Won't Get Fuelled Again: 2!

With Looey's comment in mind re. The Soviet vehicle in UFO I remembered I posted this way back in 2011, 15 years ago! I was a mere 50 back then and just started a new job in a High School! 

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Over Easter I treated myself to Derek Medding's superb book, 21st Century Visions, which was going for a song on Amazon. I wasn't dissapointed and have been poring over it ever since. One of the vehicles mentioned is the Russian surface rover shown above [bottom left and right]. It appears in the 1973 episode of UFO called The Responsibility Seat, which you can watch via You Tube.

Around the same time I was also lucky enough to take possession of an Apollo Moon Exploration boxed set, [pictured top right along with a US catalogue ad], which I've been after for years. Inside is a nifty red fuel tanker [pictured top left], which also came carded as part of the 1970 Apollo Moon Exploring range [pictured top centre].

I couldn't help but notice a similarity between the UFO Russian moon rover and the Apollo fuel tanker. Or am I just seeing things as per usual?

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PS. As it's 2026, some of the above 2011 info and ideas maybe obsolete now! 

From the Blog Xmas 2008

Treasures of Will Osborne

December 2008

Above - Spacex II Booster Rocket backing card rear Above - Spacex II MOLAB backing card rear Above - Spacex II Lunar Orbitor backing card rear

Above - Spacex II Lunar Orbitor and Apollo Tracker backing card rears and Boxed Moon Base Set ( foldable plastic lunar plan not shown)

Above - Spacex II MOLAB backing card front and Lunar Orbiter front (with toy, astronaut and badge)

Above - top left: Elf Toys Tracy Island Prototype with Dinky die- casts: Top right - Elf Toys Tracy Island actual toy with JR21 vehicles

Bottom left - Spacex boxed Superset with hard plastic moon surface; Bottom right - Linemar space vehicle

Above - top left: MARX Lunar Exploration boxed sets: Top right - 2001 NASA remote- control Glider

Bottom Left: MARX Moon Grabbers: Bottom right - MARX Moon Grabber Train Set

Will Osborne, a good friend over many years and a keen Space toy enthusiast, has sent me these pictures of part of his brilliant collection of Spacex, Thunderbirds and Marx toys. The original pictures are colour photocopies and prints, some of which I received many years ago. Enjoy! Xmas '08

Final Tap

It's with a certain degree of sadness that I've just shut down my old Lenovo laptop for the last time.

Retiring to the knackers yard of tech, this laptop, my fifth, has served me well for 10 years as the main writing console for the blog, my last three books and my ebaying up till about this Spring when it started playing up.

Held together with gaffer tape and sporting the soon-to-be redundant Windows 10, it began failing to connect to the internet around April this year, the start of its swan song really.

I had to switch to doing everything on my mobile phone, everything except creating books on Blurb, which remained the sole activity I still did, albeit a huge struggle, on my old Lenovo.

Today I cut the cord completely and transfered photos, documents,  everything from my dying laptop to an external hard drive, ready for the arrival of a brand new laptop, with Windows 11, this evening.

Yes, a new dawn of fresh computing begins at Moonbase and after some editing on the new machine, there'll soon be news of a new publication by Bill and myself.

Have you got a new computer, laptop or iPad readers? Or is it old? Or do you just use your phone?

🦢

Here on the Blog Today in 2009

Back in our first full year on MC, 2009, born out of my childhood love of Project SWORD, we largely focused on Gerry Anderson's amazing shows and toy lines.

Here's what appeared here that day, sixteen years ago!

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Thunderbird 6

Mentioned earlier on the blog, I couldn't resist posting this fabulous set of pics from Philosophic Toad / WOTAN. 

They show all 3 prototype Thunderbird 6's made by Brains in the film of the same name. The sleek silver one makes me think of an Angel Interceptor. 

The middle one is very Matt Mason. As I've talked about before, the bottom red one is a deadringer for the Tarheel NOVA III toy rocket. They all got trashed in the film. 

Wonder of any more of them were made and survived? We know what Thunderbird 7 is - no such drama - the Project Sword Beetle or Snow Train. 

