You can't keep a good idea down and this is especially evident in the toy industry, where countless copies or similarities exist of popular toys. Tucked away in a corner of the Hamleys catalogue, you may have noticed the Child Guidance Toymobile, an interchangeable vehicle set with a motorised base. I was very familiar with it from endless browsing of the catalogue and when I saw a Six in One Space set, I knew exactly what it was. What I didn't anticipate was that the vehicles in the set were based on Project Sword, Spacex and Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds!
I bought the set, even though it was listed as incomplete and when I arrived, I found it was missing the parts for the Captain Scarlet MSV clone, Sword Moonbus and one or two other small parts. But it did include the parts for the Thunderbirds Firefly, Spacex Tractor T5, Nuclear Freighter and best of all A Base Patrol Cricket! The idea, as clearly borrowed from the Toymobile, was a battery powered motor base shaped like a Lego brick, which clip on elements to allow you to swap the parts out and make six different vehicles.
The Tractor T5 only has four wheels and the Firefly design is lifted from the Bandai toy version without the dozer blade. The white hull part would have been the back of the Sword Moonbus toy.
The Nuclear Freighter owes more to Thunderbird 2, but is very close to the original toy.
My favourite vehicle and the chief reason I bought the set, is the Base Patrol Cricket clone. The Cricket has a long history of copies and is itself originated from Remco's Hamilton Invaders Mosquito Jeep.
The Mortoys version is chunky and composed of two body sections and the rear cannon - possibly why it fared better than the others models as there are less parts to lose.
Being a completist and unable to find a second example of the Mortoys set, I was pleased to discover two sets of the Toymobile toy on ebay at a reasonable price. Both were complete and were different, presumably a Set 1 and Set 2.
The motor unit on the Child Guidance version is much simpler and in a pre-school style, but both motors and parts are interchangeable, showing that Mortoys probably used the set as a template, before adding minor modifications to avoid copyright issues.
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