Cakes and Favours

Recently I picked up this set of cake decorations in the form of our friends Apollo Moon Exploring. The seller was a cake decorater. When I got the items I saw that they all had 'Made in China' stickers on their undersides as you can see below. The items looked brand new and the stickers added to this newness. Is it possible that they are still being made in China?

Extending the decorative function of these toys, I was fascinated to see these carded '6 Party Favors' pictured below appear on Ebay this month. Quite clearly the rockets and capsules from Apollo Moon Exploring, these were packaged and sold under the name Unique for 99c. Are there any more combinations out there?

One further incarnation of Apollo Moon are these carded sets of LP spacemen re-branded as Flash Gordon 8 Space Warriors, If your'e feeling flush you can bag a set on Ebay - 3 sets available by the looks of things. Marketed by King Features Syndicate. Anyone know? And just what is that tall purple thing pictured to the right of the card?

Happy Late Summer!

Just wanted to wish all the blog's readers a happy sunny late Summer [or decent Winter in Oz/NZ] and if your'e in the UK a fine bright August Bank Holiday weekend. Thanks for all your continued support. Keep on Swordin'

Woodsy

It's Mint Man!

Reader Arto and avid space collector sent me these great pics of part of his collection. I'll let Arto explain:  To continue with my favourite subject, heres a piccy of my two Rocket Banks. The red and yellow one is a U.S. Fosta (Foster Grant Co.), the grey one is a Tudor Rose Made in England. They both measure 24 cm, and are very likely from the same mould. There exists also a more colourful variant of the Tudor Rose version, perhaps several.

The next two pictures [below] are of a surprise find, also Made in England by Kelrack Ltd. in the beginning of 80's. Originally called Mint Man, this toy with robot likeness is really a puzzle which you have to solve in order to get the mints sealed in a bag behind the teeth. Educational, funny, and very motivating! What's more interesting, the Mint Man has made it into an all-Finnish version called Minttu-Pekka (akin to Mint-Peter), with instructions & ingredient info embossed on the back. The puzzle measures 9 x 7 x 2 cm, and bears a copyright year 1982.

Pertaining to Wote's Tri-ang zone thread, the last picture is of my find from Gothenburg in last April, a Tri-ang catalogue 33 (1934/35). Just could not resist the cheerfulness of the catalogue, not to speak of its rarity. The stamp on the cover reveals that the Danish agent, situated in Copenhagen, also supplied to Sweden and Finland as well!

Empire Building

With Dr Who popping back into the schedules again, and the lovely Alex Kingston gracing the screens, its clear that xmas isnt far off. Meanwhile, new toys appear on the shelves and among them I spotted a new line of 'lego-like' Dr Who sets and a brace of collectable figures. The collectable part comes from the fact that figures are a series of 10 randomly assorted into a sealed opaque bag. At £1.95 a throw, its an expensive business to collect them all, but luckily for me, Asda had thebox on display and I was able to have a good rummage and feel the shapes through the thick plastic bag! The majority of the figures are the humanoid variety, a couple of doctors, assistants, cyberman, silurian and those ridiculous angels. But two of them are the new Daleks, a blue strategist and red drone. A good squeeze and I found the last two daleks in a box of about fifteen packs. The rest of the figures are stupidly cartoonish and deformed, but the daleks are really good representations of the new enemy. Good quality plastic build and a fair number of interchangeable parts, mean that at 2 quid, its worth having a look for them. After the Dr Who magazines giveaway of a dalek army, these are a great way to add to a dalek invasion force.

Kuvataide Astronaut Game

Reader Arto and fellow collector sent me these cool pics of his recent find. Arto takes up the story: these are pics of a surprise find of last week, an Astronaut board game which just does it for me! I adore the cover illustration with a Jupiter-C rocket on its launching pad, presumably a Revell miniature blown up into a giant 39 x 28 cm box cover size, and enlaced with a 50's B-horror-movie typeface logo. Just love the artifice combined - an Astronaut game from the Black Lagoon!

Unlike many other board games published by the prolific Finnish manufacturer Kuvataide, this one was not made in Finland but - perhaps with the exception of the instruction sheet - printed in Denmark as stated. So even if the Danish original may date from the late 50's (ca. 1958-59), I would put this Finnish version around early 60's. Oddly enough, I have not found any Danish examples yet, or any others for that matter.

Rover's Return?

Above is the ARGO Lunar Vehicle as it appears on their website. Recently Argo were "named as part of a consortium designing lunar rovers for the Canadian Space Agency". They also have a Lunar Rover.

Above is Moonstream as designed by student Anthony Sims.

For my money, these concepts have not moved on that far from the Sixties designs, which inspired moon vehicles in SWORD and SpaceX. What do you think?

No More Heroes

Star Brothers

Major General Leonov

Continuing a long-running interest in the Soviet space programme on this blog, reader Andy B has sent me these great paintings from a Russian art book called "The Soviet Character", which for me, do capture the enthusiasm we once all felt for the Space Race.

My gut feeling about interest in Space travel amongst the general public of the UK is that it has waned and continues to wane. I suppose this is to be expected since NASA's space programme has dwindled and seldoms features in the British media. There are also very few space toys in the shops. This is despite a number of excellent TV series on the cosmos such as Professor Brian Cox's. I suspect that it will take something jaw-droppingly dramatic to rekindle public zeal for space flight over and above any brave efforts that commercial outfits like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic and new space nations like China and India may be making.

What do you think? Is it the same in Europe, US and Canada?

And Then There Were Three

It's been another summer of SWORD at Moonbase. I've continued to plug the gaps in my collection and one major step forward for me was a boxed Tarheel Probe Force 3 to complete the trio. Apart from Probe Force 1, which appear to be the least scarce of all the Tarheels, acquiring other Tarheel SWORD has been a very slow process indeed [far harder than Century 21] and the PF3 has been no different. Having discovered it and it's stablemate Probe Force 2 for myself, in the mid-1990's, I have been looking for them ever since. After a wait of more or less 16 years Ebay US came up trumps this June. I was and am thrilled as it completes my collection of the three boxed US Probe Forces. That just leaves the Space Glider and the Moon Ranger now and on current form I should have them both around 2027!

As regards Tarheel's Probe Force 3 the box speaks for itself and features the same fab swirly galaxy box art. A couple of things to point out: 1. the Tarheel logo on the box is the standard T with the small red globe biult in [does it also exist with the T with kids logo as happens with the Space Glider and Moon Prospector?] and 2. there is no maker's mark at all on the toy itself apart from the phrase 'Made in Hong Kong'. I would be pleased to hear about any variations.

If you own a Tarheel Probe Force 3 or indeed any Tarheel SWORD I would be interested to hear how difficult [or not as the case maybe] it was to track them down.