But did it ever actually appear in Thunderbirds?

LET'S START AT THE BEGINNING .......

I'm going to go back a few years now.

My whole life I'd been carrying round memories of the cool Project SWORD toys I'd had as a kid in the Sixties. I adored those sleek big rockets back then and still did in my head.

But what to do with those memories? 

It was the coalescing of two icons that nudged me towards the answer.

In 1989 I saw Batman at the cinema, the Burton Keaton masterpiece and noticed all its fabulous toys in the shops afterwards. I remembered that I loved toys! Later that year I found an old battered Dinky SPV in a junk shop and bam! It dawned on me that nostalgia was tangible and my old toys were still around!

But, was Project SWORD?

I think it was 1990 when I got the reply to that. I was 29 and had begun to visit my first toy fairs. It was at a small Normanton Evening Toy Fair, where, incredulously, I found a boxed SWORD Space Glider. It was £20, more back then than it is now, but I shelled out willingly and came home as happy as I was on Christmas Day in 1967, when I'd just turned 7 and first got the Glider.

Around the same time as finding the Glider I discovered Model Mart Magazine, having it delivered to my home like I did Look-In comic back in the day! It was great fun and on cold winter bus rides to work I gleefully devoured Model Mart from cover to cover every month. It was in those hallowed pages that I first came across such vintage toy luminaries as Andy Foley of TV Toy Zone and the late great Jim 'Mr. Star Wars' Stevenson and their marvellous listings, which also included .... Project SWORD toys!

Having then bought a boxed Century 21 Zero-X from Andy Foley - for £60 - I advertised in Model Mart for further information about Project SWORD [and SpaceX] from its readers, as I was now hooked. As a result Chris Avis, a fellow toy fan, based in London, contacted me and over the next five years or so Chris was able to find every SWORD vehicle I needed for my growing collection, including big stars like the Cape Kennedy Set and the Apollo Saturn Rocket, together with the those three elusive Scouts 1,2 and 3.

The internet hadn't yet properly arrived so finding out about Project SWORD was not that easy. I had written to Century 21 Toys and received replies from Keith Shackleton, but sadly he didn't recall much. I also wrote to Martin Bower, Phil Rae, Bill Bruegman, Marc Frattasio, Fanderson and Dennis Nicholson.

I also got hold of the Annual - which I loved as a kid - and the two Make a Model Books. TV21 and SOLO comics still eluded me but new information was now trickling through as a result of hooking up with fellow enthusiasts Bill B and Paul V - both looking into SpaceX toys - and Will O.

Will O. sent me photostats of a contemporary trade article featuring two 'new' SWORD vehicles, the Moonship and the Lunar Climber. Having never seen either of them in the flesh I was thrilled to get a tinplate Moonship from my contact Chris A, together with some larger LP Spacemen. We were both convinced that the Moonship was THE Moonship and the spacemen were from the never-seen Moonbase Set. But as I say verifying anything pre-internet was difficult and we didn't know that we were wrong on both counts! Some small comfort was gained later from knowing that the original article from 1967 was also wrong as neither the Moonship or the Lunar Climber had anything to do with Project SWORD!

During this period, in the mid-1990's, I'd begun work on a Project SWORD Checklist and eventually had enough information to publish it online, simultaneously on Kelly Lannan's TV21 site and Brian Hayes' Alphadrome site, where I believe its still available!

Some things were simply not known to me back then, for instance I thought Tarheel and T in a Circle were the same company, as they both had T logos. I also firmly believed that the SWORD Nuclear Ferry and the Moonbase Playset didn't exist.

This Checklist was followed by a small Project SWORD Toys website on Yahoo, which garnered some further contacts with fellow fans. I'd also begun work on a more complex site to include SpaceX, Roxy, LP and so on and was being tutored in a programme called Dreamweaver by my daughter's boyfriend to get it online. Alas, this came to nothing for some reason but glimpses of it remain here on this blog.

