The line of toys in this post represents my on-again, off-again efforts at collecting the spaceships and vehicles associated with the comic strips printed in the Project S.W.O.R.D. Annual starting in 1968. Essentially these were toys being made by Century 21 and the idea was to promote them using a comic strip format with an end-of-world story line. There's more to the history but the below extract is enough to allow you to get the gist of the matter.
An excellent source for Project S.W.O.R.D. (or SWORD - both are correct) is the Moonbase Central blog where Woodsy, Scoop, Wotan and a coterie of contributors, have tried to tell the history of the strip and the toys, track down the toys themselves (common and rare alike), and feature knock-offs and variations. Be Blessed and Relish Life! Ed
(The following is an excerpt from a now-defunct website: www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk:)
"The City... New York. The Time... near World's End.
The opening caption of the first strip in the Project
SWORD annual sets the scene for this ambitious format to promote a new
range of Century 21 Toys. The irony is, the format is not set in the 21st
Century at all. But then, to be in the pages of TV21 when it
did, it would have to be somewhat removed from the other series. So 'near
World's End' was a thousand years in the future, in AD 3031.
The feature In The Beginning starts six years previously, with
an equally ambitious plan to explore deep space to find resources for a
depleted Earth. S.W.O.R.D. - acronym for the Space World Organisation of
Research and Development - is set up for this quest, beyond the known worlds.
The second main feature 3031 explains how chaos and
destruction had now come to Earth in the form of a meteorite plunging into the
Pacific Ocean. In a broader reworking of the opening instalment of Project
SWORD in the weekly comic, and illustrated by three of Ron Embleton's
artworks from TV21 (below), we are reintroduced to the
desperate plight of Earth and its survivors. Project SWORD is
again reiterated as the last hope for humanity, with a three part mission -
Evacuation, Rehabilitation and Investigation.
So what of the annual itself? Production lead times indicate it was being written just as the first instalments of the weekly Project SWORD stories got underway. Howard Elson, who was working as an editor in the Century 21 Publishing book department, 'The idea was they had a range of merchandising that they wanted to sell, and they decided to sell it on the back of strips. The strips basically revolve around the vehicles, which was a unique idea at the time"
My Project SWORD Toys
Tarheel
Century 21
Tri-ang / MPC Golden Astronaut
No comments:
Post a Comment