X-300 is for Space Cruiser

The sister publication for Ed's Adventure Annual, was The New Spaceways Comic Annual Number 1, a slightly pretentious title as I don't believe there was ever a 'number two'! And, it too pulled heavily from existing toys for it's artwork, mostly hollow-cast, but the Pyro et al Spaceships were also referenced. I believe they were published the same year, 1954, but while The Adventure Annual seems to have run for some time (with title tweaks - Okay, for Boys, the Boys & Girls, &etc.), there was only the one 'Spaceways.

This is the cover of the annual, with the big beast it's lifting-from to the right; The X-300 Space Cruiser and probably my favourite of all the ships in the extended family of 'Dime-Store' sculpts.

 

You can see that the cover art has taken a wing and turned it into a powered tail, Tristar-like, while pulling the tail down to make two wings! The nose has also been sharpened and shortened, I wonder if they used the Combex sharpener!

Mine is missing its wheels, and while they do turn-up on evilBay occasionally, even ragged ones with no nose can cost a pretty penny, so for now I ignore the absence, it still sits 'right' on a flat surface! You can just see the Kleeware mark on this one, on the underside of the left wing - on the right here.

 

My tail-fin is also slightly truncated, the tip was lost long before it was mine, and I just cleaned-it up with a file to match the lower one, but I notice it's cut-short in some of the artwork below, so it must have been a common break/fault, present on the artist's bench-model too!

The Covers of The Adventure Annual use the same ship, but with no real changes, grounded on the left with a bunch of distinctly Johillco/Cherilea figures, and flying in formation with an X-100 Space Scout through some bloody dangerous manoeuvres courtesy of an X-200 Space Ranger!. Artist seems to be Denis McLouchlin

 

I should add that all these connections were first made in Plastic Warrior magazine a decade or two ago, and these [above] crops can be seen in context, via Moonbase Central here, thanks to Ed Berg's scans of the 'Swift Morgan' strip.

An older shot of mine, the line between the portholes isn't a crack, but rather the boundary line between two regions of the resin, flowing into the mould from different directions, and meeting, just as they begin to cool-off, producing a kiss rather than fully-melting into each other, the mark is called a weld-line or a knit-line, and it is commonest, or more-commonly found with metallic materials, due to the inclusions in the polymer making moulding harder to get just right.

Couple of hours later - I forgot the image inside the cover! Complete with another Johillco/Cherilea figure and the hollow-cast 'vending machine' robot!

Later Still - In the 1950's, future spaceships were going to be very easy to control!

In the early hours - Brian Berke sent his scan of the bookplate from 'Spaceways, which I had failed to scan (because it had been filled-in I think), which was daft as I could have used it to illustrate a point on the bookplate posts, at Easter - Doh! But there's the converted Cruiser again!