It was around this time, in the early Noughties, that I turbo-charged my basic Moonzero Toys mail order thing and had begun to buy and sell vintage toys in earnest, standing at toy fairs, selling on Ebay [I was a PowerSeller!] and eventually gave up my job to do this full-time [I didn't like my job anyway!], which I carried on until about 2007, under the moniker of Madaboutmonsters.

I recall meeting Will O. for the first time in the flesh at the Castle Donnington toy fair, where I was standing at my stall with my friend Mark. I had a good selection of Moon Prospectors on offer; the Argentinian Chibi and T in a Circle versions. I think it it was the Chibi that caught Will's eye and we got talking, only then realising that we had been corresponding with each other for years and that Will was indeed Will and I was me! I think Will bought the Chibi Prospector!

Selling old toys full-time isn't easy and making a living from it even harder. Only a few make it I imagine. I'd already had to get a part-time job to supplement Madaboutmonsters and eventually ran out of steam and capital around late 2007.

In 2008 I was out walking the family dog Blue. We had gone to our favourite spot, an incline within the local woods. I would kick the ball down it and Blue would hurtle after it and pelt back up and place the ball at my feet again! Like Captain America Blue could have done this all day and it was during one of our walkies that the idea for a Project SWORD blog was born. I'd already messed with a basic horror-based blog page on blogger called The Towering Peaks of Monsterdom, so the switch one night to Project SWORD was easy. 

At midnight on Monday 15th September 2008 I posted my very first thing on Moonbase Central, a SpaceX toys photo archive by way of a test shot https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2008/09/spacex-archive.html. 

Then after a decent night's kip I posted my first proper article around 10am and, coming full-circle, it was one that I had written as the foreword to my original Project SWORD Checklist ten years earlier!

The post was entitled Dream Rockets and with the help of Bill B, Scoop, Paul V, Arto, The Philosophic Toad, Darth and Andy B in those very early months in the winter of 2008/09, the rest, as they say, is ...........

So thank you.

MY FIRST PARCEL

I wrapped up my first sale in the re-opened attic this morning.

A 1980's Barbie Gym no less!

It'll go to the Post Office later today.

Wrapping it was a first small step in the latest chapter as an Ebay seller, which began all those years ago in the year 2000, when Ebay started up in the UK [five years after the USA I think?]

Back in 2000 we lived in a different house, where I had an even bigger room to play with, an entire cellar, which I'd turned into an 'old toy shop' in the early 1990's. It was definately a fun hobby.

All before Ebay existed, back then I supplied toy fans with stuff via mail order and also personal customers who visited on the weekend by appointment. All great fun after a boring week at work! I was called Moon Zero Toys. I even took it on the road and had a stall at toy fairs!

Maybe I sold to you!

Have you done much selling readers?

HARRY'S OPEN!

 I've opened up Harry [the attic] and retirement sorting/ perusing/ pondering/staring through the window/Ebaying has resumed.

The old Mad About Monsters desk is once more alive and kicking.

I have a friendly old wizard to add some magic!

Once you start rummaging its amazing what pops up!

These old Walls et al cards are gorgeous and I'm pretty sure I had some as a kid. Did you?

Pretty much everything I loved as a little 'un is pictured including deep sea frogmen!

Thunderbirds-like crabloggers!

Undersea bases and sleek jets!

What more could you want!

Maybe an old game from those golden years, Twister by MB. Now that was a crazy family pastime, stretching across a plastic mat in your socks! Phew! A classic and a symbol of the Sixties for me.

Did you have a favourite game as a kid?

THERE'S A TOY CELLAR IN US ALL!

I had another blast from the past at my Daughter's house over the weekend. She returned a plastic box I hadn't seen in years. 

This green box was one of many I had on shelves in my big old sunlit  'toy cellar' back in the 90's, when I used to trade stuff from there and do mail order as well. It was called Moon Zero Toys and I actually had regulars!

Having a full-time job as well, buying and selling old second hand toys was my hobby back then - it still is! - and these plastic boxes were how I divided up my stock into manageable parts. The one in the picture - TV Action - would have held all manner of oddments from the TV shows listed - James Bond, The Saint, the A Team, Bionic Man and Zorro - ranging from key rings, novels, action figures, jigsaws right up to small boxed toys.

