IT'S A BOYS WORLD

In the sixties, children's interests were very strictly polarised, girls had their dolls and their fluffy animals and boys had cars and army and space. This made for very simple marketing of toys and models, as the target demographic was clear cut and easy to identify. As such, annuals and comics could be simply collated with stirring stories of war, adventure, intrigue and heroism for boys, padded out with articles about technology and sports. Odhams 'Boys World' annuals are a fine example of this style of publication, with a round up of hobbies, comic strips and informative articles for the average pre-teen boy. The comic strips are re-prints from various weeklys of the day, supplemented by text stories punctuated with illustrations, which mostly had been published earlier. The 1966 annual catches the moon race zeitgeist and prominently displays a rocket on the cover - something which was at the forefront of almost every advertising avenue at the time, as preparations were well under way for a moon landing just three years hence.

Inside is a generous double page spread showing the projected Project Apollo spacecraft, styled after the early press released images of the LEM and Saturn rockets. 

Like so many early visions of the vehicle, it shows spidery legs and a simple blocky body, far removed from the angular final version. The massive crawler designed to move the rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the pad is also shown, with a very simplistic Saturn V waiting for launch.

Possibly the most interesting spread is the final pairing, showing a very Major Matt Mason style astronaut happily wandering the lunar surface. The last page shows something which I always looked forward to in any space books and that was a glimpse of the future and projected vehicles which would be used to ferry crews to orbiting space stations. Rather than show an imaginary shuttlecraft, Odhams have managed to procure some good imagery of various designs from Martin, Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed - clearly take from official source materials.

The Martin shuttle design also appeared in a small Odhams pocket book of space, given away around the same time with orange juice. The images would probably be based on official NASA press-releases or information shown in Aviation Week or Popular Mechanics magazines, at the time.

The 1967 annual prominently features Triang Hornby train models on the cover, with a dynamic painting of a tank launching twin surface to air missiles, from the back of a gondola low loader wagon. Presumably this is a bit of product placement by Triang, as the annual has several articles about model railways and aircraft modelling, prominently featuring Triang Hornby products. Presumably the company would have bought space in the annual as a means to advertise their xmas range of products.

Triang Hornby had been well established as a major supplier and maker of HO gauge model trains for some time, but like most other toys companies at the time, they sought to capitalise on the fascination with all things space, which was dominating the headlines.

The Battlespace range were a predominantly military themed range, using earlier army style wagons, which added a more dedicated 'space' feel to the line with the Satellite Launcher wagon, which set a small propeller based satellite speeding into the air as the car went past a track based activator switch.

The satellite set was a development of the Helicopter wagon from the earlier army releases, and the annual cover also features the plane launcher wagon, which carried a foam core flying plane, which kids could launch separately via a catapult.

The large red bomb on the low loader was a cap fired toy, which when thrown, would activate the explosive cap in the nose.

To bring the series firmly into the realm of space, one of the later releases was the Turbo Car, shown above in an early pre-production illustration and below in the final product. The locomotive had a spinning fan at the rear and a large 'ramming spike' on the front for a direct assault on enemy vehicles, which happened to be on the same line! A range of small military figures were included with some sets and rocket launch pads and gun emplacements were available as trackside accessories, although it was never actually made clear who the space battle was taking place with.

Triang also found major success with a much simpler impulse purchase type toy, sold predominately in Woolworths department stores as a cheap rack toy. Spacex Interspace Miniatures were a line of simple plastic rockets and vehicles, which came with a small HO scale golden astronaut figure and most of the spaceships were fitted with tiny unercarriage which resembled locomotive wheels.

BALLOONS ON THE MOON

 Given the extreme nature of conditions in outer space and on the lunar surface - harsh radiation, total vacuum and extremes of temperature and light - the idea of exploration from inside a bubble or an inflatable vehicle, seems a little counter-intuitive. However, early concepts for moon rovers and probes were proposed that used inflatable envelopes as the main body. The 1968 Look and Learn annual showed a bold illustration of a seemingly flimsy bubble rolling happily across a rugged lunar landscape, as astronauts cavort in casual abandon before it.

