Recently I picked up a silver Space Cannon. Does anyone know what specific playset (Tom Corbett, Rex Mars etc.)it comes from? I am not strong on what playset certain items went in. I have always been a parts man with the idea the buyer knew what set it belong to or was making the playset their way. The cannon fires and has the wrong shells.
I may be mistaken but I believe that I have seen the particuar cannon in some early Alamo sets. The first issue sets with the 45 mm indians and defenders.
Strange? You bet. But, I think the story goes that the 54 mm (Fort Apache) cannon either wasn’t ready in time or that the assembly line ran out of them.
Anyone else remember this?
The silver space cannon I haven’t encountered. I think the one I have from the Space Academy set is either red or yellow. I have a dark brown one with some of the shells it came with that was in a very early Alamo set. Bill Hanlon was the source and he said it was from his set as a child and he related the story of the rush by Marx to get the sets out for Christmas, of the lack of enough cannon to fill the orders, and a production run of the space cannons in dark brown to fill the void. My brother got the 45mm Alamo set with the Indians that Christmas. It had one black cannon but we felt disappointed at the lack of Mexican soldiers. It would be many decades before I found out some of the story why. Several years later we got our hands on the 54mm set with the light blue Mexicans in a two day swap with a neighbor who wanted to play with our Battle of the Blue & Gray that came out that year. I can remember being quite taken with them.