Monday, 11 November 2024
Paul's UNCLE Badge - Found!
Friday, 3 May 2024
MOON FLEET CAPTAIN BADGE
This badge caught my eye on Ebay so I saved a pic.
I used to eat Sky Rays and remember their Moon Fleet marketing.
Here's the Captain badge. I wonder of there were more?
Sunday, 17 December 2023
TERRANOVA47'S OLD TINS OF BADGES AND PINS
- An Air Lingus pin given to me when I was in a publicity shot for the airline
- BEA pin from the airlines' stand at an Earl's Court Schoolboy Exposition.
- TARDIS COMMANDER from an BBC Dr Who exhibit at London's Science Museum
- Badges from staying at Butlin's Holiday Camps.
- 007 from the first Bond movie, sadly suffering from being next to a rusty badge.
- Eric Winston was the orchestra conductor at a Butlin's Camp.
- Civil Liberty from a High School club
- The Blue badge was for my Primary School Marvell House. Which is strange as I was in Coleridge House which was red? The Houses were named after poets
- The Empire State Building is the kind of metal badge given out in the USA to show admission has been paid. This is from a trip to the USA in 1959.
- Tonibell Ice Cream was from one of their vans.
- League of Oveltinies is from the days when Oveltine sponsored Dan Dare stories on Radio Luxemburg.
- Castrol and Birds Eye from an Earl's Court Schoolboy Exposition.
- Robertson's Golliwog from senidng in labels on jars of jam
- Uncle Holly was from waiting inline for hours to see Santa at Selfridges Department Store in London. Uncle Holly was Santa's cheap understudy.
- Dr McCoy must have been in a Kellogg's cereal box
- Methodist movement's John Wesley was from visiting his home
- Matchbox Collector was in with a toy army truck
- Desert Commandos was from a brand of dates that had great French Foreign Legion promotions
- Esso Safety and Wall's Curb Drillers are from Police road safety demonstrations in school playgrounds.
- Potato Puffs, Noddy and Murray Mints are mail in promotions
- A Knight of the Banner is from Banner schoolboy shirts,
- The QEII medal was given to me by my Grandmother for the Coronation in 1953
- The Muffin Club was from the BBC children's programme, Muffin the Mule
- Dan Dare was with a Dan Dare licensed belt.
Saturday, 17 June 2023
WILL'S BADGES
Thursday, 9 September 2021
THE OTHER S.W.O.R.D BADGE!
Tuesday, 17 August 2021
KEVIN'S STAR COPS BADGES
TUDOR CRISPS BADGE: ITS CRUNCHY IN SPACE!
Friday, 18 September 2020
I WAS A JELLY WOBBLE TESTER. WERE YOU?
My Missus recently bought some old badges for a friend's birthday. The pile included some fabulously nostalgic ones.
One was Jelly Wobble Tester. I so remember that phrase and said it all the time, yet i cannot for the life of me recall where it came from! Can You?
Another one was Wayfinders. Blimey, that took me right back. I had a pair of Wayfinder shoes with a compass in the heel. The sole was embossed with paw prints I think. I had thought they were called Pathfinders but who knows. There was a Moonscape version with craters on the sole too.
Another badge was Clarks Commandos but I don't remember that one. It could have come later than my childhood maybe?
Do you remember any of these badges readers? Did you have favourites?
Monday, 26 August 2019
ANOTHER TWELVE MONTHS OF PROJECT SWORD TOYS
Yep, another year on the base has passed like a solar prominence and another twelve months of employment in the real world beckons as the school holidays fade this week once more to grey.
Looking back over the last twelve months from the point of view of toys, it's been one of filling in a few gaps for me personally.
Specifically, gaps in my Project SWORD and related toys collection and principally in the Space Glider department. I'll blog more about this during birthday week starting the 15th September but suffice to say that these new acquisitions bring me much closer to my own personal red-line for my own collection.
Its hard to know where to stop with any collection and as the blog has shown there were and are many more SWORD-related toys out here than any of us could have guessed way back in 2008.
Take for instance all the chromed Task Force toys that have slowly dripped out of Ebay, both loose and blister carded. Or the blister carded Japanese Scouts. Who could have known that such hidden gems existed when we set out over a decade past!
For my own part I decided many moons ago to focus on Project SWORD toys and sadly resist the temptation to collect Tri-ang SpaceX. There's simply too much for my wallet to cope with! It's been an unusually good last twelve months for SpaceX toys I've noticed though. Would you agree?
I have veered from this mantra of no SpaceX now and then as its such a brilliant line of space plastic but on the whole my fleet comprises of larger toys, mostly Project SWORD and related makes especially Tai Hing [T in a Circle], Tarheel and Century 21 [non-TV].
Approaching a collection's finish line is a strange feeling. It's been years and years in the making. Maybe 50 years if I go right back to when I first had SWORD toys as a kid back in 1967 when they appeared in the shops. I wonder if I ever thought I might collect these toys in the future with my seven year old mind? I doubt it. Being seven was all about the here and now and I will have played with those toys till the mystery action burnt out!
