Ed's Deluxe Reading Rocket Base U.S.A.

Woodsy,

A couple of years ago I got this boxed Deluxe Reading Rocket Base U.S.A. set to go with my Operation X-500 (which still hasn't been photographed!).

My set has issues - lots of them - however, all the major components are there (minus one missile launcher): the beautiful colors on the box are gone, faded to nothingness; a previous owner put decals on the truck that are more appropriate for the service pit at a Formula 1 race; there are no figures; two of the missiles are missing and railings are broke.

Yet, in spite of all that, when this is assembled it still looks like a formidable toy.

Has anyone else got one?

I have yet to find an item number or set number as none is listed on the box or any instruction sheet I've seen on the Internet.

From Vegas Base

ED

Will's Topper Shop Display

Adding to Wotan's great post, here's Will Osborne's Topper Armoured Battalion shop display showing some battle damage!

Deluxe Reading and Topper Toys

Hi Woodsy,

Here we have a look at toys by Deluxe Reading and Topper Toys, some with period TV commercials. Mostly very large, battery powered vehicles and ships. The later Johnny Astro space balloon toy rings a bell, although I certainly never had one. 

Deluxe Reading and Topper boy's toys of the 1960's - YouTube

Yours Sincerely, 

Paul Adams from New Zealand

WILL OSBORNE'S TOPPER ROCKET BASE, TUDOR ROSE SPACE EXPLORER AND THE SOLAR-X 7 AND 8

Hi. Here are some pictures of the Topper Rocket Base USA.

My late father used to tell me that people would see the window display and come into the toy shop wanting to buy the toy, but when he gave them the actual object as pictured here, they used to say no no, I want the one like the one in the window!

He had to explain that it was all packed in to the small box and they would get everything that they saw in the window, but without the surrounding display of course.

The third and fourth pictures are Tudor Rose's X-400 Space Explorer with box.

and the fifth and sixth pictures are tinplate Japanese battery operated toys who’s design looks very familiar! All the best.

Will.

Return to Base

The Cold War may have been a trying time for adults in the U.S, but for space crazy kids, it was a boom time. A little inconvenience like the threat of carpet bombing by enemy aircraft or ICBM's dropping out of a dawn sky was not going to stop toy manufacturers making a fast buck before a nuclear holocaust affected consumer spending. As a result, companies like Remco, Topper and Deluxe Reading produced some amazingly complex and involved toys, themed on the idea of countering an enemy missile strike. Needless to say, these expensive toys were slavishly copied by the small Hong Kong manufacturers to be snapped up by an eager audience.

A fine example of this plagiarism is the Delamare Rocket Launching set, blatantly ripped off from Remco's Voice Control Rocket Base. The Delamare set uses elements from the Apollo Moon Exploring range, such as the conical rocket, which unusually, has been produced in bronze, with two upper sections to extend the body and give it a more missile like shape. The anti aircraft missile bank on the left, has been fitted with two non-firing launchers taken from the LP Moon Bus (themselves copied from Lone Star Modern Army series years earlier). The lifting arm between them is also featured on one of the Moon Vehicles sold in abundance too: https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2010/01/strange-tractor.html

The whole set is neatly finished off with some grey astronauts helpfully glued onto the superstructure, a miniscule green Helicopter fixed to the pad, a small army truck and a flight of three chrome silver F111A swing wing fighters, hideously out of scale, glued to the back of the box. My example came in a battered box, with a Xmas Greetings sticker still attached. Its plain that the toy had never been removed from its pack, the base was securely wired in and everything was in place. Its amusing to see the note on the front reads - THIS IS A TOY - just in case the buyer was tempted to try and defend his personal airspace.