Larger boxed toys and board games were stacked as they came, on a separate shelf and the biggest thrill was to see several of the same boxed item stacked up. I remember having three second hand and excellent boxed Batman Animated Batmobiles on top of each other and it used to make me so chuffed. Like a proper toy shop! ha ha

There were some inspirational toy sellers in the 90's, who took the hobby - for them a business - to a whole new level and it was always a buzz reading their mail order catalogues and sales lists on Model Mart magazine. 

Notable among the many was the late great Jim Star Wars Stevenson and the inspirational Andy Foley and his TV Toy Zone, the catalogues of which are still a treasure of mine as they were really the catalyst, along with Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, to start looking for old toys and collect the toys I owned as a kid.

My 'cellar' closed in 2003 when we moved and the new house didn't have one. Also with the advent of Ebay in the UK in 2000 my mail order side had already stopped. It was the end of an era and I was sad to leave that cellar behind. It had been a lot of fun.

I don't have any photographs of the old cellar so when I saw this box again this weekend it brought back happy memories of a time before Ebay changed our lives forever. Thanks for listening to an old man reminiscing!

Did you have an old store room, cellar or attic full of your stuff? Did you buy and sell or swap old toys? Do you still readers?

ROCKET REPAIR DEPT

I love the name at the bottom of this old pen packaging, Rocket Repair Dept. of Hoboken, NJ, which I saw on auction.

When I was choosing names from a list I'd drawn up for my Ebay business back in 2005 Rocket Repairs Garage or something like it was on the list!

Small world!

Eventually I went for Mad About Monsters!

Do you have a space pen or a space clock or watch or other household space item?

HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT MOONBASE CENTRAL?

Earlier in the year I asked American reader and active contributor Terranova47 how he first heard of Moonbase Central. He told me:

Hi Woodsy
As regards having American readers you raise an interesting point. How did they find Moonbase Central? In my case, in 2012 I was able to unpack stored hobbies including my TIMPO toy soldiers. When I Googled TIMPO I found Small Scale World and there Hugh had a link to Moonbase. One of the first of your blogs that I recall was your memories of Butlins and model boats. That was my first reply to one of your posts. Maybe having a readers survey of how MC was found would turn up a majority who Googled Spacex? I also enjoy Kid's blog, CRIVENS! Comics &Stuff.

Terranova47

So, out of curiosity, how did YOU first come across Moonbase Central readers?

Stay safe,

Woodsy

MY MILLENNIUM MAIL ORDER SERVICE

Here's a blast from my past, an old mail order sales list of mine from the year 2000. I traded as Moonzero in those days.

This blog very nearly got called Moonzero Base!

This is one of many lists I sent out in the post. It was hugely enjoyable to trade like this back then. Ebay arrived shortly after and my mail order service ended.

I'll try to find the rest of my old lists and blog 'em. Its a bit of fun from twenty years ago. What would you have bought? Anything?

Did you sell by mail or send your wants lists out?

MEMORIES OF MAD ABOUT MONSTERS

It's roasting here in West Yorkshire, UK.

I've just switched on a big metal fan to cool down me and the missus and the mutt.

The fan has sentimental value for me as I bought it as part of my toy business set-up in the Autumn of 2005.

I'd left my 'career' in environmentalism behind and gone on a holiday to the US with friends to celebrate my change of direction.

When I got back I was so excited its hard to explain. My new toy venture was to be based in the attic, which I furnished with a new desk, an office chair, a landline phone, a TV, a laptop and a bog new metal fan for the summer.

I also had two T-shirts made advertising the business and a stack of business cards from Vistaprint.

I also set up an Ebay shop and got myself classed as a 'powerseller'.

My business was called Mad About Monsters and I was ready to take on the world!

The attic was bursting with stock from the countless car boot sales I'd been to, together with some toy fairs and ebay purchases.

I also had a few dedicated customers from my mail-order days over the previous ten years advertised in the small ads in Model Mart, which I'd done after work and in amidst family life.

It was time to get serious and do it every day!

