MINI SPACE VEHICLE CLOSE-UPS

Continuing on from the BC Mini Toys the other night Darth has had these toys for a while, bought ten years ago in Los Angeles. Click for close-ups. He's included two pictures of the one that looks like the Scramble Bug because the wheels fold up, which makes it look kind of like a different vehicle altogether! Cheers Darth, Woodsy.

SWORD LOGO LOOKALIKES

Darth has sent in this pic ( from ToyTent.com) of the Hong Kong made X40 Space Rocket. Check out the logo - it's very SWORD - like!

Terry Harle has also suggested that we have a look at the above pictures of an IMAI leaflet and box artwork noticing the Sword(ish) logo. These kits are in the Mighty Jack series but a couple were re-boxed with Captain Scarlet logos even though they had nothing to do with the series. However another rather tenuous link is that the small craft for which the link below is supplied also appearson some Captain Scarlet Dutch waxed papers produced in the sixties. http://page11.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/n63984995. Thanks Terry!

BRADLEY 1967 SPACE WATCH AND MODERN BC MINI SPACE TOYS

Been Googling again - check out these cool modern mini plastic blue space vehicles from BC - just click on the pic to get to the site. There's a Japanese pencil rubber museum too!

I had to post the Watch pic too - it's so Project Sword! Look at that moon module! From Bradley 1967 ( pezheads.net)

MORE EAST GERMAN SWORDESQUE

SOVIET SWORDESQUE: Space Toys from behind the Iron Curtain

OMEGA VEHICLE

PIKO MILITARY LAUNCHER

PIKO MARS CRANE

PIKO SATURN* ROCKETLESS VARIATION

(correct name thanks to WOTAN)

PIKO JUPITER ROCKET LAUNCHER

Well we're back back from our holiday in Berlin. Phew! What a great city! So much world history in one place: The Kaisers, the Schlosses, WWII, the rise and fall of the Wall and of course East Berlin and the former German Democratic Republic or Deutsches Democratisches Republik (or DDR - pronounced "Day Day Air") as its known in Germany. The Wall may have fallen in 1989 but Berlin was still officially 'occupied' until 1996, when thousands of Soviet troops, living behind a smaller walled disctrict within Potsdam called the Forbidden City, finally pulled out leaving behind street after street of grey houses falling to bits. With awesome zeal the Potsdamers have transformed these into the beautiful villas they once were. And just like parts of the Berlin Wall are left behind, so too are countless old socialist artifacts from the former DDR including fascinating urban space mosaics and you've guessed it - sovietised space toys!

I first stumbled across these toys in a fabulous German toy mart magazine called Sammler Heft ( like a colour version of the old US Toy Shop paper), where people still place ads with pictures just like in those pre-Ebay days here. Nestling in the toys section where pictures of amazing space vehicles with caterpillar tracks, missiles and radars, all designed with a strange Soviet economy and grace: socialist space toys by East German companies like PIKO and ANKER. Wanting to find out more I asked in a Potsdam bookshop if they had a new hardback book called DDR SPIELZEUGE and on its cover was what for me had become the quintessential East German space toy, the PIKO JUPITER ROCKET LAUNCHER! Wow! Being a similar size, it would fit sooooo well into the Project Sword fleet ( not sure of the politics of SWORD!) Having bought the book I then, along with my long-suffering wife Birgit, set off to find at least one old DDR space toy in one of the many junk shops in Potsdam. After visiting about three and having no luck we were losing hope. Then in one final push ( or pushkin!) we asked in another shop if they had any old 'Raumschiffe oder Raketen' ( aka space ships or rockets)! The kindly shopkeeper rubbed his chin and said 'Ja'! Opening a cupboard he pulled out a huge box revealing a very strange 1960's silver moon rover from Russia - a Lunokhod replica (correctly named thanks to WOTAN) pictured here in a museum with a small red astronaut stood on top. At 250 Euro's this was not the one for me! However, he delved deeper and emerged with a plastic bag containing - yep, the PIKO JUPITER ROCKET LAUNCHER! I couldn't believe our luck and at 90 Euro's ( a bit overpriced but the moment was priceless) it was on it's way home to Blighty deep in the Western zone! What an impressive toy, easilly a foot long but alas missing its missile and cosmonauts, lost in some heroic struggle in Jupiter's red storm! Unfortunately there is a modern-day sad capitalist end to this tale - going through the incredibly busy Customs (Zoll) at Schonefeld Airport a young zealous X-Ray operative mistook the toy for a 'lamp', requested that I take it out of the suitcase and show him directly. Satisfying himself that I didn't have a 'lamp' ( I'm unsure what danger it may have posed) I had little time to pack it carefully as there was a bottle- neck of would-be 'lamp' owners behind me. Back home I unzipped the case to find the long missile launch unit of the toy snapped in half! I couldn't believe it - this toy has seen off Socialists, Soviets and the fall of the Berlin Wall but I couldn't get it through German/ UK Customs in one piece! The Iron-y of it all.

