Ed's New Moonscape Diorama Project

Woodsy,

I started this new diorama base project back in May and this is as far as I've gotten.

Except for the cheap framing, I already had the other materials on hand and decided they needed to be put to use. It's 48" x 38.5" and consists of two sheets of Masonite, glued and tacked onto a frame of fake wood (don't know what they call it but it's a plastic-like material), over which 1" sheets of Styrofoam are glued.

The crater rim is sheets of 1" Styrofoam cut and glued to the board. To finish this, I'll need to carve the foam to its final shape, cover everything with plaster (or similar), and then paint.

Here's the kicker: I can't do all that carving, plastering, and painting in the house, so it'll need to be done outside but it's gotten warm out there (we're looking at 112°F/44°C out on the patio). Plus, I have other things going on in my life.

Hopefully I can re-engage this project this coming Autumn.

The first two photos show the work in progress. The third photo was taken a few days ago after pulling out some of my SpaceX Moonbase HQ's to visualize what a set-up would look like.

See what you think.

From Vegas MoonBase

Ed

MARS HANGAR PREP

 I'm making another home-made base.

A Mars Hangar.

Basic materials: 4 Imperial Leather hand-wash bottles. What a shape! Squared off like the Brooke Bond card Base.

Emptied and washed

Dissembled

In the meantime, the Control Centre from some old lego and a HO man

Caps attached

Module test: screw or glue

Modules done with numbering, new lid doors and radars

Next stop, Mars!

INSIDE THE LUNAR BASE

Woodsy,

I've been culling photos from the Web for years in an attempt to get inspiration for some kind of display using my toys!

These are only some of the images I've collected. 

Even I we don't use any of these ideas, they're still cool to look at!

From Vegas Base

Ed

Fred Freeman, Colliers, 1952

Are there any more out there? Pictures welcomed.

CLEMENTONI MOON

I don't often like modern space toys but this one impressed me when I saw it online. The NASA Space Exploration set by Clementoni, made In Italy.

Have a look. See what you think.

https://amzn.eu/d/adGWw4t 

MODULAR MOON ROOMS

 

I'm always on the look out for modern equivalents of the toy modules shown in the plan for the Project SWORD Moon Base Set.

These Astro Ventures modules look good with their fold-down doors.

My favourite artist's impression of these opening modules is Ed Valigursky's fab painting from 1964. Have you got any toys like this?

THE PROJECT SWORD MOON BASE SET: TAKING STOCK

 Project SWORD fans have often pondered long and hard about the fabled Moon Base Set as illustrated in the Project SWORD Manual.

Does it exist?

As far as I know there have been two sightings of the set, one good sighting in a box inside a shop and one less detailed sighting in Hong Kong.

No known commercially sold examples exist i.e. a toy set in a box and no known example of a loose set either.

The two sightings may well have been prototypes or trade samples for shops set up in the way that the Elf Toys Tracy island displays were set up for Century 21 Thunderbirds toys.

The two most prominent Project SWORD trade displays that we know of, Hong Kong and Hatchetts, contained the entire range of larger SWORD toys but no Moon Base set, despite it being the logical choice for a SWORD diorama. It wasn't there.

Disappointingly the Project SWORD Annual itself failed to offer anything about the Moon Base Set either. No ads, no strips, no drawings. Not encouraging at all. Having said that neither did it contain anything about the Nuclear Ferry and the Scouts but we know they do exist.

If an entire set has never turned up then have any of the constituent parts? The modules and the vehicles? As far as I can tell the answer is no. Certainly no toy lunar modules in the vein of those shown in the Moon Base drawing have surfaced. None of the big space toy firms released anything like them: Century 21, LP, Hover etc in the 1960's.

Tri-ang SpaceX did offer a Moon Base Set called just that but despite it containing a Scramble Bug and a Moon Prospector, like those pictured in the SWORD Moon Base set illustration, its housing modules are completely different.

Imai and later Aoshin released a UFO Moon Base Set, which also contained modules and vehicles including among many others a SWORD Scramble Bug and Moon Prospector. Sadly the modules are nothing like those again pictured in the Project SWORD Moon Base illustration.

There is also the question of which toy vehicles they were? Were they the existing Prospector and Bug? This would have made the Moon Base Set huge. So were they SpaceX sized, maybe the small toy craft released by Hover, which included a Scramble Bug?

We can ponder till the cows come home on this one and no doubt we will. Until then here's the Project SWORD Moon Base Set entry in the Official Project SWORD Manual.

Thoughts on its parts, box, existence and scale welcomed!

