Project SWORD
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For the CrossWire Bible Society's Open Source Software, see The SWORD Project
Project SWORD was a series of toys produced by Century 21 Merchandising (associated with Gerry Anderson's Century 21 Productions), and two series of comic strips and text stories appearing in publications by Century 21 Publications: "Solo" and after Solo folded, a second series of stories - text, illustrated by comics artists such as Ron Embleton and Don Lawrence - appeared in TV 21. There was also a 1969 annual for "Project SWORD" featuring text, comic strips, cut-aways of SWORD vehicles such as the Snow Train and stills from the Stanley Kubrick film 2001 A Space Odyssey, which had also been released that year.
The Definitive website detailing the SWORD comics and annual is the Gerry Anderson Complete Comics History by Shaqui Le Vesconte and Kim Stevens.
In the "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons" episode "Shadow of Fear", there is a mention of 'Operation Sword', although this is presumed to have no links with Project SWORD.
"Century 21 Merchandising" was created to market products produced by "Century 21 Productions" - in particular Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. They acquired a line of science fiction toys manufactured in Hong Kong, which their subsidiary Century 21/JR21 Toys marketed under the name "Project SWORD". The branding and look of this toy line prior to its purchase by C21 is unknown.
The Century 21/ JR21 toys each came with a badge and a paper manual, which detailed the complete range including the Moonbase Set. The range included a large toy Zero X, the spacecraft which first appeared in the film Thunderbirds are GO. The rarest of the Century 21/ JR21 toys are the Nuclear Ferry with only several examples known and the Moonbase Playset with no known examples in existence. The Century 21/ JR21 line was marketed by Tarheel in the US and copied in part by the Hong Kong based companies T, Day Fran, Hover, Hoover and NASA. Several other individual SWORD toys have appeared such as the Chibi Moon Prospector (Argentina), Imai Scramble Bug (Japan), Imai Thunderbird 7 kit (aka Snow Train/ Beetle, which includes a miniature Booster Rocket (Japan) and two different Space Bird Probe Forces (Japan). There are also pencil erasers , branded as UFO, by Takeuchi of Japan.
There are also two cut-out model books by Century 21 Publishing, The Sand Flea/ Scramble Bug and Hover Tank/ Snow Train.
Since Zero X was really a Thunderbirds vehicle, it has appeared in a whole host of other model kits and plastic toys such as those by Bandai and the recent die-cast Aoshima. Some of the JR21 SWORD toys were based on NASA designs: the Dyna Soar, the Space Glider, the Saturn Apollo Rocket and the Cape Kennedy Set. As such many of these designs have been used by other toy companies such as the US Sears 3 Stage Rocket ( a combination of the SWORD Apollo Saturn and Cape Kennedy toys) and many different kits and models of the Dyna Soar.
Two other JR21 plastic toys were initially linked to Project Sword, the Lunar Crawler and the Moonship. Despite JR21 branding, neither appeared in Project Sword boxes. Imai also produced various kits such as Star Base and Big Base, which included SWORD miniatures such as the Moon Prospector, Scramble Bug and the Moon Crawler. Imai are also reported to have produced a model kit of the SWORD Moonbase, but no examples of this have surfaced. The Moon Crawler is also pictured on the box of the unlicensed UFO Missile Tank.
Another toy line related to SWORD is the smaller scale SPACEX or GOLDEN ASTRONAUT as it was known in the US.
The PROJECT SWORD TOYS MOONBASE CENTRAL Blog and Forum are dedicated to the SWORD, SPACEX and related toy lines.
