One of the coolest facets of vintage space, whether it be toys, stories, comics, movies, etc., is spaceship design and between Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon there was a seemingly endless array of ships. It's so sad that only a relatively few designs made their way into the marketplace. Tootsie Toy was a popular brand of diecast toys back in the day and in 1937 they introduced a set of four Buck Rogers toys, three were spaceships and one was the U.S.S. Los Angeles dirigible and all four were also available as separate sale items. The three spaceships were: the Blast and Attack Ship, Venus Duo Destroyer, and the Battlecruiser (all one word as seen on the toy itself). We posted a Venus Duo Destroyer back on Apr 6, 2013 but to-date have not yet acquired the Blast & Attack Ship nor dirigible.
The example shown here today looks as if some youngster personalized it way back when by painting vertical red stripes on the hull giving it a very patriotic red, white, & blue theme. To the best of my knowledge, the hulls were painted a solid color (white, yellow, blue, etc) while the fins were another but there didn't appear to be any striped versions. I kind of like these treatments by former owners because there is a more immediate attachment to the past. Each of the four toys in the set had two rollers through which one ran a string, the string then being attached at either end to whatever was handy. by either pushing the toy back and forth on the string or raising and lowering the string the ships had the appearance of flying.Everybody Enjoy!
Bettina & Fritz Berg :)
Notice 'BATTLECRUISER' is all one word. Most of the time it's spelled 'Battle Cruiser'
Having a little fun with Photoshop. The hapless Earthling airliner is in for a rude surprise!
