HOOVER SPACE RACER

Some lucky wins on Ebay this holiday season brought me a really interesting vehicle, a Hoover made space racer pictured below. It's a huge friction driven plastic jet car easilly a foot long. Hoover were a Thai based toy company who often made cheaper end toys but I personally think this is a corker.

It reminds me a lot of the JR21 X50 Space Racer, which as Lady Luck would have it came in the same lot, albeit incomplete.

The Hoover racer has a striking riveted outline across it's body as seen below. I've seen this before on the SWORD Probe Force 3 pictured below too. Is this riveting common on space toys?

Just so you recognise the Hoover logo, here it is on the car's undercarraige, together with the model number 302 (poor picture - to be replaced!)

Has anyone perchance come across this toy boxed or know it's real name?

ITHACUS TROOP TRANSPORT ART

Wotan's posts have re-activated the bookworm in me again tonight so here's probably the most beautiful set of paintings in the FRONTIERS OF SPACE book, mentioned in Wote's piece, the ithacus troop carrying nuclear aircraft carrier and associated stages. Although the illustrators of the book are listed on the title page and a variety of signatures are visible on at least three of the above paintings I just can't work out what they say. Beautiful space art nevertheless.

Scouting for Toys

Having been inspired to raid my library bookshelves in search of 'Frontiers of Space', I dug out the aforementioned 'Rockets and Missiles' by JWR Taylor. Picking it up and thumbing through, I remembered a picture of a very Scout-like design, pictured above. Unfortunately, its only listed as 'future desing for a space ferry', but it does have the familiar wedge shape, distinctive exhaust vents and a giveaway red hull!

The spread also includes the HL-10 Lifting body, just below and the exotic shape of the unmanned X-23A Prime - used to test high speed re-entry. This always reminded me of Thunderbird 2 and to a lesser extent the Spacex Nuclear Freighter!#

PS -had a scout around the internet for info on the X-23a PRIME and the actual vehicle bears little resemblance to the picture in Taylors book. Its much more triangular. However, It did lead me to look at the X-24c and a desk model of the craft bears a more than passing resemblance to our red friend...

Ex Libris Wotan

The internet is a massively powerful resource and an apparently unending source of knowledge, but for me, you cant beat a good book. Seeing Mr Woods' earlier article about the book 'Frontiers of Space' reminded me that I have it myself, courtesy of a 13th birthday prezzy way back in 1974. Since then, ive sought out its companion volumes, Manned Spacecraft, Rockets and Missiles and Robot Explorers. Kenneth Gatland was a great influence on my early explorations of space and along with tv correspondant Peter Fairley, paved the way for a consuming interest in space books that still obsesses me today.

Another good read is John W.R Taylors 'Rockets and Missiles' by Hamlyn. All these books have some very early designs for shuttles, lifting bodies and launch vehicles as well as Molabs and lunar crawlers galore. I'd advise anyone with an interest in vintage space to track them down.

Meanwhile, for a much more immediate fix of space book goodness, check out John Sissons stunning blog 'Dreams of Space'. A fabulous taster of all those childrens space books which fed our imaginations in the past.

CHRISTMAS PAST: PAINT WHEELS AND MIST-O-MATIC

Christmas always gets me reminiscing about those fabulous toys I had as an anklebiter back in the swingin' Sixties. One of the many themes of games and toys that Santa (or could it have been my Mum and Dad?) sprinkled a little of his magic over was paint. I loved drawing as a nipper and painting stuff was a natural extension. I have a vivid memory of painting a big red fire engine at Primary School during one of the class's countless 'topics'. I also remember clearly drawing loads of redline HotWheels cars whilst laid up ill in bed. I can still see the lined graph paper I used for these drawings (why?), done with a classic fat multi-colour biro - it had about 20 colours! Of the many artistic toys that I had I can now only bring one clearly to mind - the wonderful PAINT WHEELS by Denys Fisher, a sort of wheel on a stick that painted shapes in lines. I loved it! Pictured below in all its glory in that beautiful style so typical of Sixties and Seventies box art.

Now the second paint toy that I had was called something like MIST-O-PAINT or MIST-O-MATIC? It came in a huge box and basically you dribbled coloured paint into a rotating drum and when it stopped you had amazing paintings worthy of Jackson Pollock! I absolutely loved this toy and was lucky enough to find another one at a boot sale some years ago, but where it's hiding in my bulging loft is anybody's guess. I can't be sure of its name so I've not found anything on the net, except for a sample of the sort of masterpeices possible as shown below.

I will just have to find this toy in my attic to prove I'm not going nuts.

PROJECT SWORD SCOUT 3 LOCKHEED ORIGIN

I must have been a good boy last year, Santa SWORD stayed a while at Moonbase leaving a pile of goodies under the Whitby tree. One of them was this fabulous little 1969 book 'Frontiers of Space'. In mint condition with its original dustjacket it's crammed with tons of beautiful paintings and photographs of space flight.

Amongst its many pictures is an amazing concept drawing of a LOCKHEED two-man lifting body with swing wings - below. It has an amazing similarity to the Project SWORD SCOUT 3, pictured below it for comparison. Besides the obvious wedge shape the other similar feature is the rear tailfin and its mounting. Okay there are no swing wings on Scout 3 (they do appear on Scout 2) but there's enough here for me to be satisfied that this Lockheed is the inspiration beghind it. It's entirely plausible that Century 21 toy designers had access to this design just as they did with the Dyna-Soar and Space Glider.

Beyond the single picture in my book I've not been able to find any other reference to this particular Lockheed online other than a general drawing of various lifting body designs pictured below. The concept labelled 'FDL 5 Late variant' appears to be similar. If anyone has any further information I would be only too happy to post it on the blog for other readers.

Courtesy of Media Photobucket

STRANGE CHANGE: SADLY I NEVER DID!

I always wanted one of these cool American STRANGE CHANGE toys by Mattel back in the 60's. My nephew Andrew had one after one of his family visited the States back then. I remember it had the US 2 pin plug, which somehow they managed to get working here in 3 pin UK! You can see from the You Tube commercial that it basically heated up blocks of gloop and turned them into monsters and the like in a small oven! Wow! Like a lab in your own bedroom! I was so envious I can almost taste it even now. I remember clearly the T.Rex on the box - pictured below. I WANTED THAT T.REX SO BADLY! The closest I got to strange changing was a toy that allowed you to solidify plastic insects and monsters in clear and coloured plastics. The name of the toy escapes me but I'd rather have strange changed! Anyone out there had one or got one still?

COMMANDER BIG - THE GERMAN BILLY BLASTOFF

Hi Paul,

Billy Blastoff is hard to get in Germany. I´m glad I found one a while back, but without its german box. Billy Blastoff was distributed by BIG. BIG and JEAN were the trademarks of Jean Höfler, well known for Wild West and medieval toy figures in the 1960s & 70s. Billy was sold under the name Commander BIG. Perhaps they changed the name because in German "blastoff" sounds a little bit silly. Back in early 1970s I can remember that Commander Big was sold beneath the togglers toys, unlike the Matt Mason stuff beside the "big boys toys". The toy shop I´ve visited often at that time had for about one year or longer three sets of Commander Big and hadn't sold them. One day all three had dissapeared. Here is a copy from a german catalogue in 1969 (more info here too).

Best Regards

Klaus
Blechroboter.de

Image courtesy of blechroboter.de

Excellent Klaus. Thanks for sharing this great information with us. Commander BIG rocks! Paul