Three themes down and 1 to go... that will be the sum total of 260, and then... who knows what will happen?
This journey down memory lane is brought to you by the idea book I received from my best friend as a youngster... I think his family picked it for me because it was cheap... costly mistake ;)
Space Police made out like a bandit in this idea book. ,
A truck roams the horizon as the search tower guard and his sentry spot something threatening this little outpost.
And here are the instructions. We see several items from the prior page as well as a few extra vehicles... and a suspicious looking Monorail passenger.
The rover from page 1 is present, you can see a double cell build, there's a light up truck, and in the foreground a space scooter zips by. I wish the scooter had a bit more clarity. You can see the robocop putting one prisoner in while another looks to make a break for it.
Here's the tower from the main page, and the little rover we'll build.
This tower, seen from the front page, has a lift to get up to the base level. It resides on the old fashioned crater plate... which is still one of the best plate molds ever made by the Danish toy manufacturer. Space walls, raised girders, antennae... it looks like a fun quick build. The spaceship in front of it carries a jail cell and uses a tiny wheelwell plate for the radar. Overall very nice.
This is just all the part goodness... black space wheels, corner quarter domes in transparent red, a radar dish... lovely.
The Police cruiser and Robot require a distribution of parts from all the Internationally released Space Police models. i.e. No need to break apart Lock Up Isolation Base for this rundown.
1.
2
1
2
1
3
1
2
1
6
2
1
3
1
1
1
1
1
1
2

2
2First up... Robocop, with his toothy grin and flashy taser. He'll scuttle about and make a great sentry
Play elements are spare. His eyes can look up, he can swivel his head, and the arms can swing in and out. As a brick built bot it's decent... He's the right size for the intended play interaction, if a bit chunky by modern standards.
The Police Cruiser is on par with Message Decoder. It lacks logos or insignia, but does carry around a Prisoner, albeit cabled in, rather than jailed.
The model has more in common with Classic Space sets such as Surface Transport than it does with the main models from Space Police.
Of course, robocop wants to ride too.
If you look at the car as a robosentry transporter it makes just a bit more sense. He's wobbly, but snug. In fact, I'm sure the Blacktron guy doesn't mind sharing... just this once.
On the whole the section for Space Police has some cool vintage concepts which look decipherable. I only regret the lack of any big ships or rovers. In the effort to make sure kids could actually build these things the designers made everything small, spare, and skeletal. The goal here seems to encourage disassembly, get kids started, and then cut them loose to build more impressive ideas of their own accord. That aside... I wouldn't mind seeing the designers cut loose and really outdo themselves, but in this book that doesn't really happen for Space Police; on the plus side the Space Police monorail is the book's best lunar model by far.
Static crackling
Do ya wanna break a moonbase? It doesn't hafta be for fun, we could do it while we're on the clock, near sector spock... there'll be nowhere to run! We can mess things up for Futuron, con those M:Tron, and fight off the Space Police... do ya wanna break a moonbase, it doesn't hafta be a moonbase.....
Go away Blacktron...
ok bye...