COMIC ONLY MACHINERY : DIVER 1

Starting an occasional series of posts on SWORD vehicles, which appear in the 1969 Century 21 PROJECT SWORD Annual but which never made it as a toy or model (like the cut-out books) of any kind. SWORD Has-Beens All but this is their second chance, a SWORD come-back!

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First up is the submarine DIVER 1 as pictured on page 90 of the Survey Vehicle story. It reminds me a lot of the later Action Man Sea Wolf toy. It lacks the distinctive futurism of the real SWORD fleet but would have made a great little toy nevertheless. Or?

MOONBASE DIARY

Today's booty at the Fitzwilliam Car Boot sale! Can't ID the Sub, either Bug or the red spaceman yet but I reckon somewhere in there are summer modelling projects for a SEA SWORD, Scramble Bug and Spacex Rocket Launcher! Steady on, don't get cocky I hear you say, finish that Moonbase first!

OUT INTO SPACE

After a hard day PROJECT SWORDING its a good idea to .....kneel down!

MOONBASE DIARY

There's been some progress in the modeller's loft! The Housing ('Egg 1') and Light ('Tin 1') Modules are more or less finished - top pic - maybe just another SWORD logo somewhere and a light in the Housing unit and that's it! Phew! I've started on the Garage module too - bottom pic -basically a thick cardboard tube with a card ramp. A stroke of luck was the plastic lid it came with - a sound base for the plastic roof crane unit (courtesy of an old megarig set). I also picked up 2 tupperware stacking trays -middle pic - at Dewsbury Car Boot. Not sure I can use them yet but one might make a good LEM base! Still no Panettone though! WOTAN has given me some good LEM leads so there might be progress there too soon!

SEARS SPACE MOBILE

I've probably blogged this before but the Sears Space Mobile on Ebay USA is just brilliant. With its antenna like the Major Matt Mason one (Big Red Toy Box) and its Scramble Bug tyres it would fit neatly in the SWORD fleet like a glove. And 8 wheels, yes 8! Wow! Wish I had one of these awesome toys when I was a kid. Were they sold in UK/ Europe?

NOVA BY UNIPLAST

I always loved the sleek lines of the Spacex NOVA and lo and behold here it is on the backing card of this Argentinian UNIPLAST toy rocket on Ebay USA. The description says it was made in the 1940's/50's but I'd have thought the 1960's were more likely.

HYDROFOIL BOAT BY T

As you know I'm a great fan of any obscure plastic toys by the SWORD trio of Century 21/ JR21, Tarheel and T and have posted a number of bloglets about them. Well I was officially chuffed to have won this brilliant looking Hydrofoil by T on Ebay this weekend. I can honestly say, unlike JR21, I have never before seen another toy by T. So this is a first for me. The toy and box look to be in great shape and somehow I feel that they will fit well into my SWORD collection with thier similar box art and sleak SEA SWORD looks! I'll be able to say more once the little beaut arrives. Are there any other toys by T?

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pictures courtesy of Ebay.

BLOG EXCLUSIVE 8 - SPACEX/GOLDEN ASTRONAUT ISSUES OF ONE INCH WARRIOR MAGAZINE

Here's a great thing for Spacex/ Golden Astronaut/ LP astronaut fans like us - there are 2 issues of One Inch Warrior Magazine (sister publication to Plastic Warrior) with really well researched articles about the history of small plastic golden astronauts as appeared in Spacex and Golden astronauts sets. The articles detail their evolution, usage and ultimate fate as cake toppers, which is a fascinating area in itself! On top of this Plastic Warrior magazine did a detailed article on the bigger LP astronauts. This is now out of print.

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However, the editor of both magazines has offered blog readers the following deal! -

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Both 'Spacex' issues of One Inch Warrior - #'s 6 & 9 for £6 postage free (in the UK) plus a photocopy of the now out-of-print LP Spacemen article ( from #85 Plastic Warrior) thrown in for free! It really is an excellent package! I've got them and thoroughly enjoyed reading them all.

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To take up this offer email the editor of the magazine pw.editor@ntlworld.com stating what you want and that you saw this offer on this SWORD blog. In the UK the package is £6 post free. Outside the UK there WILL BE A POSTAGE CHARGE. Ask the editor. He will give also give you payment methods accepted and the address.