I booked into a few more toy fairs including the final Donnington before it closed for renovation.  I had a great time at that fair and my mate Mark helped out too. I even met my old SWORD 'mentor' Bill Osborne, where he bought an Argentinian Moon prospector off me. We'd never met but corresponded many times and during the sale worked out who each other was! |Small world!

The plan I agreed with the Missus was to make about £100 a week from the toy business, which was just a fraction of what I'd been earning previously. I'd figured on supplementing this with some part-time casual work if necessary.

It all came together to start with. My stock, largely cheap and cheerful stuff with a few mint boxed gems thrown in, kept me going and I quickly racked up thousands of sales on Ebay and did well at toy fairs with my more choice stuff.

I even had some customers who asked me to track down certain toys, including some modern issues, which was a lot of fun I remember. One of these asked me to get hold of a set of Space 1999 Mego re-issued figures. Another asked me to find a mint boxed Matchbox Tracy island, which eventually I did and sent to one happy customer in Australia!

Two memorable Ebay sales were a vintage milk bottle to one Nigella Lawson and an old Sooty glove puppet to one 'I am the Real Sooty', which in my excitement decided must have been a Corbett!

One very sad Ebay sale was to a young girl. She had won an old pedigree doll but never completed the sale. In time her father contacted me and said she'd died but he would like to have the doll as it was something his daughter had wanted. I think I blubbed all day after that!

I made some cock-ups as well during those years. I  would accidentally send the wrong Ebay items to the wrong buyers. An Action Man knife went astray that way and was never re-united with the uniform, which fortunately went to the right place! Copious grovelling and prudent partial refunds or replacements usually got me through these mishaps and I protected my 100% positive feedback by the skin of my teeth.

It did go down to 99% one day though. I had sold a stack of old Beatles LP covers, which I had bought in. I described them 'old Beatles LP covers, Ideal for framing but not much else' or something similar. They were sold as is but the seller then left me negative feedback and wrote that 'they were old LP covers with no records in and more or less only suitable for framing!"

I was so incensed by this injustice that I appealed to Ebay - and won. My score was re-instated at 100% and the seller told me he had thrown the LP covers in the bin so there!

Yes, they were fun days selling old stuff full-time back in the mid-000's. It didn't last but whilst it did I was chuffed.

And all this because I switched my big metal fan on today!

Have you bought and sold old stuff readers?

STRANGE ARCHIVE

Not sure why I saved this bookmark but here's an archived page from the blog from 2015.

The archive looks like a type of Wayback Machine. Its taken a screenshot of the page too.

Oddly, it has mt blog address ending in nl for the Netherlands! Strange!

http://archive.is/huYtx

CARDS ON THE TABLE

Found these in my archive folder.

Old blog business cards.

I think Bill made them for me.

I gave them out at the TV21 convention I went to in 2010.

Have you got or have you had a vintage toy card?

A DECADE DRAWS NEAR ON MOONBASE

Well readers, its half way through August and the British heatwave seems to be over.

Its by no means cold here in West Yorkshire but there's a whisper of Autumn in the air, at least to me, the nights are slowly creeping back to their earlier showing times and the sunlight seems hazier.

Its an ancient struggle, night and day and one which eventually sends us inside to contemplate what we do now after being outside all summer.

It was this conundrum which faced me 10 years ago around this time of year. I'd been ebaying full-time solidly day and night since 2005 and as the nights of Autumn 2008 drew in I fancied doing something else in the evenings.

As it happened I'd been reading my nephew's neat birdwatching blog Toadcatcher and thought, hmmm, that looks like fun. His was on Blogger so I thought I'd give it a whirl too.

That was back in September 2008 and as the tenth anniversary approaches my mind inevitably turns to what might we turn up during this years special celebration!

I've a few tasty things cooking for the decade: reflections from long-time readers, new Captain Scarlet art, something from ISOSHADO, memories of the 90's Thunderbirds comic covers, reflections of vintage space publications and more. As usual there'll be some new Project SWORD stuff and maybe even a free Birthday gift!

