LB is for Little Buggers!

Another eBay tale! I was checking late one nigh/early hours and saw the small Matt Mason knock-off's I needed, so bought them, only to see a similar set from the same seller, so bought them too, messaged the seller asking if he might be able to combine the postage (after I'd paid full twice) only get a message from the seller almost immediately (mid-evening over the Pond), pointing out there was a loose set too . . . a few emails later and I'd found the other, he'd cancelled the two purchases, bundled the three lots, relisted them and I'd paid for them - at the third attempt!

Purchase on the right, it was the generic version of the Lik Be set on the left (old eBay image), and both have the same contents of the five 'cake decoration' mini moon-exploration vehicles, without the wheels you normally see them with.

 

The other purchased card (on the left here), it's another generic, overprinted to M. Shimmel Sons (MSS), and had the addition of the two 'NASA' style astronauts, also seen on the right with their lander, command module and flag - as they were also issued as cake decorations.

 

The smaller card is another generic, and also an old eBay image. Both Space Set generics are overprinted to the Happy Mates division of Electro Plastics of Newark, New Jersey, a jobbing rack-toy importer who also carried Yat Ming die-casts.

Note that the Shimmel card has artwork including the unmistakeable outline of Mattel's Major Matt Mason himself, with tubular rubber suit-joints, swinging-by to deal with the deadly triple hi-fi jack 'that's not a moon' of the dreaded Moron Vee! While the figures are either based on LB's spacemen (Mercury/Gemini programme suits), but without air-tanks, or the two Apollo types.

 

The seller included another Space Set card without blister, to which these were supposed to be attached, but they have the cake-travelling wheels attached and red astronauts while the blister (missing) would have struggled to hold them neatly on the same sized card, so these may just be cake decorations, or from one of the boxed-sets?

Ultraviolet is probably responsible for the bleaching of the figure bottom left and then the discolouring of both elements to a burnt-orange? It's also missing its wheels, which is useful . . .

. . . as you can see how the wheel units were added to the undersides by simply glueing the double-unit over a small protuberance on the models, clearly visible in some of the shots above.

 

A couple of shots of the cake fleet on the move!

 

Another iteration of the Space Set card on the left, as an LB original, we will return to it, soon, in a future post when we look at the robots attached to it.

Six weeks later - Follow-up here from Moonbase Central, except I don't think there's any Giant spacemen involved, they are all the Lik Be sculpts.