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I really do recommend these magazines. There is so little well-researched material about these toy lines we love but these are the real McCoy!

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Woodsy

MINIATURE SWORD MOON PROSPECTOR BY WOTAN

Last week my good friend WOTAN sent me a surprise package - a miniature SWORD Moon Prospector with custom box and spec sheet! Using a Spacex Prospector and produced in the same authentic style as the Scramble Bug Blogsclusive last month, it looks great next to said Bug in the SWORD cabinet! All hail the the mighty WOTAN!

MOONBASE DIARY

After a particularly dire late night choice of Friday films on TV, the best of which was 1992's The Unforgiven with Clint, Morgan and Gene, I went to bed pondering - is there anything else that looks like a LEM? ..........and hey presto, out of that wacky dream machine called sleep we have PANETTONE LEM! Bravo bravo! The box is a definate contender for the main body I reckon! The right size (phew!), cheap AND the contents are edible! A second normal box for the base and some K'nex legs and voila, off we go! Its common knowledge that small astronauts love Panettone bread and butter pudding too! So where to buy one in May?

LEMS ON THE BRAIN

LEM's are on my mind at the mo. I'm struggling with what to do about my moonbase LEM so I've sought inspiration. Here we have my own Spacex LEM APOLLO (bottom 3 pictures) and the beautiful LUNAR CAPTAIN by Nomura (top pic - Mark Bergins Toys, 2nd pic - Vintage Space Toys) . However fabulous these two toys are they are way too small for my moonbase. I'm going to have to switch to looking at kits.

MOONBASE DIARY

Unfortunately this week my modelling efforts have been hindered by pesky sinus headaches making me grouchy and gruff! However, a visit to the docs this morning and a bevvy of new drugs has done the trick and I'm back in the attic!

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The housing module legs - top pic - are painted and the body is ready for finishing touches like sword decals! I just have to decide if the top clear half needs some space 'furniture' or simply illuminating.

The rader dish array is finished and the pedestal is painted - top pic. Not sure what to use for the boxy base. Might just use a box!

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It was always going to be difficult and it has been - the Light Module - middle pic. I have painted up an old tin as the base section. The lamp itself is an old mini table lamp again painted in space cream - bottom pic. K'nex rods and old storage wheels make up the legs. Old model sprues make up the V's, which were really tricky to stick onto the tin but my trusty super glue came good.

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Finally I have painted up an old plastic crane - bottom pic - to use on the top of the 'garage' unit. I've got the crane but no unit yet! I need to be able to cut a 'door/ramp' into it so I'm leaning towards a plastic paint 'tin', which more or less has the right cylindrical shape.

Progress!

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However, I foresee my biggest problem already - the LEM. There's just no way I can make one from scratch! HELP!

MARX AND MULTIPLE TOY MAKERS MOONBASE

I think I'm in love with Operation Moonbase by Marx! The box is how I imagine a Project Sword Moonbase box to look (check out the excellent Time Warp Toys to see these sets). The bottom pic is of a modern re-incarnation of the Marx Moonbase called Star Station Seven. Finally we have the Multiple Toy Makers Space Control Centre ( these 2 pics off Ebay). Where there any other moonbase playsets? British / European ones maybe?

MOONBASE DIARY

Made some progress on the 'dish housing'. Quite chuffed as I picked up a cheap Hawker Hunter Aircraft Reflector dish on Ebay from Jet Art. Fits the bill I reckon. Added a paintbrush handle and a few other bits and its getting there. I even mounted the dish on a small mini desk fan so that it might rotate but it just got too fiddley so I ditched the idea! The tin with the V attached to it is the start of the 'light' module, the V being the first leg mounting. The tea is real and I even forgot to take the bag out! Scruff!

SPACE SAFARI BY MINIFLEX

I've never owned Space Safari by Miniflex but this is such a stunningly good example on Ebay that I had to post it for posterity on the blog. Its Spacex/Moon McDare/Majot Matt Mason all rolled into one, just check out the Crawler! The box art is fabulous too, sort of T Project Sword Painted style. And there's some little cute martians thrown in too! Beautiful. What else did Miniflex do?

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PS. Mark Bergin Toys has some great shots of these toys too in a different box. A great site.

&

PS2. Here's another completely different box too!

EBAY USA

Currently on Ebay USA are these two: a beautiful Golden Astronaut Launch Site set and a T Probe Force 1. Not sure I've got that little specification sheet showing the fin attachment. Anyone able to scan one so I can post it up on the blog?