If you yourself fancy contributing to the 10th Anniversary with some words, maybe some pictures or maybe some video or art, then just drop me, Woodsy, a line. My email is at the bottom of this page.

You are invited!

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

I saw a phrase I hadn't seen before the other day. It was 'ghost site'. It refers to a dormant website on the net. I had seen the phrase 'ghost sign' before and indeed I live across the road from one, an old Hovis Bread sign fading slowly on an old shop wall.

Ghost site sums up perfectly that strange thing you find online, a site that hasn't been updated for years and despite still existing on the net its been more or less abandoned.

Dormancy like this can be for many reasons. There maybe nothing new to say. There maybe nothing new to find. There maybe be personal reasons on the part of the author not least of which could be getting on with other parts of their life.

The first ghost site I came across was the much-missed Stingray Museum. It was alive and swimming when I first hooked up to the net. I even corresponded with the site creator back in the 1990's. After some time though it became dormant and even worse disappeared altogether. Fortunately its ratemaster was still whirring and it resurfaced on that portal to lost worlds, The Wayback Machine.

I have met with many ghost sites since then and lament the passing of many others into the ether. The Gerry Anderson Complete Comics History or GACCH was such a work. Comprehensive and monumental, it vanished completely only to again fortunately rise in some form on the Wayback Machine, fast becoming the web's official ghost town.

Ghost sites worry me. I know that one day Moonbase Central will be such a one. OK, its rather maudlin' to think like that I know but as we fast approach the tenth anniversary this Autumn I do wonder how much longer it can run. I suppose what is most on my mind is whether I still have anything new to say. My co-authors still do but personally my own collecting days are largely over and without new stuff to play with its hard to stay fresh.

Yes, I do still have a large space toy collection, especially Project SWORD, but how many more times can I talk about these? Virtually all the research that is possible has been done into this line with new material few and far between these days. Being a blog Moonbase Central relies on newness. Readers have been brilliant these last couple of years, providing many articles and titbits to bolster the effort of the three of us at MC, for which I am eternally grateful as it has indeed helped keep the blog fresh and relevant to its audience.

I dunno. Those ghost sites are on my mind. Any advice on what to do with ghosts?

MY OLD MOONZERO BANNER

I found this old GIF banner in my photo archives. A bit of giffy fun.

This was part of my old late 90's/ 00's website, Moonzero Toys, before I launched this blog in 2008.

Did you have a dabble with websites or blogs in the 1990's?

Floppy Discoveries

During our ongoing clear out at Moonbase I found some floppy discs from the late 90's/ 2000.  I can't believe that we still used floppies in the year 2000.

I will have archived these few images from the developing internet and Ebay, which landed in the UK in 2000 and contain probably the first picture I ever saw of the T in a Circle Moon Bus box.

With the inclusion of free animated GIFS in the group I realise that they were part of my first attempt at a Project SWORD website on Yahoo, which I've blogged about before http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-evolution-of-blog-1993-2013.html

Nothing amazing here but enjoy the floppy pics.

FIRST CONTACT

Its always pleasing to see fellow collectors reading the blog. Makes it all worthwhile. Here's some evidence it was read even in those early days back in 2008 when it launched! This could be a link to first contact!

http://robotjapan.proboards.com/thread/13576/project-sword

ONLINE REFERENCES TO PROJECT SWORD AND SPACEX PRE-2006

These are the earliest references to Project SWORD and SpaceX I can find on the internet. Some sites I have to guess at in terms of year unless you know of a way of dating undated websites readers?

1990's Bill Earle's UFO Imai Dome Kits description originally from the 1980's SiG Mag

1990's Marc Frattassio Gerry Anderson Playsets [Project SWORD near the bottom]

1998    Bob Neumann

1998    Paul Woods Project SWORD Collectors Checklist

2000?  Bill Bulloch [search for Tri-ang Rovex Spacex Interspace Miniatures  near the bottom]

There are other old references to Project SWORD that I saw in the past but these have since vanished. I may have print outs of them from the time. I need to dig around in the loft!

Can you find any other pre-2006 references online to Project SWORD and SpaceX/ Golden Astronaut readers?