SL RADAR VEHICLE: WE'RE LISTENING

Since parking up my new SL Task Force 3 I have been on the look out for more toys made by SL. I recently stumbled on this RADAR VEHICLE on Ebay. It would sit great with the Task Force 3 at the Moonbase hanger! Clearly a re-hash of their Mini-Moke, both I'm sure are derived from the Dinky PARA MOKE. I wonder if SL looked around for a few popular established toys and simply cloned them? Anyway I've added the Radar Vehicle to the somewhat sparse SL Checklist. Contributions welcome!

Wotan adds: Another instance of 'borrowing' from the earlier Lone Star Modern Army series (pictured above)! Have a look here at this great checklist site!

SPACE AGE LUNCH TIME

If I was piloting a Probe Force 3 on a deadly mission I would want a lunchbox like this! It's crammed with cool spaceship images, some very SWORD and SPACEXY. Have a gander at the whole thing here on Obey Ebay.

But what would be in my SWORD lunch? Moon Pie perhaps! Any other suggestions?

WOTAN butts in:
Some classic inspired artwork on those items - on the flask is whatseems to be the CONVAIR MANNED LUNAR RECONNAISSANCE VEHICLE (1958)
And on the box is a beautifully classic rocket in the style of artist John Pohlgreen.

BIG BIG TRAIN TO MOONBASE

Whilst waiting for my better half in the dentists, poor thing,  I read the rest of my ANDERSONIC fanzine. It really is a great read and such amazing value for money. If you haven't got the latest copy then check out their cool website and get one! Amongst its many delights this issue, some of which we've discussed already like X-Planes, is a fabulous interview with Century 21 designer Mike Trim. It's a great interview by Richard Farrell revealing just how it was back then in the Slough model and design shops for the famous Anderson shows. You'll have to get the mag to read the lengthy interview but one thing Mr. Farrell the interviewer and Mr. Trim did mention I will highlight here because it brought back such wonderful memories of a toy I had completely forgotten, Triang's BIG BIG TRAIN. I had one of these back in the Sixties!

ebay

Googling BIG BIG TRAIN I was amazed to find a whole hidden worldwide sub-culture devoted to this toy (sound familiar!). There are fan sites, more fan sites, flickr pages , an official site and The Tri-ang Society, which even has a section on rumours and speculation on the fate of the BIG BIG tools - see "TT Castle" piece (rather like the mysteries surrounding SWORD!). I have never looked for BIG BIG trains on Ebay before and amazingly there are loads! Its a whole new world!

As mentioned in ANDERSONIC by Mike Trim the toy was used by the Century 21 series makers and by the power of YouTube we can actually see it at the start of this brilliant medley by ZiggyShadowDust08 called On The Right Track:

Thanks to those nice ANDERSONIC guys I'm a BIG BIG fan once again. Go and get your copy now and share the joy!

SSP -Super Sonic Plagiarism ?

Sometimes you cant keep a good idea down and a great design is often going to appear in many guises. After Paul flagged up his new SL Task Force 3, blog reader RAB immediately flagged up the resemblance of the ship to one of the Kenner SSP racers - the Laker Special!

Kenner SSP were marketed in blighty by Denys Fisher as Revrods, but in a much more limited range. The Laker Special appeared here in lime green and named the Eliminator. Three other models completed the range, the Blazer Special (red), Sidewinder (blue) and Sand Scorcher (yellow). All of these models were featured in the standard SSP range, but in slightly different colours and with name changed around. I still have my beautiful Eliminator and managed to find a battered blue Sidewinder on ebay recently. I always admired the elegant black box packaging for Revrods too. I had a Sand Scorcher briefly (aka Dune Digger) but it fell foul of too many high speed crashes and all i have left now is the gold coloured driver!

The streamlined forms of land speed record breaking cars have been copied before for various spaceships or futuristic toys, so its probable that toy designers had an eye on the ground as well as the sky for inspiration for space age toys!

BUDDLY L FIGHTER TF3 LOOKALIKE

Like RAB's KENNER SSP (see comments on previous post), this BUDDY L Fighter reminds me of TASK FORCE 3 too. We know that the TF3 is from 1967 so what was the inspiration? a dragster? a land speed record car?

TASK FORCE 3 BY SL AKA HEN'S TEETH

Feast your eyes Swordheads on the new member of the Moonbase SWORD fleet, the ultra rare boxed TASK FORCE No.3 by SL model no. 121 C. It's a thing of rare beauty I'm sure you'll agree. It's been on the blog before last year but now the said toy has been acquired as a permanent member of Moonbase Central. I just love the box art, which if T in a Circle had produced a TF3, would look like this I imagine. I don't know much about SL but I've blogged what I do know before. Did they do any more SWORD? They have some some other interesting toys and probably deserve a Checklist when I get round to it. Contributions welcome. In the meantime just enjoy the pictures and be warmed by the knowledge that there are still unusual and even unknown SWORD and SWORD-related toys out there somewhere just waiting to be found by Swordheads like us!

REHOVERED

All this talk of Hover has made me delve into the archives and re-blog one of my favourite postings from the early days, the wonderful boxed HOVER MOON BASE and associated carded toys (Hover brand not visible but I'm confident they're Hover) from back in February 2009. Enjoy again! Any updates, new photo's, omissions (a carded Scramble Bug or Lunar Rover?), variations and general Hover wisdom are welcomed! And just what are those groovy fonts they've used? Austin Powers? Yeah Baby!

The fabulous Hover Moon Base, Space Glider and Adventure: Now these little fellows I adore although they somehow passed me by as a kid ( then again I was 10 in 1970 and had discovered pop music!). The fabulous Hover Moon Base and fleet of spacecraft. Although a Spacex knockoff it did offer value for money as you got not one but two silver astronauts on the carded toys and a veritable academy of six in the box! Added to this were little plastic pieces of pink moonscape (they look pink in the pics!). So cool.

A couple of inevitable questions arise looking at these pictures: what was on the box and card backs - nothing?, did the Scramble Bug come on a card too? and did the pink roving vehicle, which appears on the header cards come as a toy too? Where there any more of these little beauties?

One final thought, I can't help thinking that the Space Adventure is a typo with an 'r' missing. I think it should have been 'Space Adventurer', which would fit in with other two factual titles of Space Glider and Moon Base.

(picture credits: 1 (top) Ebay, 2 MM, 4 (bottom) MM - thank you)

And presto! as if by magic we have a Hover Lunar Rover! - the blue one with the red wheels ( they look the same as those on the line's Scramble Bug) - next to the blue Hover Space Glider (alas, minus antenna) and more Major Matt Mason vehicle - look-alikes courtesy of WOTAN. Not sure what the red rocket truck is? I love the wooden gantry with skyray rocket holding the paper down!

I just thought, the Space Adventurer featured in the blog earlier looks a lot like that brilliant little spaceship the Jetsons flew around in in the 60's cartoon!

"WOTAN said... (in Feb 2009)

I Came upon these hover toys and a Lunar Rover from the same series as loose toys sold in an open box, 5p each, way back about 1973! ive only got the space glider left now!"

ADDENDUM:
HOVER 747 on Ebay May 2010, Made in Hong kong, 18 inches long. Model no. on the box 874.

ADDENDUM

Hover / Salco SST

TB2 OR NOT TB2 - THAT IS THE QUESTION

I always have a few of these in my spare parts box. It makes a great TB2 exhaust! But what is it?

The answer is:

Toilet Duck - in TB2 Green as well (or is that TD2)!

Any more household objects that can be used as spares for space toys guys?