N is for Now Let's Play Space Legion UFO's

I was so keen to sort out the stuff from the Birmingham show, I'd put most of it away before I thought about a show report, so there wasn't one! But a lot of it will appear here soon one way or another as I got some things specifically with the blog in mind, and shot other things while I was there with the same reasoning.

This post is a case in point, I bought some of these and photographed the other two, all are available from Mercator Trading, link to the top right, who may well be taking them to the Sandown Park toy-fair next (this coming) Saturday.

The title of this set translates to 'And now let us play', and it's a nice Italian space set from - I don't know - maybe the early 1970's? One of the things I like about continental 'cheepie' toys of the 1960's and '70's was that a lot of it was produced domestically, so while the HK stuff we had in UK was also what the Americans got, the Spanish and Italians produced their own, Germany had Manurba and Jean, the French just re-issued earlier hard-plastic figures in bags of brighter coloured unpainted plastic.

This is just that type of carded rack-toy: the rocket is a common design which also turned up via Hong Kong and was later copied/produced by some South American 'cheepie' experts, while the figures are quite unique. The full card is top left, any Italian followers have an idea on the maker? They are not the known Co-Ma designs but I don't think they are Cane either so any clues out there?

10/08/2017 - Now ID'd as Torgano and added to the tag list. 

Over the Alps in Spain a more established company; Comansi, produced two space sets: the quite common Thunderbirds sets (which like the Beatles I published earlier tonight - command a price way above their actual value), and this Ovni set, or 'UFO'. Having pretty-much missed UFO the UK TV series (too young, or was it on ITV? We didn't do much telly when we were kids - always out on the heath playing 'Army', fishing for Airfix at the local tip (rubbish dump) or building 'camps') I didn't know if these bore any relation to the TV series, but a quick Google suggests not, so just generic UFO's!!

Indeed one seems to be a rather topical (in current popular [read; American] culture) zombie! I've seen other versions of the claw-handed alien/robot, and other humanoid poses. Again - do any Spanish followers know if there is a link to something on TV over there? Does 'zombie'-man have something of significance in his hand? Also - like the T'bird set, I think these were latter re-issued unpainted in that floppy silicon rubber?

Back across the Alps went Caesar, and if we follow him - we get back to these...I love these, so these are the ones I bought. Definitely earlier then the others, based on the old Ajax/Archer/Lido/Pyro/Kleeware/Tudor*Rose generics of the classic 'pulp' fiction era, but smaller at 45mm and in a hard plastic, these were already in my collection as 'Unknown Italian Space' in a silver styrene, and they will stay unknown Italian for the time being as the card only has a title!!

They came either 5 to a card, or 10 to a little bag, which looks like it may have ended-up in something else, soap-powder, Christmas crackers (did the Italians have Christmas Crackers in the 1950's? One tends to assume the rest of the world has the same cultural 'stuff' and they don't always!), or some other premium? The bag has a little metal tie that will open you finger if you're not careful!

The carded ones are all one colour, while the bags have various colours and flecked/marbled ones. I've also seen them in black plastic, have some silver ones somewhere as I mentioned and I'm sure gold ones will turn-up eventually.The green marbled one points to other greens, but I've yet to see blue.