CENTURY 21 PROJECT SWORD COMPLETE SERIES INCLUDING THE 2 ROGUES: MOONSHIP AND LUNAR CLIMBER

picture credits:

top two - Darth

bottom - Will Osborne

NB. the absence of the Moonbase is telling and how have they spelt XERO X?

SEARS ROCKET BASE

Well done, Paul in Dark Spaces!

This is a great line of toys. Is it not unusual for a guy in the UK to collect stuff in the box, (what we casually toss off here as "M.I.B.")? I was of the understanding that our friends in the UK did not collect packaging.

Also I noticed an item or two that were released differently here in the US. -- the C21 Apollo Saturn Rocket for one. That came to us as the "Sears Rocket" and it has a reflective base to reflect the fiery lights of takeoff. (Mine needs the parachute). It is about 2 feet tall. How tall is yours? But all of these are really neat toys. The Ferry is awesome. Anyway, glad we could do something on all this and thanks for your order. I am sure Kath will be in touch with you on that shortly.
Best regards
Rusty

Publisher, Playset Magazine729 Crown Ridge DriveColorado Springs, CO 80904(719) 634-7430 http://www.playsetmagazine.com/

SHREDDED WHEAT MOON ROVER CUT-OUT FROM WOTAN

Cut out and Keep Special from WOTAN! In 1960 Shredded Wheat offered a neat little carboard Moon Rover in the box, Philosophic Toad discovered both the original comic ad from the Hotspur and then managed to locate the actual premium itself on Ebay!

He very kindly donated it to the Wotan archive and I have scanned it here for you to share. Notice the extremely SWORD like emblem on the side! Construction is basic and needs an elastic band and a cocktail or matchstick. As the original only has a single sided main fuselage, ive photoshopped a double sided version to get the full effect. Careful with those plastic scissors boys! Enjoy!

That's totally shredded man! Woodsy

SPACEX CRASH TENDER AND ROCKET TRANSPORTER

Picture Credit Will Osborne

picture credit Alphadrome


Picture credit Alphadrome

Picture Credit Alphadrome

Picture Credit Will Osborne

Picture credit Mark Bergin Toys

Picture Credit Alphadome

Picture Credit Alphadrome

There are 4 Spacex toys I've simply never seen. Not sure if anyone has? The Crash Tender and the Rocket Transporter (both pictured above as seen on Spacex backing cards), the Nuclear Freighter and Salvage Craft (which I mused over last week on the blog) and last but not least the fabled the Soyuz spacecraft. I've been searching around for toys similar to the tender and Transporter and have here posted my meagre findings so far. The murky nature of the Spacex pictures doesn't help the search, but I don't think that there are any others except maybe black and white drawings in some comic adverts. The crash tender feels as if its from a Thunderbirds episode, one of those vehicles seen dashing down to the runway to a plane in flames!

I can't help thinking if these 4 mysterious Spacex vehicles ever made it into the US Golden Astronaut design shop at all?

One of the pleasures of searching is occasionally stumbling across great sites. Here's just such a one, Aplhadrome's Space Toys database. Oddly enough I have a long connection with this site, as my original SWORD Toys checklist first appeared on the web here way back in 1998 thanks to Brian Hayes, site proprietor and robot guru. It's still there!

GOLDEN ASTRONAUT CLUB AND BADGE

Hi Paul,answer to your question: you sent off a quarter to Golden Astronauts, andyou got the badge! As advertised on the back of GA cards.

Best--Paul Vreede

Cheers Paul ! Were any readers in this club? There wasn't an equivalent UK or European Spacex club was there or was I asleep during my childhood?

SPACEX MAJOR IN TOYS INTERNATIONAL 1969

courtesy of Will Osborne

Is anyone aware of any other references to Spacex 'Major' anywhere? This term seems highly unusual!

GOLDEN ASTRONAUT BADGE AND CERTIFICATE

Continuing WOTAN's excellent badges theme, here's a snap I grabbed offa Ebay some years back. It appears to be a badge and certificate for the US Golden Astronaut toy line. Could a reader from the States confirm this?

SPACEX AND SWORD BY WOTAN

Towards the end of the Spacex era, the second series of the toys were released. Unfortunately for us collectors, Tri-ang were in difficulties at the time and it must have affected production on this less prominent line of toys. A series of four adverts went out in kids comics during the run up to Xmas 1970, showing Spacex models old and new as well as the offer of a new addition to the line - a badge. I saw the adverts at the time of release, probably in Buster or one of the similar weeklies and promptly became so excited at the prospect of new Spacex toys, that i couldnt sleep for weeks. However, it would be another three years before I discovered any of them, quite by chance while visiting my mother in hospital, in a small discount store in Liverpool.

I never found any of the toys in a high street store. Woolworths always had huge amounts of the first series and all the major department stores had displays and playsets, but the second run were nowhere to be found. Apart from being exclusively new models, the few i found in the few weeks following that initial discovery, the chief difference alongside the radically different cards - was the badge. Not all models carried one, the Booster Rocket and Lunar Orbiter came with one and several of the larger models like te Molab, ATS and LAMA may have had one, but the nuclear ferry and NASA Glider - similar size to the Booster, did not.

Tri-ang had obviously decided that the SWORD badges some time earlier had been a big selling point and 'borrowed' the idea. As far as I know, all Spacex Commander badges were a uniform red with silver plate letters. Sword badges had, i believe, four ranks - Astronaut, Captain, Commander and the elusive Supremo. As you can see from the photo, the similarities are obvious and the two types of badges work well together. Ive never seen a Supremo badge, let alone own one as it would only have come with the premium models such as Zero-X or the large Apollo set - has anyone got a picture of one ? Wotan.

Brilliant article. Woodsy