During the recent visit to Moonbase, I was delighted to have the opportunity to see first hand, some of the bigger and rarer SWORD toys. Until then, I had only seen photos of the Zero X, Apollo Saturn and Saturn Rocket. I had passing glimpses of them as a child in shop windows, but never had the chance to handle or examine any of the big three.
It was during my photography session that I was looking over the big Cape Canaveral set and had taken the Apollo rocket out of its box, when I spotted a peculiarity. The standard Saturn V rocket on which the toy is based, has four fins around the first stage F1 engine nacelles, to steady the rocket on liftoff. When I looked at the toy version, these were clearly absent and the red nacelles on the toy seemed to be made to accept a clip on part, which wasn't i the box. Further inspection of the base crawler, showed slots in the stand to hold such fins. When I asked Woodsy about it, he said the toy was as he had bought it, many years ago and was sold to him as complete.
Swift inspection of the manual revealed that said fins are present on the illustration, so its almost certain that they would appear with the toy. Unfortunately, these models are very thin on the ground and I for one don't have another version to compare it to. Does anyone out there have a complete model which we can see ?
Such was the disappointment caused by my revelation that I was almost ejected from Moonbase via the adjacent porthole, but swift action with the Johnny Seven and the armour piercing rounds and anti tank missile managed to fend off the irate Yorkshireman! :-D
STOP PRESS: Well in a beautiful stroke of synchronicty, I have just received a mail and photograph to confim my suspicion that there are parts missing from Commander Woods Rocket.
As we can now clearly see, the fins are present and are held in place by silver covers on the nacelles. And to complete the connection of the post, the photos and model are from Arto - a resident of
Finland!