Since getting home on Friday I have done a little more research into East German space toys, which are often called RAUPE ( caterpiller) or MONDAUTO ( moon car) mostly made by PIKO and ANKER. They really do look great and I absolutley love the sovietised design of them, managing to be charming, utilitarian and military at the same time. I have posted pictures of some of the principal toys above and for those interested there are lots of these on Ebay Germany, especially the seller DDRTETE (unfortunately hardly any are for sale outside Germany's confines).

I've pics of a few more DDR/ Soviet toys: AX1, AX2, Soviet Moon Crawler art, Soviet Scramble Bug,

Have a look and see whether you think they would look out of place in a SWORD fleet?

Like JFK, Ich bin ein Berliner,

Woodsy

ON MY HOLS

My Blog will be silent for a week as I am on my hols. The Forum lives on though! Per ardua ad astra.

MOON CRAWLERS by WOTAN

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WOTAN has sent this great article in:

'The Moon Crawler is one of my favourite designs from the whole SWORD range
and I can't understand why it never made production - for those who have never seen the Annual (shame on you - go straight to ebay!) heres the illustration. The
design seems to be another NASA also ran as something very similar appears in the
early sixtes book Man on The Moon in an illustration by an unamed artist ( picture 1). Then in
the early seventies the vehicle pops up in the failed second series
of Spacex/Golden Astronaut toys (picture 4) which saw very limited release due to the demise
of Tri-ang round about the same time. An almost identical vehicle to that
featured in the annual with slightly different radar and jointed arms ( picture 2). The name
again culled from the NASA databanks; Surveyor 2 after the first successful US
soft landing probe. I recently had the fabulous good fortune to acquire
two Surveyor models and from the two make a 85% complete one using some remnants
from a third model I had as a child.Then, in a move which will no doubt infuriate
Spacex purists and collectors alike, I took the remaining body and
wheels and used them to custom build a Sword Moon Crawler - an on-going project to
make a childhood dream a kind of reality. The picture ( 3 ) of the two vehicles is
slightly photo-shopped as I haven't repainted the wheels, only the old body shell
and the Surveyor itself is still missing one arm.

Nice one Wotan, another wonderful piece! Woodsy

SCOUT 2 CATALOGUE

Darth contacted me with this

'Hey Paul, Don't know if you had this mini catalog? It came with my Scout 2
vehicle. This is the thing that made me think that they never made the Moon Base
but did make the Nuclear Ferry. I figured they wouldn't list the Ferry on this
"second generation" advertising if it didn't exist. Likewise, I think it is
quite telling that they DIDN'T advertise the Moon base any more. Anyway, now
you've proven the Ferry exists so that discussion's finally over.'

Cheers Darth, I agree that this is more evidence that the Moonbase never made it further than the drawings in the Sword Manual. Paul