Next on the copyists list comes another Missile Array from Redbox Toys. Originally made by Topper Toys for the Cape Canaveral set, this little battery also appears as part of the Apollo Moon Exploring series, by Imperial, but exchanging the rocket launchers for Radar Dishes.: 

http://www.triangspacextoys.info/SpGAderv/APEX/ApEx304F.html

I originally had this, the Atlas Gantry and a Rocket Transporter in the seventies, each coming separately window boxed with a handful of white figures. The semi circular Atlas Gantry actually fires the missile and the three carried by the transporter could be used with it. Unlike the big Topper base, the transporter only came with a single missile design, although Multiple Toymakers did 'borrow' one of the other types for a slightly larger 'Titan' missile in a rack toy.

http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2014/08/failure-to-launch.html

Deluxe Reading probably produced the great grandaddy of all rocket bases with the elaborate Operation X-500, which took all the elements from previous releases, beefed them up somewhat and added extra features like lights and moveable controls. It fairly bristles with rockets and gadgets and even has a train to deliver the interchangeable nosecones to the gantry, to be lifted by crane onto the rocket! Its complexity probably worked in its favour, as to my knowledge, the Hong Kong companies never managed to reproduce a small version of it, although they did come close!

Finally this fine Cape Kennedy rack toy, with powerful spring launched rocket and ejectable satellite!

The gantry helpfully rolls back from the rocket and a large well-detailed radar dish tracks the ascent.

Card artwork is especially fine, with clear renditions of Mercury Redstone type rocket and instructions for use on the inner pack.

Safety conscious, the rocket was tethered to the launcher by string, the upper stage springing out to push the circular satellite into space as the rocket is stopped in its rapid ascent by the string. Quite a powerful ascent it is too, untethered the rocket can easily reach a good twenty feet.

the blog's first topper rockets post revisited

Before the Topper Rocket train drives off for the night I thought I'd re-blog a post I did using some Topper Rocket base toys way back in 2009, their first appearance on Moonbase Central when it was just 8 months old.

That Bronco fire truck in the third photo looks cool and I'd forgotten I had that for a while before I sold it on Ebay. Sadly I don't have a normal photo of it anymore.  It looks very Gerry Anderson!

No idea what that green cannon robot was in the penultimate shot. You?

*

Inspired by Mike (Burrows)* amazing Spacex dioramas I've been messing about with a few space toys and my camera. The somewhat unspectacular results can be seen above.

1. Penance battles with Spacex
2. Penance inverted colours
3. Bronco Fire Tender colour inverted
4. Topper Rocket Base USA truck and Spacex colour inverted
5. Topper Rocket Base USA Truck and Spacex
6. Megarig Rocket Transporter and Topper Rocket
7. Megarig Moon Ranger and Robot
8. Megarig Scramble Bug and Topper people

*

*this was before Mike was known as Scoop and was an author on the blog in his own right!

Addendum:

Inverted the colours on the Bronco fire truck pic and voila! here's what it really looked like!

anyone had one?

Rocket Base USA: Another Tale from the Haunted Toy Box by Tony K

FLASHBACK - Moonbase Central Swordcast/Celtica Radio, 30 Dec 2016 - A guilt ridden Bill B openly confesses to Advocatus Diaboli, Woodsy, that as a trigger-happy tyke, during the 1960s, he wantonly launched an unprovoked ICBM strike and nuked the family Christmas tree resulting in fused tree lights and one fallen Angel. 

Bill's description indicates that the chosen weapon of attack was none other than, Rocket Base USA, modestly billed on the box as, 'The Most Amazing Toy Ever Made'. 

Rocket Base USA was produced by DE-LUXE TOY CO. LTD. London. One of many brand names, including Topper Toys, used by New Jersey based company, Deluxe Reading. 

Deluxe Reading armed the gung ho 60s kid with everything gigantic, robust, impressive and plastic... including the Johnny Seven OMA, USS Battlewagon, the huge Operation X500, and many more memorable toy lines from that time.

Rocket Base USA is now a collectors piece of classic plastic from the 1960s. It was affordable for parents... appealing to kids... and available in the UK. The versatile playset was manufactured in contrasting red, black and white durable plastic, with chrome detail and authentic decals. 