MOONBASE MANUAL ILLUSTRATION ORIGIN?

Hey Paul,

y

Don't forget the original image that the moon base was inspired by. This was basically a version of Boeing's LESA concept from the 60's. Pretty much all of the contractors had versions of this concept including the one attached by Grumman.

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Cheers,

Darth

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Excellent Darth, see what you mean, that Bug/MEV descending the ramp is so similar to the Sword Moonbase illustration! Seems plausible that the Sword Manual illustrator had seen this! Not seen the Countdown pic before - what a great aerial view! Looking at these the modules don't actually have clear domes. It looks clear in the Sword manual illustration.

MOONBASE DIARY

The moonbase model has begun! Having decided that the Housing Module looks a bit like an egg cooker, I attached some K'nex rods and old plastic wheels to said cooker base. Well its a start, the astronauts will have somewhere to live soon and their eggs will only take a minute in space!

FRANKENSTEIN MOD MONSTER

Continuing my gallery of stuff mum chucked out, here's one of my all-time favourite toys, the Frankenstein blushing Mod Monster! What a cheeky devil he is. I remember taking Frankie into little school on the day you could bring your Xmas prezzies in. No-one else had one. I placed it on the teacher's desk and pressed the button and presto, Frankie did his Frankie sway, dropped his kecks and blushed bright red! Talk about a show-stopper! I could never beat that!

SWEET-FILLED JR21 SOMPORTEX THUNDERBIRDS BY STEVE OF THUNDERBIRDSVINTAGETOYS

Hello Paul.

Thanks for the mail & the comments about my thunderbirdsvintagetoys
site.

The sweet filled TB2s - Christies worked a real flanker with
those. They were sealed in 4's - in brown paper.They wouldn't open them for
viewing so it was pot luck as to what was inside & the state of it. All 32
eventually ended up with a friend of mine. I got the best box etc but strangely
he kept the only bag of sweets still in their original 60s state. They were
spiders & bugs etc.

I never knew there was so much SWORD stuff.
I do recall a 2nd hand/junk shop in Nottingham having bucketloads of the stuff
in the late 80s @ 50p each - presumably from clearing old stock- I'd only
just gotten into collecting & wasn't wise enough to buy
it.

Sadly I cannot answer your questions about
SWORD but ......... I have put them & a link to your blog on my
site http://thunderbirdsvintagetoys.co.uk/ExternalLinks.htm

The TB2 you have found is not mine. There are quite a few of them about.
Here's another http://www.solnet.co.uk/metropolis/albumdet.asp?id=1035

The common thing is all the boxes are stained. Very few have sweets in any
state.

Dennis Nicholson loved the "with sweets" story too. The guy that told it to me is sadly long dead. I have no reason to disbelieve it. He worked for JR21 & Lincoln International too apparently.
A lot of the JR21 stuff that's around came from him. He - again apparently - handled shop returns & made good out of bad. And hoarded it. What foresight?

I believe the "Stingray Museum" site is long gone. I did
hear that the stuff was all sold & split up.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Regards,
Steve.

SWEET FILLED JR21 THUNDERBIRDS TOYS: re-printed from thunderbirdsvintagetoys with kind permission from Steve the site owner.

To get a set of JR 21 vehicles is hard enough? What about the RARER ones?

There's a story to tell.............and here's how it was told to me, many, many, many years ago- by an ex-employee of JR 21 Toys. And, of course, it might be a work of total fiction. Here goes..............

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In the mid 1960s JR21 decided to move production of their toys from Hong Kong to England. When manufacturing in England was set up & in production it was discovered that toolings to make parts of the friction motors had not been brought over from Hong Kong. In order not to disrupt production nor reduce sales prices it was decided to compensate for the lack of a friction motor by including a packet of sweets within each box. All mention of a friction motor on the box was covered by a sticker saying "SWEET FILLED" (TB2 top picture)

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So this was done for a limited time.......................

2 batches (as far as I am aware) of Thunderbird 2's containing sweets have turned up & been auctioned through Christies. As, over the years, the sweets had disintegrated & covered the boxes with a sticky mess, it was difficult to find good examples. Most of the boxes were stained.

