Wayfinders Moonshot — "Moonprints on your Foot"
Look and Learn No.397, 23rd August 1969. With moon-fever at its height (the first moon landing was one month earlier, on July 21st), Bata bring out a new version of their Wayfinders shoe. Note the brilliant re-use of the 1965 monochrome Lunar Base Panorama transfer sheets!
Please visit the Lunar Base Panorama page to view these transfers in more detail, & continue reading to find out how they were used previously with Shredded Wheat.
The next week, instead of a double-page spread, a single full page ad (No.398, 30th August 1969):
No.425, 7th March 1970: note the Rotadraw set. Rotadraw has a connection with Letraset; in 1978 Rotadraw Disney & Super Heroes sets are branded 'Letraset', since they had the rights to those licenses.
No.452, 12th September 1970 — & both the animal & moonshot transfers are still being advertised.
Origins of the Transfer Sheet
It's now become apparent that this monochrome transfer sheet used for Wayfinders Moonshot shoes, shown above as it appeared in the magazine adverts, was actually a re-use, having been originally put together for another product back in 1965: the Shredded Wheat Moon Battle promotion.
I strongly recommend you visit the Shredded Wheat Moon Battle page for more details & images, & then pop back here to continue (there's a link at the bottom of that page to "Wayfinders Moonshot Shoes" which will bring you back to this page).
Unless, of course, you've just arrived from the Lunar Base Panorama page, in which case… carry on!
BUT MEANWHILE…
Complications (as usual)…
I re-checked the ads; for 23rd August 1969, the Lunar Base transfers are shown in the ad. By 7th March 1970, just a few months later, the transfers aren't shown but they are referred to as 'a sheet of instant "action" moonscape transfers'.
Now, ordinarily you wouldn't suppose this to mean that the original set of transfers had been abandoned in favour of another set, would you? Because that would be a lot of work & expense. However…
Oops.
The transfers shown are re-purposed from Peter Archer's Meteoroid Menace Red Action Transfers set.
(N.B.: It looks like WOTAN's Moonshot shoes would have had the colour transfers, which explains a couple of otherwise niggling points.)
So… I reckon this means the lunar base sheets were only available for a fraction of a second — six months or so — which could explain why I've never seen any.
UPDATE: we've seen it now — in the form of the Shredded Wheat Moon Battle sheet!
Who knows what happened? Did Letraset promise lovely transfers, but they weren't ready & Bata had to settle for Lunar Base? Or — more likely — did Letraset happily supply Lunar Base transfers (left-over from the cereal promotion), only to have Bata complain, perhaps having seen 'Meteoroid Menace' for themselves?
Whichever way you look at it, it spells TROUBLE.
Reference to "a sheet of instant "action" animal transfers" in the same 7th March ad (for Animal Tracks Wayfinders) suggests another possible transfer switch at this date as well.
The terminology switches from: "instant transfer 'Letraset' pictures" (23rd Aug 1969)
— to: "a sheet of instant transfer 'Letraset' figures" (30th Aug 1969, 13th Dec 1969)
— & then to: "a sheet of instant 'action' moonscape transfers" / "a sheet of instant 'action' animal transfers" (7th Mar 1970)
— & finally to: "instant 'Action' space transfers" / "'Action' animal transfers" (12th Sep 1970)
So let's keep our eyes peeled for alternative Animal Tracks transfers! Perhaps based on the monochrome Busy Bees sheets.
WOTAN's Box
We don't have the "moon space capsule model" to show you, but WOTAN had one when young & remembers it vividly enough to have provided this Photoshop simulation to stimulate your imagination. (Many thanks to him for this; if you are interested, you can visit his Project Sword Blog.)
He has also kept part of the box! Unfortunately not the part with the 'moonscape panorama', but very interesting nevertheless:
Notice the tagline "Footprints on the moon". This is obviously a misprint (see what I did there) for "Moonprints on the foot".
We can still get an idea of the 'moonscape panorama' from this close-up of the Look and Learn advert photo:
UPDATE: We get our own box!
Who would have thought one of these would ever turn up? It's a bit battered, but on the whole in remarkably good condition. Thanks to jaso.rain for finding it & selling it to us!
The text on the lid of this earlier box reads "Take you for a walk on the moon" (sic).
The original owner has applied his transfers very neatly to the background, although he didn't remove the 'sky' as suggested in the ads — which is just as well, as far as we're concerned.
And… er… if you can see a wire frame in there, that's just me trying to hold the box reasonably uncrumpled!
UPDATE 2: We get a second box!
And after all those years of searching for one, the second turns up just a couple of months after the first. And for only 99p! Many thanks to the very helpful & generous anouskalealea for sending it to us.
This box is clearly slightly later than the first one, because although the box itself is identical, those are the Peter Archer transfers which have been applied.
The luxury of having two boxes has meant that I felt justified in flattening out the second one in order to scan it. In the scan, the bottom left-hand side flap has become detached, but you can see that the artwork on the side flaps is identical to that on the end panels (but rotated 90º), allowing the flaps to fold up over the end panels when the box is assembled.
The artwork on the inside of the lid, which depicts the sole of the shoes originally supplied as a free gift to anyone purchasing the box & its transfers, is in slightly better condition on the second box than on the first, so I've updated the previous photo.
Finally, here's the complete box interior artwork — without the confusing right-angled duplicate panels. This is probably a more 'natural' view!
• Next Wayfinders Page: Other Shoes →
• …Or back to the first Page of this Wayfinders article ↑
• …Or visit the Shredded Wheat Moon Battle page ↑
• Next "Free Gift Transfers with Other Products" Page: Sunlight Soap Tintin →
← Free Gift Transfers with Other Products