Our next trip to view a home of the future was rather tortuous with a lot of loose ends but eventually we tracked this down, and it is a set I have not featured before. It seems likely that man and woman will never be able to jet straight down to a planet and build a home. The solution is to have an off world place to stay, and to move down to the surface eventually once security can be assured.
Our British Trade Index part two, RB.27, published in 1969, splits Weetabix into two groups, cards, like ours, being group one, and package issues, cut from the packets, as group two. The listing for our set says :
WEG-1 Conquest of Space Lg. 80 x 62. Nd, Album issued.
1. Series A (25)
2. Series B (25
It does not explain why there are two series, and the card is also holding back of its secrets, so onwards to our updated British Trade Index of the year 2000. The text is almost the same but now we have a date of issue :
WEE-290 Conquest of Space. 80 x 62. Nd. Album issued.
1. Series A 1958 (25)
2. Series B 1959 (25)
I eventually found the solution in Cartophily Britannica, by Bill Wareham, a great resource for late 1950s and early 1960s issues I could not find Series 1, but Series 2 appears in Volume 2 No,15, March 1959. And it tells us :
Weetabix Ltd. 25 "Conquest of Space Series B" Nd. 62 x 80 m/m. This second series to be inserted in the packets of Weetabix, the popular breakfast cereal, is similar in all respects to Series A except that the subject caption appears on fronts. This is a great improvement and indeed the illustrations in colour appear to be even better that in the first series. Many grown-ups, as well as the children will be more than keen to collect the whole series and place them in the special album prepared to hold the set.
Now you can see a whole host of wonderful things at CerealOffers/ConquestA - though that dates our set at 1957. It shows all the cards and also has an advert from a magazine which includes a section to clip out and send for the album. This says "I enclose postal order for 1/3 for an album for my *Series A/Series B Space Cards (*cross out series you do not require)" And if you look at the album, also on that page, it has a small circle bottom right with the series A or B on it.
And there is also a page for CerealOffers/ConquestB - which proves that the cards were different, not just the same picture with captions added.