A Project SWORD Toy Shop Shelf?

I wondered what a Project SWORD shop counter might look like. Culled from my old attic shots, here goes.

MY NEW GREEN EAGLE SPACE GLIDER

Late last year Wotan Bill tipped me off about this elusive Space Glider in Ebay.

Its one of the more obscure 2001 toys, sporting a Spirit of America-style eagle and stars. 

Here are the original auction pictures from mac0405.

Luckily I was able to bag this new green one for a reasonable price and its now stationed in the Moonbase holding area awaiting a full check-up.

Its worth pointing out that the eagle and stars are in fact adhesive clear decals. I think that two 'Spirit of America' title side decals and two US flags should be present but are missing from this one.

You can see them here on this fully-liveried darker green glider I saw years ago on the net [in a different and rather snazzy box].

I had always assumed that these were printed directly onto the plastic but they're not. Based on this I now reckon there are undecorated green 2001 gliders out there, as well Spirit of America decaled versions in all the available colours. Anyone got one?

I have found plain red, white and yellow versions already as seen here in the Moonbase collection, bottom right.

The two remaining 2001 gliders still missing from the Moonbase fleet are these:

an orange glider

and this flame-edged white NASA version 

And, just spotted online today! Mr. Blue! 

I so want one of those! 

What do you think readers?

MY MOONBASE PROJECT SWORD TOYS COLLECTION

 This is my Century 21 toys Project S.W.O.R.D toy collection hangered here at Moonbase. These are all the known Century 21 SWORD toys. It excludes the books and comic strips.

On this Century 21 table you can see from LtoR:

Probe Force 3, Booster Rocket, Probe Force 1 [elevated], red Task Forces 1,2 and 3, Scout 1 [yellow], Scout 2, Scout 3 [behind], Space Glider grey, Space Glider orange, Scramble Bug, Moon Ranger, Moon Bus and Apollo Saturn Rocket [behind].

Scoop 2014

This table below, from LtoR:

Moon Prospector, Dyna Soar [tail], Cape Kennedy Set [in box], Zero-X, Probe Force 1 [elevated]

Scoop 2014

Same table at the end, from LtoR:

The blue Nuclear Ferry [kindly on loan from Salim], Probe Force 2

Scoop 2014

This table is of North American Tarheel SWORD and various knockoffs and is by no means exhaustive.

Back Row From LtoR:

Tarheel Probe Force 2, Tarheel Moon Prospector, Tai Hing/ T in a Circle Moon Prospector, CHIBI Moon Prospector [Argentina]

Scoop 2014

Front row, LtoR:

Tarheel Probe Force 1, white SL Task Force 3, Tarheel Probe Force 3, Behind: yellow Tarheel Task Force 2 and a carded red Tarheel Task Force 1 [custom card], Redacted 'Tarheel' Moon Ranger  for the Italian market], Hover Probe Force 1, Hover Probe Force 3, NaSa Probe Force 3, SL Task Force 3 box and Hover Booster Rocket.

My Japanese SWORD toys and kits - again not exhaustive. There are many more out there:

From top to bottom:

Maruman Probe Force No.1 'SB' model kit

YT Spacebird No.3 green canopy,

YT Spacebird No.3 red canopy [in bag]

Imai Thunderbird 7 model kit [aka the Beetle]

Hope you liked my collection.

Now onwards and upwards ....

MY PROJECT SWORD TOY COLLECTION

Photos: Scoop

ANOTHER TWELVE MONTHS OF PROJECT SWORD TOYS

Back from our travels and enjoying perhaps the last hot weather of the British summer [but who can tell these days] my lounging mind now turns to balmy September and the fact that Moonbase will be 11 years old.

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?

CABINET RE-SHUFFLE

Just tidying up.

Here's my bedside cabinet.

Monsters up top,

Bottom a mixture inc. Kev's fab scratch Hover Tank

Spacex and friends one down

My home made toys next

Have you something similar?

IKEA WALL BOXES AND TOYS

Looking through some old prints I came across a shot of me sitting beneath three deep frame pictures at some point in the late 1990's. I've edited the picture to remove my ugly mug, although you can just see my old military prop cap.

You know the kind of frames on the wall. Wooden boxes with glass fronts. From Ikea. Small collections can be hung up and displayed quite easily.

I used to do this a lot.

The three in this poor photo of a photo are my daughter's old Mickey Mouse collection - she had some great stuff; my Secret Wars action figures painstakingly located at 90's car boot sales and finally three space toys stood up portrait style.

These three toys were an X-series X40 blue and red rocket [yes, I had one before I even knew what it was!], a Masudaya plastic wind-up Robbie the Robot and a red mini Robot given to me by a close friend for safe keeping.

Only the mini-Bot remains of this lot I think as I flogged everything else when I had a toy stall and Ebay shop years ago.

Do you have small collections on the wall readers?

Have you less stuff than you used to have?

I saw three crypts

When we were recently in Liverpool we visited the huge gothic style Cathedral on St. James Mount.

Whilst walking through its sunken park and graveyard we photographed the mausoleum on the hill just as the light was fading.

A strange green light is emanating from the window!

The liverpool crypt immediately made me think of the old Arrow paperback cover of Dracula's Guest.

It was one of the most startling illustrations I had ever seen as a kid horror fan and it has stayed with me ever since.

I think it's the muted tones of the stone biulding that appeal but more particularly the movement: the falling victim, the running wolves and most strikingly the flying skeleton.

The cover scared me to death as a nipper when I found this book in my parent's bookcase but that bookcase sparked a love of horror novels and a passion for collecting them.

Writing this has put me in the mood for one of my favourite films of the Sixties, the classic anthology Tales from the Crypt, the ideal nostalgic movie to watch today, my birthday!

MY EARLY COLLECTION 1990

Recently I found these shots of my early vintage toys collection from around 1990 including my first re-acquired Project Sword toy, the SPACE GLIDER (bought at an evening toy fair in Normanton - they were great!). The snaps were taken by a professional photographer mate of mine back then, which I have scanned for the blog. Around 1990, I started to buy Model and Collectors Mart magazine, which was absolutley wonderful. The classifieds were excellent and were the 'Ebay' of their day - I miss them a lot (I used to advertise for PROJECT SWORD information!) The mint bubble-boxed Corgi Juniors Batmobile in the bottom pic was my first purchase through the magazine - from the excellent TV TOYZONE. I was so excited when it arrived in the post. Those were the days! Alas, many of the toys pictured have been swapped/sold over the years.

My First Photographs of My PROJECT SWORD Collection: early 1990's

Looking through some old family photo's to send with Xmas cards I stumbled across these prints I took of Project Sword craft about 15 years ago. The quality is terrible! Pre-digital bog standard kodak! I feel that the second one down with the wavey green look isn't that bad. I can't beleive I had a hair on the lens in the bottom photo of the Scout boat! I'm sure that blog readers can do much much better than this!

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So - I'll be soon launching a - wait for it - a PROJECT SWORD photo competition!!!!!! Watch this Space!!!!!!!

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Here's an early shot of a young Woodsy displaying my passion for spaceships as I patrol the skies with my cousin Susan in a Space Tank and Supercar at Butlins in the glorious 60's. Check out Thunderbird 1 catching us up! Heaven!