The Woolworths Explorers
These appeared in Woolworths circa 1994 also and were marketed as Explorer III. They also appeared/disappeared very quickly meaning that they never sold well either, It wasn’t long before Woolies were selling these for as little as £2.00. These vehicles are a bit strange as it was very clear that these were re-releases of the original BHS range as all three of them had the original stickers and the EX4 Space explorer mission patch on the main body, very strange. Despite being labeled EX2,3,4 there was no re-released EX1. Moving on to the packaging it was very apparent that these were a intended as a cheap release due to the bad art work and quite frankly bad packaging, however it wasn’t all bad. If you looked at the back of the box you came across a diagram of how to hook up two units using a tow bar, here you can see another two different types of explorer! Where these came from and what they were sold as no one knows.I suspect that this may have been the American version of the toy even perhaps the original toys that we never seen in the UK. It is possible that the BHS range was not the first and that they bought the toys and sold them as Explorer 12s in the UK. The reason behind this thinking is that the Woolies and BHS range were all embossed with ‘Supertoys Inc 1986’, I don’t remember seeing them until 1988 so it
