1973 saw Corgi release one of my favourite large diecast models - the
Moon Buggy from Connerys last official outing as 007, Diamonds are Forever. I remember going to see the film at the cinema and besides being rather taken with Jill St John in the bikini and the balloon wheeled Honda bikes, I was seriously impressed with Blofeldts microsub and the fabulous Moon Buggy that Bond steals from Willard Whytes development centre. The real prop was auctioned at Christies recently and Ken Adams original concept sketch for the buggy shows something very close to the Spacex Moon Buggy and Mev.
That xmas I was lucky enough to get the Corgi Moon Buggy and despite it having a totally different and odd colourscheme, the model is a brilliant representation of the vehicle.
My original toy has naturally suffered over the years since then, principally because the model had cool spring powered claws on the moveable arms and when I discovered Micronauts in the eighties, I went on a cannibalistic purge of my old toys and the claws ended up being retrofitted to work with the new toys. The toy had a great twirling radar scanner that moved as you rolled it as well as poseable arms. When you pushed the silver tank behind the cockpit, the dome flicks open and a rather portly, but smiling Bond pops up.
I recently spotted a re-issue of the Corgi toy on ebay and made a mental note to pick one up at some point. Just recently, I put in a bid on what I thought was the Corgi toy, but when it arrived it turned out to be a 1:43 scale model - spacex scale - of the buggy. It came with a neat card backrop and a brilliant plastic moonscape base inside a plastic box. I rectified my mistake later and found the Corgi toy.
The Corgi re-issue is cosmetically identical, but painted exactly as the vehicle in the film. All features are present except that Bond isn't painted as well.
The 1973 catalogue also had the Corgi Comics range in it, a series of cartoon and tv based models in, which brought the fictional Lunar Bug model. This was a neat car carrying transporter in the style of Macs Car with fold out wings and repositional wheels on long arms. Even the engines are a lot like the jet turbines from the Joe 90 flying car.
Again, the Lunar Bug has suffered over the years, mainly because it was thrown into a box with countless other cars and has had a lot of paint chipped off. But it remains a cool design and gave me loads of fun as a kid, transporting cars up to the moon in my back yard!