CONTROLLING TRACY ISLAND

The control box on this Japanese Tracy Island model really reminds me of the one on the fable Project SWORD Moon Base Play Set we see in the SWORD manual. What do you think? Click on the lables below for more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLf-WMCzt74

BLOGGIVERSARY TREAT: ARTO'S ORIGINAL SPACEX SIGN AND MOON BASE SET TOGETHER!

Sometimes things just come together and this year Arto was able to pair a SpaceX Moon Base set set with his lovely original SpaceX shop sign. How cool is that! Thanks Arto!

RISING TO THE CHALLENGE

 Wotan spoke about the possible S.W.O.R.D Moonbase LEM. 

Can't find footage of the one Wote mentioned.

This one is interesting I saw on You Tube. It rises but doesn't rotate.

Anyone got this MI Toy from Japan?

ABANDONED MOON BASES

 A trip into the Moonbase attic found two abandoned bases.

These two Moonbases were built in 2009 as part of a the blog's look at the fabled Project SWORD Moonbase toy, of which only two possible examples have ever been seen we think.

This large scratch built model was my own effort to capture the SWORD Base. It could do with another outing.

This smaller SpaceX-scale set was made by Wotan and again deserves another outing.

I shall see what technicians at Moonbase can do!

Have you made a moonbase?

DARON SPACE STATION

These are cool.

Modern toy moon housing modules by Daron. They're called a space station.

https://images.app.goo.gl/fiFCLbURscFiDTJL6 

The doors flip down and remind me of the module, rear right, in the planned Project SWORD Moon Base Set pictured below [colourised by Bill B]!

Anyone got any?

disney's moon base

Moon base from Disneyland "Flight to the Moon" ride in the 1960's.

Rob Godwin

[2015 email archive]

MEXICAN BREAKFAST CEREALS IN THE STYLE OF ED VALIGURSKY'S MAN AND SPACE AND THE PROJECT SWORD MOON BASE PLAY SET

I've blogged about Mexican R and L cereal space premiums before here for example. The regular R and L premium websites don't appear to cover them.

As I've just got hold of the Mexican Nova model I thought I'd look at them again.

Basically my gut feeling is that these Mexican models were largely inspired by Ed Valigursky's prototype SpaceX and SWORD art.

See what I mean in this schematic that I've done comparing models and paintings.

I can't find any images of the model buildings, bottom left, actually built up so here are my two sketches of what they might look like.

Interestingly the Exploration Module appears in the Project SWORD Moon Base Set illustration top right.

Another Mexican model is this Saturn V with base.

which built up looks like this.

and to sign off here's Bill's superb job on his Mexican Booster, which you can read more about here.

Has anyone else got any of these Mexican cereal models?

PROJECT SWORD MOON BASE SET: THE VIEW IN THE MID NINETIES

Its interesting to look back at how much-older sites than Moonbase Central once described Project SWORD. This small paragraph on the SWORD Moon Base Set on the TV21 site caught my eye again. 

It was already on the site in the mid-1990's when the then editor Kelly Lannan accepted my own Project SWORD toys checklist for publication [after a long absence the site is live again by the looks of it].

The author of the paragraph was Marc Frattassio who wrote many online articles about Gerry Anderson toys and in particular the kits and die-casts used in the shows. I corresponded with Marc many times in those early days. I think I may have summarised his TV21 articles on this blog in its first year.

When I rediscovered SWORD in my Forties and set out as a novice to find out more, the prevailing view at the time in the mid Nineteen Nineties, among experienced Anderphiles writing in books, magazines and online, was that the set existed. Marc's summary fits in with this view.

Despite the mystery still surrounding this most fabled of SWORD toys, seeing the phrase Moon Base Set next to the name J. Rosenthal Century 21 Toys always gives me a thrill! 

"PROJECT SWORD

Moon Base Set. J Rosenthal Century 21 Toys, UK 1968. Playset contains six plastic astronaut figures, Apollo Lunar Module, radar station, housing unit, vehicle storage unit, Scramble Bug vehicle, Moon Prospector vehicle, Lunar Excursion vehicle, and molded plastic moon surface play mat. 

Motorized operating features and lights are controlled by battery operated switch panel. Project Sword was a toy marketing concept which drove a comic strip feature seen in TV21 annuals of the late 1960s."

THE SCALE OF THE PROJECT SWORD MOON BASE SET

Arto's comment today about whether parts of the fabled project SWORD Moon Base set may exist separately reminded me of this post from Bill in 2009. It concerns scale and is an excellent starting point maybe for discussing the set's constituent bits.