The toy had a simplistic but imaginative design, and it didn't require batteries! The launch complex consisted of three sections, numerous spring loaded projectiles, and an assortment of white plastic personnel. 

Cost-effective to produce, Rocket Base USA was a winning formula guaranteed to radiate endless hours of hands-on fun... it was pure liquid hydrogen to fuel the imagination of the rocket and space obsessed kids of the time. 

The three sections of the playset, included - The Missile Defence Base, Rocket Launcher, and the Mobile Rocket Transport. The Missile Defence Base was a plastic Command Bunker with chrome control panels. 

It featured three top-mounted, spring loaded launchers and plastic missiles, which appear to have been inspired by the Nike missile defence system. 

When fired, these persuasive rubber tipped rockets could deliver a powerful knock-out punch to advancing hordes of gun-slinging Timpo cowboys, jousting Swoppet knights, and a motley assortment of plastic spacemen and invading jelly-like Jigglers.

The Mobile Rocket Transport was a simple plastic truck and driver, with an articulated trailer, small tracking radar, and chrome detail-. It would ferry three large ICBMs from silo to launch pad. 

These days, the Rocket Transporter can function as a practical display platform for the three big colourful rockets. Ideal, if you don't have space to display the whole playset. 

The Rocket Launcher was a tall, ladder accessed gantry, topped with two chrome radar dishes. The launch pad was the inner core of the complex and the place where the real action was. 

Its selling point was a powerful spring loaded firing mechanism. This would blast the large hollow plastic Titan, Jupiter, Atlas or Thor rockets, into orbit around the living room. 

Bright orange flat pack lampshades and delicate decorative eyesores, such as period plastic gondolas, were fair game, and often targeted and downed by mutinous young Missileers who had their itchy trigger fingers on the button. 

Wonder if Rocket Base USA, would soar above the radar of today's health and safety regulations... or perhaps get shot down by some modern day toy industry politics, which outlaws the deployment of spring-launched, rubber tipped, ICBMs? 

I wonder if there would even be a market for such an energetic toy today? I guess it's a toy from the past, and maybe that's where it belongs... remembered as a part of our past. A fun toy... which gave us fun times!

Tony K

THE JOHNNY EXPRESS CRANE

Pictures: Sean

Life on the Ocean Wave

Recently we've had a departure from outer space to inner space with a rolling topic of submarines and frogmen, now i'd like to return to the sea to show this wonder of the high seas, the Topper Task Force!

Ive just recently scored this amazing set of three ships on ebay, the USS Battlewagon, Destroyer and Motor Patrol Boat. The three boats date from about 1963 and arrive in amazing shape. There were one or two small omissions and a little damage, the original searchlight and landing craft were missing, plus a radar scanner from the patrol boat and the base of the target float. Im in the middle of fully restoring these wonderful toys, but felt I had to share them at this point as they are closely related to the Topper Cape Canaveral Rocket Base.

The large white missiles on the back of the battlewagon are the same as the Nike Hercules rockets from the Cape set, apart from these ones have red nose cones instead of black. I had only previously seen the Task Force set (destroyer, MPB and target float) in a Hobbies catalogue along with the Johnny Seven, Jungle Jack, Fire Chief and Canaveral sets and I naturally assumed they were to scale with each other. The figures from the boats are about 1.5 inches high, about 2/3 the size of the standard 1.72 scale soldiers in the Cape set. The Battlewagon takes four batteries and trundles along, bell ringing and searchlight seeking out enemy subs. The big cannons come with large shells and theres a triple torpedo launcher at the back. Beside the early cruise missiles is a jet catapult for launching the delta wing jets!

The Destroyer has a large naval cannon firing silver shells and a depth charge launcher at the back. The Motor patrol boat has a large missile at the ready too. As previously pointed out by Philosophic Toad, Deluxe Reading moved production of Topper toys to England in the early sixties and lucky for us, brought amazing toys like this and the Johnny seven into our homes. The USS Battlewagon is a huge toy, nearly three feet long and must have made someones Xmas very special over forty years ago - I know its made my year just now!