Tomorrow Never Came

I saw a quote once, in an old isse of 'OMNI' magazine:

"The Past is gone, the Present lost as it arrives. There is only the Future."

When I was seven, I once remarked to my schoolmates that I was going to be an astronaut when I grew up. I would get married at 24 and have two children and drive an E-Type Jaguar (at the time one of the most streamlined streetcars available). Forty years on, I cant drive at all, will never reach space and have the smallest practical car to carry my loving wife and two children. At that time, I looked forward to a future of glass and steel, monorails and aerocars and world peace. I think I must have bumped my head on the desk at some point, as I was obviously hopelessly myopic.

Everything in the sixties promised a new Space Age - it was a time of plastic and funky design, bright colour and limitless imagination. Designers and engineers sold us a slick, streamlined world of open highways, clear skies, velvet reaches of space and the means for anyone to travel them.

As I write, the building im working in shakes, quite violently sometimes, as the old hospital site adjacent to it is torn down. My office is in a building which has stood here since the 1950's alongside the old hospital where my daughter was born 12 years ago. Very shortly, the site will be clear and work will progress on the new development.

Shall I expect to see golden towers of plexiglass and arcologies of spun steel ? Will the future hold nanomachines silently busying themselves over the construction of organically styled homes as hypersonic jets leave doughnut shaped vapour trails in the blue sky overhead ? Somehow, I doubt it.

For the foreseeable future, I think the only space age I will enjoy will be made of plastic, but on a considerably smaller scale than I first thought in 1969.

ATOMIC SUBS AND AIRCRAFT CARRIERS: A WHOLE FLOTILLA

I've recently been immersing myself in TV21 comic strips I've aquired in 1980's Action 21 comics and Thunderbirds In Space from the 1990's. There's a whole armada of huge futuristic ships not least of which is the fabulous Submarine Aircraft Carrier (more to come on this during September) and the majestic PRESIDENT atomic ocean liner. Short of finding these comic creations (well we know about the Sub Aircraft Carrier but surely there's no President toy!), I have found some other cool and sometimes nuclear vessels online, mostly Ebay.

Above - Atomic Submarine bagged

Above - Britains Scuba Sub - I had one of these!

Above - Gama Atomic Liner - Wow!

Above - Telsada Train Ferry Boat - that box style is very Tarheel!

And last but not least, the Telsada Clockwork Aircraft Carrier! But what did it do?

Oh yeah, the Renatta Sub is in the side-bar too!

Under Pressure

Well, it probably looked like a great idea on paper and the artwork for the box is pretty dynamic and interesting, but the Jetspace Pulsair Base really doesnt blow my skirt up.

Ever since I was a kid, i'd seen fabulous bases in space and on the moon with clear domes and travel tubes zipping astronauts around on monorails and in capsules and nearly every good space toy had an implausibly huge glass partition that you could peer into to see the inner workings or the pilots sat at the controls.

When I first came across this set, I imagined it to be full of clean tubes with small spacexy capsules zipping about while helicopters lifted off the landing pads and starcruisers orbited overhead. I'd long been a fan of the Takara Micronauts line and had often coveted the fantastic Rocket Tubes set, which encased a 3 inch figure in a special capsule and then shot him around four feet of perspex tube to the main base. The Pulsair set turned out to be more like one of James Dysons bad trips and could have been just as easily created from a batch of Tupperware bowls and some old vacuum parts. It includes lots of pipes, each about as thick as your average index finger, a big clear dome and several modular 'base' units to clip the whole thing together. Once the laborious duty of plugging it all together and hoping it stands upright, was complete - two simple pumps are attached and a quick thump sent a one inch 'bullet' shooting down a pipe at speeds too fast to actually see. If the connections werent secure at this point, the whole thing would pop apart and the capsule would be liberated into the far corner of the room.

Originally made by a company called Ceji , the licence was picked up by Revell and small box of accessory vehicles were released. These included large cruisers very reminiscent of the swan-necked spaceships of Angus McKie and which were designed to sail along a cotton thread. Also there were small buggies, each made of individual vinyl plastic parts and one piece copters. The capsules came in three sections and would only work with a small collar of transparent film attached at either end to preserve a tight seal. The central body popped open and allowed the insertion of possibly the tiniest figures I have ever come across - barely 3mm high! A standard Golden Astronaut towers over them in comparison. Possibly, such microscopic parts meant the end for the series as they were so small they represented not so much a swallowing hazard as the probability of being inhaled if you bent too close to watch the 'action'!

SPACE RACER X 50 - JR21?

This plastic space jet was recently sold on Ebay. Described as a 'SPACE RACER X 50, made in Hong Kong No.233.' Intriguingly the seller suggested that it may possibly have been made by JR21 and is from the same series as the X 60 rocket launcher. JR21? Can anyone shed any light on this?

Scalecraft Aerocar Redux !