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Project Sword and the space toy industry is full of surprises. If on company isn't copying another, the other was always trying to outdo its competitors by offering bigger, more expansive sets to an eager army of children each Xmas. 

I've always been a huge Sword fan from my very first Task Force 1 to the very recent Nuclear Ferry and I've spent the intervening years poring over the Sword Manual and Annual as (until the advent of the internet) they were the only available sources of information. 

Every year while Sword was hot, I included the Moon Base on my hitlist, and every year it eluded me. Its good to know that I wasn't the only one wondering about it!

Woodster's moonbase project is indeed a big task [ a model ]- and I envy him greatly and look forward to the results! As to the question of scale, one thing always troubled me was the (apparently) massive control box - all those dials and switches seemed awful complex, but re-reading the text in the manual, it clearly states that its a 'four switch control panel', so everything below the four lever switches at the top must be decoration! 

Also, it details the actions for each part, rotating scanner, lifting lem and blinking lights, so complex switches aren't needed. 

Furthermore, looking closely at the main image, you can see what appears to be a battery compartment beneath each module. 



Now assuming these are batteries and all they have to do is power the simple function, they would be 'C' size or similar, making each unit about 6 or 7 inches high (approx 16-18 cm) which would in turn put them at the right size for Spacex sized vehicles.

Also, the text mentions 'miniature versions' of Prospector etc, so its definitely not the huge set we hoped it might be! The figures in comparison to the vehicles would indeed seem to be LP scale as Woodster suggests - pictured is a comparison of the 6cm 'cake topper' size figures and various golden astronauts.

ANOTHER MOONBASE

Hi Woodsy, Moon base from Disneyland "Flight to the Moon" ride in the 1960s. Best, Rob

Robert D. Godwin
TheSpaceLibrary.com
Space Curator - Canadian Air and Space Museum
Editor/CEO - CG Publishing Inc/Apogee Space Books
2116B Prospect Street
Burlington, Ontario L7R1Y9
Canada

MY NEW FAVOURITE PROJECT SWORD TOY ABSOLUTELY NOT IN MY COLLECTION!

I do think this is the new favourite toy I haven't got, the original Imai UFO Thunderbird Secret Command Base Set complete with 3 beautiful Project SWORD model toys. 

Its just stunning in its original fruitbowl of colours and is not to be confused with later re-issues in rather boring white or two-tone. The size is still difficult to envisage without anything recognisable next to them and as I am scale-extric/ scale-phobic/ scale-immune what it says on the box, if anything, won't help me!

Has anybody got one of these amazing sets? 

[pictures: godzitoraman]

ALAS, NOT UNDER THIS YEARS XMAS TREE! AOSHIMA UFO MOONBASE KIT ON YOU TUBE

Well the turkey and stuffing seconds are going down a treat but breaking away from the festivities for half an hour I've been checking You Tube for UFO videos.  I've come across this short film about the UFO Moonbase Kit, which is now on my Xmas list for next year! Although the maker doesn't talk about the Project SWORD vehicles contained in this kit it's still fun to see them on the box and on the sprue. This re-issued Aoshima kit appears to be all white but I am sure that the Imai original was multi-coloured inclusing the SWORD vehicles. Does anybody have the original Imai kit?

MEMORIES OF THE MOON BASE SET BY ANDY B

Dear Woodsy,

In case you do follow up the SWORD Phase 2 mysteries tackled in your blog entry -

I still think I saw the SWORD Moonbase, probably in the early 1970s. It was when I had moved from toys to making model kits, so by then I had lost interest in space toys. When younger, I had always wanted the Moonbase, so when I saw it, my thoughts were something like "Oh, there's that moonbase I had wanted", but didn't look in detail.

The Moonbase box was in the toy department of a larger shop, probably during a visit to family friends in Swindon. It wasn't in the window, but part of a larger display of toys inside. I assumed it was on sale, not just a display item. 

All I saw was a large cardboard box with lettering and presumably pictures, but I cannot be sure of anything else. As I have mentioned to you before, if you hadn't said how rare this sighting was, I would have thought no more of it! 

Also, I brought the SWORD scouts one or even two years after first finding SWORD toys, I can't really suggest a date. I hadn't seen them before this time. 

I often found SWORD toys on holidays to the seaside, so finding them sticks in my memory, as a part of a happy family holiday.

Please keep on Swordin!

Andy B.

PROJECT SWORD SCRATCHBUILT MOON BASE MODEL

Model: Project SWORD Moonbase

Modeller: Woodsy

Reference Material: Project SWORD Official Manual

Location: Moonbase Loft

Year: 2009