One of my most used toys when I was in elementary school was the Strombecker Battleship. I know now that it was a model of the U.S.S. New Jersey, but when I was nine years old I thought “Strombecker” was the name of the damn ship. (It’s the name of the toy company, based in Chicago.) Although it was bathtub-worthy, my battleship was a spaceship, not a sea-going vessel.
Now, you might be asking yourself, how could a battleship get into space?
Dear reader, allow me to introduce you to one of the greatest Japanese TV series: Star Blazers. Star Blazers was all about a giant battleship, Space Battleship Yamato, which looked way cooler than my toy. The Yamato was converted into space ship and sent off to save the Earth from deadly radiation damage that had made the surface of the planet unlivable. To a nine-year-old kid, this was the coolest stuff in the world.
Space Battleship Yamato.
Anyway, my Strombecker was used to fend off the alien hordes everyday after school. Here are two additional photographs, with stickers—mine had no stickers that I remember.
The four gun batteries would rotate, as did two smaller batteries (anti-aircraft guns?) positioned near the rear mast-thingy. As I wrote above, the ship would float, but it also included four wheels on the underside so you could roll it across the floor.
The Strombecker battleship is not particularly rare. Expect to pay between $10 and $20.
Links:
- The real USS New Jersey.
- The real battleship Yamato, sank by U.S. aircraft near the end of World War II.
I was glad to find this web page. My husband has had this toy since he was little but didn’t know what ship it was modeled after. My son, who’s seven, wanted to know and I’ve been looking for a couple days. Thank you for figuring out that Strombecker was the model company and not the ship’s name.
You couldn’t get the Yamato today as well…it’s too expensive.
Wow, I had exactly the same toy as a kid, and I got it for the same reason, it reminded me of the Starship Yamato. I played Star Blazers with it all the time. :)
Star Blazers was just awesome, in some ways like an inverted Battlestar Galactica. (The literary possibilities here are endless.)
I loved that ship! People on e-bay want $40 for it. I’m sure you could come across it at a flea market for much less.