled up from the series one toys such as the Cricket and Forklift. The Molab has the dubious priveledge of having a die-cast chassis and is one of the models that made it into the American Golden Astronaut boxed range. The Molab is clearly derived from Alex Schomburgs pulp cover artwork and has a three man crew onboard and its wide wheels can negotiate any terrain. The Molab design also appeared as a Kelloggs Sugar Smacks premium in 1970, too.
I was always luck enough to be able to buy my Spacex toys (or have them bought for me to be accurate) in two's, as they were inexpensive and quite readily available in Woolworths etc. Most of my Spacex II series were from a small discount store in Liverpool and were discovered quite by accident when I was visiting my mother in hospital. Each time I went to visit, I was allowed to buy two toys from the small stock they had in, untill I had exhausted their supply of different models. Later on, they began to stock Stage 1 toys too, allowing my friend to complete his collection as well. Along with the Molab came the LAMA, another weird and wonderful toy, with a diecast base and similar scale to the Molab. This odd contraption features a large meteor destroying cannon that fires a small probe from the tip - now lost in my example.
Returning to the real-world inspiration, we have the Moon Buggy, loosely based on the Grumman moon rover prototype. My version is a recent addition, battered and with no astronaut to drive it. Tomy Zoids featured a perfectly scaled seated pilot in gold chrome, so for the purposes of this shot, I popped one in place, which sits in scale with the standing figure.
Not Spacex, but made by their rival Roxy, is the Prospector. I've included this, as Prospector is another firm favourite, but this particular model is the post-lawsuit version, after Roxy took a rap across the knuckles for copying the Spacex toys and had to make significant changes to their toy range. Aside from the slight difference in the central rail, cone and radar dish - which had always existed, Roxy changed the balloon tyres to something significantly different to keep the lawyers at bay.
Apollo Tracker is the model which gave me the first inkling that a second series of toys was coming, as it appeared in a comic style advert in a Buster comic, along with other Stage 1 craft. Essentially a Base Patrol Cricket in orange livery with extra wide wheels, the Tracker carries a small radar on the bonnet and a large triple array in lieu of the standard cannon. As I was tired of waiting to find an actual model, I customised a standard Cricket with the help of an antenna from a small Non-Fall Moon Explorer toy (at rear of photo).
Made quite famous now for its heritage as the central ship in the Green Slime B-Movie, the Lunar Transporter is another dis-cast chassis vehicle and the source of yet another minor gripe. On the card back the toy is shown in the lovely midnight blue and red scheme used on the Booster Rocket and Ferry, but the toy appears in garish orange and green. Apalled at this oversight by the company, I set to with the Humbrol Black Gloss Enamel, to right the wrongs of the age. As a result, I utterly ruined the toy and hid it away for the next twenty years. Since then, I have learned how to safely remove the paint and have almost restored it to original condition, sans decals.
Back into the Project SWORD fold, the excellent Surveyor is a direct lift from the SWORD Moon Crawler which features in a double page spread in the annual. Surveyor also owes a little of its heritage to John Schoenherrs pulp cover art, which shows a balloon tyred moon explorer. Surveyor was the last of the toys to be discovered in the little discount store and arrived on its own. Unfortunately, it suffered again in my enthusiastic hands and the big wheels snapped off their axles within days. I suspect this may have been to some kind of deterioration in the plastic, as opposed to my heavy handedness, but they came away inside the wheel one by one, leaving a stub of yellow plastic attached to the axle, making it tricky to repair in the pre-Superglue days. Eagle eyed viewers may not that this example has lost half of its arm, which is probably still in the bottom of the toy box, left behind in my haste to photograph everything.
Again, a slightly disappointing turnout in the form of a toy that had been done to death by toymakers in the sixties, but gratefully received nonetheless. The LEM/Apollo model was larger than its counterparts and arrived boxed, not unlike the Spacex Majors before them.
If there'd be a superlative to scrumptious then that would apply here. Brilliant stuff, Bill!
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Thanks Paul - always a pleasure to blog my favourites
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