SWORD DREAM FACTORY - ANT BY WOTAN(T)

Another design begging to be realised as a SWORD toy was the ANT vehicle from the Sword Annual. Clearly based on the Grumman Molab project for a long range lunar rover, this could have been a great addition to the fleet of lunar vehicles repurposed to travel the scarred Earth after the big one of 3031. Or as seen in the mocked up photo of the toy, your back garden! The basis of this design is obviously the Grumman Molab, the photograph shown here was used as the basis of a colourful illustration for the comic story series 'Wee Willie Winkie' by John Worsley / Robert Hodgson in Look and Learn in the sixties. I 'borrowed' the artwork for the box illustration from www.lookandlearn.com/characters/index.php?c=weewilliewinkie - a fabulous resource with a searchable archive of illustrations. The 'toy' photo is taken from an old photo I had to hand of a model I made some years ago using a Kinder egg container, some Capsela parts and various household odds and ends. Its actually about 10 inches long, but sadly not motorised!

WOTAN, I want one, I want one! Woodsy

TARHEEL SCOUTS ANYONE?

Darth's fabulous TARHEEL Project Sword collection, which was blogged last September, got me thinking. Did a TARHEEL-branded SCOUT 1,2 and 3 come out too? I suppose it's also worth contemplating the existence of a TARHEEL Booster Rocket, Nuclear Ferry and Zero-X! Dream on I reckon!

KELLOGS SPACE STATION AND APOLLO CAPSULES

Lovely set of 1960's TB, Captain Scarlet and space cereal freebies currently on Ebay as part of a bigger group of JR21 toys. The blue space station and the 2 apollo capsules have been on the blog before and are part of the Kellogs range, which included a MOLAB.

BANDAI - THE BEST LOOKING SPACE TOYS EVER MADE

I have found most of these toys on the wonderful Alphadrome Database. The Radiation Tester is from Vintage Space Toys. If you haven't had a look then do it now. Unfortunately the smaller pictures don't enlarge and I can't find anymore anywhere. Nevertheless, my thesis is simple. This SWORD- like series by Bandai are easilly the best looking space toys ever made. They ooze with a minimal futuristic style that is simply beautiful. The boxes' tasteful split graphic of a wonderful painting and a starkly simple nameplate is so pleasing to look at its untrue. I'd love to post bigger pictures. I think they were SEARS exclusives. There is also a much smaller set of one-colour die-cast lookalikes by Marx Line Mar.

THUNDERBIRD 6 PROTOTYPES

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?

Tester

SWORD DREAM SHOP - ATV 2

As my email crash continues unabated I can't post the next items waiting in the blog queue. So here's another boxart doodle. This is the ATV 2 in the Project Sword Annual with the cool toy, a customised Spacex Tractor T5, courtesy of WOTAN (posted earlier on the blog).

SWORD DREAM FACTORY - SEA SWORD

My email is currently down so any posts I have in the 'waiting room' from fellow bloggers are stuck there for now. Technology! To keep things moving here's another of my ameteurish DIY mock-ups, this time the SEA SWORD from the Project Sword Annual. My poorest effort yet, I simply couldn't find a toy like it anywhere. All I could come up with was this hungarian spacecraft. Someone please find a better looking Sea Sword. There's another pic - bottom one -from the Annual to help you.

SWORD DREAM FACTORY - MOON BASE BOX ART II

Like two secret teams working on thier sinister plans, by cosmic coincidence WOTAN and I both created moonbase masterpieces at the same time! New box art no less for the fabled Project Sword Moon Base! WOTAN's was posted earlier today in all it's splendid glory and clearly created by someone who knows what they're doing! Mine on the other hand, shown here for your viewing pleasure, is what in the artworld I think is called impressionist (or a mess)!Still the intention was true!

I have opted for a larger box that would house the entire playset. The picture is a blend of the rear cover art from the Project Sword Annual and a fabulous image off the net of a lunar module. It sort of works. The Scramble Bug and Moon Prospector actually appear in the only known Century 21 artwork for the proposed toy, the picture in the Project Sword Manual (bottom picture above).

Clearly the biggest problem in creating box art for this set is not knowing the scale of the thing. Did Century 21 intend to include pre-existing toys like the Bug and Prospector? That would have made the LEM's huge and the box ginormous! WOTAN's idea of several boxes could get round this at such a scale. Perhaps they intended to use SPACEX - sized toys? We can see what this looks like with the SPACEX's own Moonbase ( courtesy of Mike Burrows) which is too small for Project Sword standards.

My own view is that Century 21 wanted a scale somewhere half-way between the two, but this would have required re-sizing the Bug and Prospector and creating the LEV, LEMs, housing unit, lunar surface and the unwieldly-looking dashbaord from scratch. It all sounds very expensive and as sales of the range inevitably dipped towards the end of the Sixties, as Moon fever waxed and waned, I imagine a complex design like the Moon Base was just too costly. But one intriguing question remains, did they make a prototype?

Well, there are some intriguing rumours! More on this.

SWORD DREAM SHOP III - WOTAN'S MOON BASE - THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE!

WOTAN's Dream Factory shows us the way:

Seeing a good bandwagon, i jumped on! Sword Moonbase Module - heres an
imaginary toy from the 'What if ?' Sword Factory. Supposing the Moon Base was
sold separately as individual modules, four in the set like the Probe Force,
Task Force or Scout series. As the Moonbase model was clearly based on existing
NASA designs, i've used the Nasa concept for the Lunar Tug as the basis of the
box art. Its not too close to the 'actual' toy as the box art so often promised
much and delivered something else with Hong Kong toys, but near enough to be
recognisable. For the toy, I've used the Spacex LEM as the basis and
photoshopped-in various odds and sods from other pictures! A little fun for
an otherwise dull Friday afternoon!

I'm standing on the shoulders of Giants! A fable comes to life before our very eyes! Woodster