Heres a much better condition Aerocar from fellow collector Ferryman. Although the propellor isnt the original part and has been replaced from a Spitfire from the same manufacturer, this model does include a small 'dinosaur' fin on the top of the canopy. Ferryman has also restored the silver stickers. Excellent work as always!

Moon Expedition 1970

Richard Warren Sears started a mail order catalogue service late in the 19th century, selling watches and other goods. This rapidly became a staple of american culture and in the late sixties the toy section of these grand catalogues was a cornucopia of delights at Xmas. Sears often had exclusive products and one such wonder of the age is this Space Mobile.

Looking like it could easily traverse any lunar landscape with comfort and ease, the Space Mobile is a solid, stylish vehicle - the caddy of the moon buggy world. Its basically a plastic toy, with a tinplate battery cover and powerful rubber belts driving the eight, pivoting wheels. It seems to have been influenced by the Matt Mason line of toys, as the rotating radar scanner is very similar to the Firebolt Cannon and the figural pilot has a look of a child sized Matt Mason too.

Although reality was way behind the Sears designers ideas for moon travel and NASA were still working the kinks out of the best way to get across the dusty, barren surface of the moon - Popular Mechanics magazine and German engineering firm Bohn were keen to speculate on the possible future of tractor design. Having been reared on Scramble Bugs and Prospectors, Moonmobiles and Americus Buggies, I recall been so disappointed when the basic, skeletal, moon go-kart of the Lunar Roving Vehicle was unveiled! What a missed opportunity! :-p

Over the Moon!

Heres another odd example of Tri-ang making a stand alone space toy, Luna-Cy. Probably the best presented and packaged of the missile base sets ive come across so far. Made in 1969/70, the game is designed so that players can blast rockets at a vac-formed plastic moon hemisphere that clips onto a door frame, as can be seen in the article from 'Games and Toys' Trade journal and the two catalogue snippets pictured above.

Its had a lot of thought put into the game, the large door clip has a special card banner that hangs on the outside, warning entrants to the room that rocket firing is in progress - which is a good thing, as the launchers are very powerful! The spring tension can be adjusted to one of three settings, which from experience I would put at wow!, jeezus! and oh god there goes the lampshade! In fact, the only real flaw with the toy is the power of the launchers as the small trigger that propelled the rocket forward eventually snaps off as it hits the gantry.

Besides two large launchers, half a moon and six missiles, the set comes with six themed base cards. In a flash of precognitive brilliance, the designers have used Peking as the centre for a chinese rocket base, predicting the oriental space programme by some decades, but equally they miss the mark slightly by placing a similar facility in London!

Artwork for the box and packaging is lavish and colourful and the top of the box features a pop out section that enables an open box display and the sides have fabulous colour paintings of the toy. Even the inner tray has a star speckled finish.

The moon hemisphere is very reminiscent of the Spacex Moon landscape that was provded in the Supersets a year later. The rubber tipped rockets and the large launchers remind me very strongly of the pilot episode of Joe 90, where the stolen Mig jet bombards a missile base featuring pads very similar to the Luna-Cy set.

Catalogue scans and toys from the Wotan Archive and the Games and Toys excerpt kindly supplied by the Philosophic Toad.

Tri-ang Moonmobile Redux

Ive touched on this baby before in the more general article http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2009/02/crawler-cavalcade-by-wotan.html, but its one of my special favourites and actually the very first item I ever bought on ebay!

Made by Tri-ang for the 'space year 1969' as the small article in the Tri-ang '69 Xmas catalogue puts it, this is a wonderful toy by any stretch of the imagination. Bearing very close similarity to its larger Marx cousin and also having a lot in common with Mattels Space Crawler, this is a much more 'sci-fi' vehicle than the other more realistic crawlers.

The streamlined hull and chromed parts are accentuated by the big twin missile launcher mounted over the cockpit. On this model, the previous owner made up a pair of reproduction missiles but also fitting in slots inside the cabin are four original missiles. Keen eyed Anderson and Dinky collectors will immediately recognise these as belonging to the Dinky SPV and SHADO 2 Mobile. Tri-ang were obviously making good use of their affiliation with the company and borrowed a few parts! Commander Craig also has a definite look of Captain Scarlet on the box artwork, even down to the light up epaulettes on his bright yellow tabard jacket.

Powered by two batteries neatly slung under the cockpit, the Moonmobile races along and has great climbing ability. Attention has also been lavished on the box art and a great deal of painted artwork graces the sides. Even the inner tray for the toy is quite complex and the main box endflaps have special instructions for opening correctly.

Also featured in the Xmas catalogue was another space item from Tri-ang, the Spacenik. This was a version of Tomys 'Grippidee Gravidee' toy and the actual toy itself is still branded Tomy, whereas the box is marketed by Triang Rovex. Conspicuous by their abscence in the 'space year' are Spacex toys! Shame!

Its also interesting to notice the price sticker on the end of the box - 49/11 - thats about £2.50 or so in todays money, but would have been a premium item at the time!