I also have a Thunderbird 1 with the "SWEET FILLED" stickers on the box (bottom picture). There is no friction inside apart from the metal casing which held the motor. Presumably it was necessary for this to be there to hold the wheel axle.That being the case I can only assume that there were "SWEET FILLED" Thunderbird 3s & FAB 1s done? Anyone know? Anyone have one?

What a fabulous JR21 story Steve! Thanks ever so much for letting me re-use it. If you haven't checked out Steve's TB Toys site then get to it. Highly Recommended! Woodsy

MOONBASE DIARY

I've been gathering together bits and pieces that might be useful for the moonbase! Stuff from the attic, the shed and a couple of Ebargains- an old egg cooker and an actual jet radar dish! A trip to the local junk shop produced a mini desk fan and 2 old emergency lamps - one looking like a blue R2D2! So, what to do with it all?

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WOTAN's comments about scale make me feel a lot better about choosing the 'Spacex' size. I love the batteries in his brilliant colour illustration! Never even spotted them before! I must admit the whole control panel thing in general worries me though. I'm considering forgetting that any of the parts should move or light up. My kung fu is just not that good!

MOONBASE PLAYSET SCALE BY WOTAN

Project Sword and the space toy industry is full of surprises. If on company isnt 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!

n

Woodsters moonbase project is indeed a big task - 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.

u

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

y

terrific WOTAN! Thank heavens I'm on the right lines!

MOONBASE DIARY

With my trusty Project Sword Official Manual to hand I have encountered my first modelling problem - that quintessential dilemma of scale. There is no real clue in the Manual other than the control box, which you can sort of envisage, since there are some pictured switches. The problem is best summed up by the vehicles we know so well - the Moon Prospector and the Scramble Bug, pictured above in both Century 21 and miniature Spacex plastic/Imai die cast sizes. To re-create the Bug garage module at C21 Bug scale it would need to be really huge - a couple of feet high! I have found this rather cool storage system by Kartell, which could work, but they are hellishly expensive and the door slides rather than lowers. Similarly a C21 scale Prospector would require a ginormous living module (to its left on the Manual picture). All just too darn big for me to work with - I can't imagine the proposed C21 toy would have been at this scale either, child-squashingly massive in a box several feet wide and deep! The astronauts compound the issue too. To illustrate this I have placed an LP silver astronaut - the C21 scale (compare with the Bug driver) - against a mini yellow crawler with driver - the miniature Spacex scale. You can see that the LP astronaut would need a giant moonbase! So, weighing all this up I have opted for the Spacex scale Prospector and Bug and therefore a much smaller, more manageable and affordable model base. Phew!

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PS. Mini Prospector customised and donated to me by the mighty WOTAN. More on this to follow!

MOONBASE DIARY

Last week I spent a highly enjoyable hour reading about Mike Delamar's wonderful Scratchbiulding a Thunderbirds Fire Engine project on the brilliant Space 1999 Eagle Transporter Forum. I am both in awe and inspired by Mike, a real friendly guy, in equal measure and have resolved to start my own 'pet' project, which has been languishing on the 'drawing board' for ages: to biuld the Project Sword Moonbase!

You fool I hear you cry! I agree! The obstacles are great and many, the greatest of which are my lamentabley 'green' modelling 'skills' (a virgin solder!) followed closely by the lack of authentic Project Sword Moonbase imagery - the only real drawing is in the Official Manual (top pic) supplemented by the odd TV21 comic strip appearance (bottom pic). There are some similar moonbase artworks by the great Ed Valigursky on the net, but these can only be viewed as background material really.

So, with super-glued hands and dedicated to virgin solders everywhere, I set off to discover the dark secrets of the fabled Moonbase! Watch this space (or not)!

JR21 MOTORCYCLE AND SIDECAR

A lover of all things Century 21/ JR21, I am always on the lookout for their more unusual plastic toys like the boxed Hurdler Jeep and the truly awesome, but unboxed Stingray Nuclear Submarine Carrier as featured previously on the blog. And here's another one - JR21 MOTORCYCLE AND SIDECAR! Not in the same league as the Nuclear Sub but fascinating nevertheless! It's small at 4 inches but is definately attractive. Currently on Ebay UK as a BIN from a discerning seller who even gives Project Sword a mention in the description (it's not me in case you're wondering!). Pity there's no box. Anyone got one? (or indeed any other unusual JR21/ Century 21 Toys?)