LIFE Magazine ran an article in the April 1962 edition which covered lunar exploration and included a spread on the various robotic rovers which were in development.

Electronics company RCA proposed a number of different robots, including tracked, wheeled and walking designs, as well as a large beach ball like device with an overhead solar panel. This was clearly the inspiration for the Look and Learn spread some six years later.

Clearly designing the probe with an absolute minimum of weight, and of a collapsible form, the rover would be able to navigate craters and dusty plains with ease, due to its lightness and large footprint.

Before either illustration, the June 1959 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, illustrated by Frank Tinsley has a cover image and interior article  which shows a much larger manned version of the 'Unicycle' concept. 

The Unicyle would presumably be gyroscopically balanced and have a rotating tread around both axis, which would roll, keeping the central cabin upright. The reduced gravity would make the vehicle much more stable than on Earth.

As is often the case with fantastic and futuristic designs, toy companies following the space race regularly looked to magazines and trade journals for inspiration and Mattel seemingly found Tinsleys artwork of interest. The Uni-Tred Space Hauler and Space Bubble uses a central drive tread to power the tractor unit, which tows a large bubble capsule behind it, with a seated astronaut.

Mattel had also produced the Moon Suit seen in the Life Magazine spread, for its range of astronaut figures in the Major Matt Mason line. Mattels Man in Space was one of the most successful space toys ever, with ingenious and novel toy designs.

Also shown on the lunar crawler spread were two RCA designs for walking robots, the 'Dumbo' model and a smaller version name 'Porky Pig'.

Porky Pig appeared as part of an Eldon Scenic Model supporting two astronauts in a lunar diorama, but referred to as a 'Space Beetle'.

The 'Dumbo' design was borrowed by Japanese toy company Yonezawa for their battery powered Moon Explorer toy, which was intended to be a manned vehicle and had a small astronaut pop out of the side door to take photographs as it waddled along.

More contemporary toys such as the 1980's Britains StarGard series of figures and die cast models also used a similar device to Tinsley, with a central cockpit belted by a rubber tread forming the main means of locomotion, whilst keeping the pilot area stable.

Several designs used the bubble cockpit, with a weighted set inside, which remained level irrespective of the angle of the main body.

Another japanese company Takara used a similar device for the Microman/Micronauts line of modular toys. The Hydrocopter has a dome almost identical to the Britains version, with a motorised unit behind it. The dome becomes the main drive wheel for the vehicle when on land and the addition of a pair of paddles on either side, gives propulsion in water, aided by removable floats on the tail section.

I WISH I WAS A SPACEMAN

Besides vintage space books, my main obsession is with vintage space toys and models. Growing up in the space age, my childhood was replete with all manner of toys, some expensive and complicated and others simple and pocketmoney sized. The smaller and cheaper toys are much less likely to last through the decades, as they were not built to last and were impulse buys or giveaways with sweets or cereal. Amazingly though, some of these simple toys have managed to make it through many hands and years of play.

A favourite of mine was recently given to me by a fellow enthusiast and is a japanese sweet shop type of toy, a very inexpensive model of a Saturn V on the launch pad. Very often these type of items came with a packet of candy tucked inside the box. This one was bought at a japanese auction site and appears complete. The box art is typical of the era, with simple graphics and bright colour and the model itself is simply moulded in equally bright plastic.

The gantry and the rocket break down into several pieces and can be re-assembled puzzle style. The whole model is around 3" high.

From probably the same period comes a full blown model kit by Aoshima. The spectacular graphics suggest a highly detailed kit, but the resultant model is under 6" high. Moulded in self coloured plastic, it is a simple build, which makes quite an accurate and recognisable kit. As the model was a vintage version from the mid sixties, the decals provided with it were unfortunately too degraded to be useable, so despite a rudimentary paint job, it remains unfinished.

