A is for Astronauts . . . in a Tin!

Back to space! It's been quite an eclectic mix this Rack Toy Month; not as many foreign (European/ex-Soviet) or domestic sets as some years, but Hong Kong and/or China are synonymous with rack-toys, so it's no bad thing to have concentrated on them, especially when the whole month has been a bit 'on the hoof' and 'off the cuff' this year.

Also this is hardly a rack-toy, having all the markers for an overpriced museum gift-shop novelty, however rack-toy versions exist and it ties in nicely with an earlier post on small-scale space sets and continues the running mentions, this month, of Pioneer being behind or involved in a lot of this more recent (1990-2010's) stuff.

Astronauts in a tin, it does exactly what it says on the tin! Distributed by PMT Holdings (a quick Google reveals pooping llama key rings on Amazon!) and sold by American Holiday & Surf Shop, the exclusivity is unknown, but may well be so in this perticular packaging/contents configuration, although Google says single outlet (St Michaels, Maryland), so maybe not?

More of a rack-toy configuration (contents differ somewhat; see below), and now branded to XY (Xinyu), and the last time we saw Xinyu here it was in the context of AFV play-sets containing Pioneer die-cast vehicles, so the persistent link is there! Astronauts have a plain finish in this set.

The contents of my set, as manned stations the satellites are all subscale although the landing module could fit two Airfix or Giant spacemen (in the imagination - not phyically, there's no door!), but not the 40mm figures in the set, however as unmanned science or communications satellites they can pass for HO-OO-compatible gear? Shuttle and rocket though are clearly sub-scale generic die-cast/plastic fare.

A third configuration, unknown, some image I saved ages ago from Amazon or Alibaba, branded to some phantom nonsense (there are 'branded' suppliers on Amazon whose names have clearly been generated by AI shoving lumps of syntax (or random letters) together - Watinc, Ainolway (think about it!), Oocome, Cvcbser, Trswyop?) and again, new items but only one figure.

The current offering from Amazon is a top-end set with just about everything seen in the other sets (differen rocket) and then some (claims 44 Pieces), branded to deAO, I have had Toy Major stuff from the same brand-mark, and they clearly came direct from an Amazon warehouse, so an in-house phantom-brand, I suspect!

The 'meat and two veg' here at Small Scale World is always the figures, and here they are, referencing the coloured patches on early (and much sought-after) Kinder spacemen, and about the same size as Kinder's smaller offering, I suspect only coincidence, and around 40mm, polystyrene.

Now if these were Pioneer, that would make a third set, in a new plastic type, so, again it points to the caveat I gave earlier in the month that as a die-caster, Pioneer (if it is them again) may have been buying in the figures themselves.

It would make it much harder for someone like Galoob to sue for the combat infantry knock-offs, for instance, if Realtoy sent them to Pioneer and Pioneer fingered a minor third, fourth, or fifth-party who had already moved on!

That some of the other - die-cast - contents have come from Pioneer I have little doubt.