That's not to say that I didn't 'collect' them at the time back them. Getting one SWORD toy will have lead to wanting another different SWORD toy. These pangs of plastic yearning will have inevitably happened at those peaks of toy exposure, Christmas and the summer holidays on the coast, but maybe also just walking past a toy shop window and maybe even flicking through the Project SWORD Manual or Annual. What wonders were stored away in those pages, what glorious rockets! Did you dream of SWORD toys or see them in shop windows as a kid readers?
My SWORD collection second time round is that odd thing, the adult version bought with my own money. Born of a desire to bag some of that childhood magic fluttering on the rims of our memories, its more intellectual, more meticulous, more planned. Inevitably there is much less play than back in '67 but no less enjoyment. Its just different wouldn't you say?
And so the gaps are now fewer as my SWORD end point approaches. I've ticked everything in the SWORD Manual like I did when I was seven or eight, exceptions inevitably being the Moon Base Play Set and the Nuclear Ferry both then and now [did anyone have a Ferry in 1967/68?].
My only 'wants' now are the important T in a Circle/ Tai Hing Moon Bus, boxed, and perhaps for pudding, a Japanese Apollo Saturn, one of the Sears or Tomy versions: either would do, loose would be fine. I'm not in a hurry though.
I've seen both of these in the last twelve months available for the collector but I can wait. Collecting is all about local conditions: chiefly cash or the lack of it in my case and the Missus and our growing family and what they all need.
Other SWORD collectors around the world will have been pleased this last twelve months I reckon. There has been a steady feed of both loose and boxed SWORD toys on Ebay, both in the UK and the US and encompassing all the three main brands: Century 21, Tarheel and T in a Circle. A few unusual vehicles too like the Tarheel Probe Force One in its memorable photo box bobbed up on the Bay and I wonder if it slotted neatly into a gap in someone's collection.
There have been a few Project SWORD badges on auction these twelve months too. I did a stock take of what I still need but I'll be darned if I can find the list! I made a video of it a couple of years ago so I'll re-watch that one day. I have noticed the prices of these auctioned badges going up though and maybe that's the case not just for SWORD related toys but for all space toys? is that your experience readers?
For those looking farther afield Japan remains an alluring land of eastern promise. I haven't seen any new Glico SWORD miniatures this last year but again, for those willing to try their hand at Yahoo Japan, Noppin and co., online Japanese auctions can offer a chance encounter with golden nuggets like a boxed Space Bird Probe Force 3 if you have to patience, resources and a pinch of luck.
What has your collecting year been like readers? Have you any major wants or stubborn gaps in your fleet?
Tuesday, 23 May 2017
century 21 toys project sword badges: hidden astronauts - a footnote
Saturday, 20 May 2017
century 21 toys project sword badges 6: the nuclear ferry
Friday, 19 May 2017
captains' table
Wednesday, 17 May 2017
project sword badge mystery 2: cape kennedy set
Tuesday, 16 May 2017
Project sword badge mystery 1: the scouts
Century 21 Project SWORD Badges Part 5: Worn out!
Tuesday, 9 May 2017
home movie project sword badges part 3: you wear them on your jumper
NB. At the very end I try to say that the metal and enamelled ASTRONAUT badges are available to members of Fanderson, the Gerry Anderson fan club.
The badge they used as a template years ago was actually one of my own!
Friday, 5 May 2017
project sword badge research: you tube examples
It can't be embedded so click on the link [I think the repackaged Fireball XL5 toy he mentions towards the end could either be the JR21 Stingray Submarine Aircraft Carrier the Hover Space Bird, which looked a little like Fireball XL5. Neither of them are connected to Project SWORD]
https://youtu.be/xY9z1P2FjFM
Saturday, 1 April 2017
WORLD'S RAREST PROJECT SWORD BADGE
Wednesday, 30 November 2016
project sword badge from the factory?
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MJ's BATMAN AND SUPERMAN SHORT ANIMATIONS
CHECKLISTS BY BRAND (FOR COUNTRY BY COUNTRY SEE TOP OF BLOG)
PROJECT SWORD SPACEX TIMELINE
- 1968 SPACEX LT10 CONCEPT
- 1966 SPACE GLIDER REAL THING
- 1969 LUNAR CLIMBER & MOONSHIP
- 1968 PROJECT SWORD ANNUAL
- 1968 TV21 #168 PROJECT SWORD PHASE 2
- 1968 PLEASURE CRUISER CONCEPT
- 1968 CENTURY 21 TOY MANUAL
- 1967 SCOUT 1 CONCEPT
- 1967 NUCLEAR FERRY TOY AD
- 1967 SWORD TOY AD
- 1967 SWORD TOY AD
- 1966 SPACE GLIDER CONCEPT
- 1966 HOVERTANK IN COMIC
- 1966 NUKE PULSE NEEDLEPROBE IN COMIC
- 1966 ZERO X FILM DEBUT
- 1966 MOONBUS IN COMIC
- 1966 SPACE PATROL 1
- 1966 P3 HELICOPTER IN COMIC
- 1966 SAND FLEA AND SNOW TRAIN
- 1966 MOBILE LAUNCH PAD IN COMIC
- 1965 SPACEX MOONBASE CONCEPT
- 1965 APOLLO FIRST UK TOY AD
- 1962 NOVA CONCEPT
- 1962 MOONBUS CONCEPT
- 1961 MOON PROSPECTOR CONCEPT
- 1953 MOLAB CONCEPT