Well, its school holiday time here in Blighty, which, if youre a parent like me, means seven long weeks of keeping the kids occupied and out of mischief. Forty odd years ago, this was my second favourite time of the year next to Xmas, as I was invariably carted off to Wales on the annual family holiday.
In the sixties, almost every little seaside shop and newsagent was chock a block with cool toys from rayguns to paratroopers on polythene chutes, to submarines and frogmen and astronauts and rockets. Almost all of my childhood space toys came from a visit to Rhyl or Prestatyn or later to Dawlish in Devon. Little shops on the campsites yielded the most ephemeral and rare toys - stuff that never made its way into the high street shops or department stores, cheap, mass produced novelties, hot off the boat from Hong Kong and I loved every little plastic part.
A regular find for me, besides Spacex and other similar toys, were boxed sets of different rocket bases or missile pads. Nowdays, I realise that they must have been largely repackaged Apollo Moon Exploring toys, but then, they were the must have items for my expanding space force.
One such example is the 'Rocket Launching' set shown here. Branded by a company called Delaware, but containing toys from maker 'LP', this is a classic example and a very rare item indeed. All the parts are glued in place, apart from the little renegade space men who have slipped the bonds of PVA and jumped off to stretch their legs.
The set seems complete apart from a silver radar scanner, which would have sat on the smaller of the two towers. Interestingly, the makers saw fit to place a label on the front of the box, saying 'THIS IS A TOY' - really ? Apparently, the glue must have been strong in its day as it was obviously presented to someone as an xmas gift at some point in the past, as the sticky labels are still in place on the outer box and everything is still intact - you can almost imagine the set being put to one side at xmas as more accessible items like the Johnny Seven OMA and Scalextric came out of the wrappers and the little inert space base began to gather the dust of decades.
Its very much the military base too as it features an army truck and copter and a flight of three delta winged fighters. My favourite part is the nifty rocket itself, a staple of such sets, these usually arrived in orange and white without the central tube behind the warhead, making a squat, Von Braun style rocket. This is an unusual colour variation too as the only other colour I have seen is a blue based rocket in a set on ebay once. All others are generally a standard orange.
At the other extreme of playability comes the Cape Canveral set. This is a larger rocket - about 5 inches high, which sits on a robust gantry with working manual lift. A spring powered launcher clips onto the pad and a length of string is tied to the lower fin of the rocket. The cogwheel shaped propellors in the pack are 'satellites' and they sit loosely on the nose of the rocket. When the rocket is fired, it reaches a set height dictated by the string and tension makes the nose of the rocket flip forward slightly nudging the satellites into low orbit. This is a modern ebay find, but I had one of these as a boy, and can vouch for the impressive power of the launcher - i probably made about a dozen successful shots before the little satellites landed in the roof guttering or crash landed in the endless summer beaches of my childhood. Nowdays, i resist the tempatation to open the pack and give it one more shot at the stratosphere...
Continuing with the unusual Italian range LUNIK 2000 I have stumbled across this wonderful example on Ebay. It appears that the toys are made by one CALIGARIS TIBIBABO. The box art is truly stunning and amazingly it is SIGNED! Alas I can't read the signature. If only SWORD box art was signed like this!