Kelloggs Sugar Smack cereal had a great run of premiums in their cereals in the 1970's, starting with a lovely set of tiny kits of space models. A Mercury Atlas Rocket on a gantry was supported by a tiny Molab, a LEM and Apollo pair, a rocket transporter and a nice space station. Cereal premiums fell out of favour in the late seventies due to problems with small part being deemed choking hazards for small children.

The popularity of the small cereal kits meant that third party supplier continued to make them as stand alone offerings, even after the main company ceased trading. R & L, a major australian company specialising in these premiums, folded in the late seventies and the dies for the production of a lot of the models found their way to Mexico, where they were used to make new copies from the old moulds. One such model is a 3" Saturn V on a crawler (the gantry may well have been available as a separate purchase) and also a smaller Nova Rocket. The green Nova rocket has been decorated after the Tri-ang Spacex toy version seen here.

The Tri-ang Spacex Interspace Miniatures were far and away my faourite space toy of the period, a small inexpensive plastic vehicle on a card was sold in Woolworths and formed part of a larger range.

Such is the popularity and enduring legacy of the toys, a friend and professional model maker has been making large scaled up versions of the line, including the Nova rocket and the Mobile Launch Pad, shown below.

A rare sight on European toy shop shelves would have been toys from the Eastern bloc, such as Russia. Although generally inferior in workmanship to Western toys, the Soviet Union did make some excellent toys, such as the this large plastic 'R7' launch vehicle. The label on the fron reads 'Mir' and seems to commemorate the launch of the space station in the mid eighties. 

The rocket booster itself, follows the basic R-7 arrangement, which launched all the major soviet vehicles from Sputnik to present day Soyuz capsules and features four strap on boosters. Pulling up the orange central collar releases the units, which fall away backwards, just like the actual vehicle. The large bulbous second stage reflects the unit used to carry the segments of the space station to orbit, but here houses a single, simple cosmonaut figure, in a pre-school format, so perhaps the toy was designed with educational purposes in mind.

Spanish company Congost made an excellent board game/toy around the russian Lunokhod missions, with a small plastic rover on a landing craft that is lowered onto a cardboard moon surface.

Soviet and eastern bloc toy makers were keen to promote the success of the Lunokhod missions and may tinplate versions of the rover were made, some with remote control and flashing lights.

A very popular kit in the Airfix space range was the Vostok Rocket, first released in 1970, but availble in different releases until the mid 2000's. Although I got it on release, it hasn't survived the rigours of play and I picked up a more recent version again, last year.

Although a comparatively small model - the finished kit being about 14" high - it is packed with detail and includes options to build the Vostok, Lunik (originally listed as Sputnik) and Soyuz launch vehicles. It even comes with a tiny cosmonaut, nut much bigger than a grain of rice. Production artwork by illustrator Roy Cross, showed an all-white vehicle, but as the R-7 was initially a military project, the actual vehicle was actually grey or drab green. The white colouration was attributed to the freezing fuel on the rocket as it sat on the launchpad and a layer of frost which coated the exterior.

Compare some modern space models from Matchbox, as part of the Skybusters line. The Spacex Starship is a sleek, plain missile shape, with canard fins. Skybusters are a range of diecast aircraft and most recently spaceships which have been running besides the traditional car lines since the early 1970's.

Another space related model is the Dreamchaser Re-entry vehicle, a proposed re-useable shuttle alternative. Like the Starship it is a simple diecast vehicle, with no moving parts.

However elegant the Starship may look, its lack of playability when compared to the similar scale Tri-ang Spacex toys, is very evident.

Again from the Skybusters series, a movie tie-in from the Top Gun 2 film, in the form of the beautiful hypersonic Research Vehicle 'Dark Angel'. Once more, the solid casting looks wonderful, but the total lack of any kind of features detracts from its overall appeal.