E is for Expelling a Few Myths!

Not exactly the best spacemen ever made, being very toy-like, but in common with
the 60mm Knights from the same Cherilea stable, having a charm all of their own, and as they are quite common, with a relatively convoluted history, worth collecting, for their position on the oeuvre.

 

 

Well, that's a bit metaphysical! I don't have that many, when I had the chance to grab a few I was actually helping someone else collect them, and he snapped up all the good ones, each time, before I could shoot them, but I've collated enough to tell the story.

 

Here are the two main types of Cherilea production, baseless, or based, which helps banish the first myth; that Marx were the ones without bases, while Cherilea had bases. The fact is Cherilea added bases to their own 'pod-feet' designs, as the 70's resulted in the popularisation of 'deep pile' or 'shag' carpets - an abomination of dirt, dust, food and pet-hair storage, which went bald in paths (desire-lines) and rucked-up in the corners as the substrate stretched or broke-up.

Bonus Hugh's Handy Helpful Home Hobby Hint - the dust from the perished rubber backing, once sieved, makes an excellent scatter material for modelling, and a jar of it lasts for decades longer than the carpets were ever going to! And the stuff left in the sieve, once you've picked out the lumps and hairs and things, makes excellent ballast for model railways!

There were six poses, and this is a mix of originals (top-left/bottom-right) and copies, which we will get on to in a minute, the black-suited chap here always seemed designed to be driving or riding some kind of space-vehicle or hover-bike, with outstretched arms and open hands, but as far as I know nothing suitable was ever released, so he makes the best space-zombie!

Not 'swoppets' in the traditional sense of the word, and, apart from the addition of bases - they never got the move to swivel bases which the khaki Infantry did, with their third series.

 

But they did have clip-on life-support packs/tool belts and plug-in heads with slip-over helmets, I think there were six designs of 'webbing and helmet' so you could technically seek to procure 216 versions, without looking at plastic colour or base/no base, but that would be very boring, these are better held as a small, eclectic 'sample'.

 

Two of the figures are equipped with that old 1950's favourite, the Enfield EM2 experimental/trails bullpup-configured assault rifle, which dates them! Still, they made a few hundred which would have been (might still be) in a store somewhere, why not give them to the Space Corps!

 

In space, no one can hear your 1940's flash-bulb! Variation on a theme, illustrating how much smaller the copies are (second from the left), easy to tell, as they usually have paint highlights absent from the originals, and because they are manufactured from PVC vinyl-rubber, not the polyethylene Cherilea used.

And to the second myth, that Marx 'made' them or 'did' them, they didn't, these figures (the PVC copies) were issued by dozens of importer/jobber's on two, if not three, continents, and were sourced from a Hong Kong manufacturer, in every case except Marx, with no real difference between the batches.

 

Some Marx sets claim Taiwan, however, as the source, but they sourced other stuff from Taiwan, sometimes credit HK and Taiwan on the same packaging, and were - by the time they carried these - importing other stuff from the colony, both from their own factories and from people like Blue Box. These were just another line, just another possible revenue stream, bought-in like others, and from the same source as all the others.

This figure and the similar kneeling pose hark back to earlier sculpts from Ajax/Archer in the 'States and Johilco over here, following the in-space-you-will-need-a-small-piece-of-equipment-on-the-end-of-a-long-lead-plugged-into-your-backback rule! Try running from a bunch of Xenomorphs, carrying that shit!
 

Toward the end they got, first the four-hole sandy bases, then the large 'landscaped' bases also seen on some knights, clearly, deep-pile shag was winning the carpet war!

 

The third myth is more accidental, it was believed for years that the moulds had gone-on to Tibidarbo in Italy, but I suspect the Italians just bought a lot in, as they seem to have had a lot with the ovoid-cartouche bases, in green-sand-silver/two-hole and sand/four-hole, but none of the earlier baseless production, nor any of the late, large, marbled-base examples. Nor have the mould tools magically turned-up in Italy ever?

Comparison between the foot-marks of the baseless figures, Hong Kong vinyl-rubber copy on the left, polyethylene Cherilea original on the right. Some always claim these as mould-release pin-marks, but I don't think it's always the case, and here, the PVC one may have the small hollows to try and prevent the edge/rim of the pod-foot from curling-up during cooling, post-mould, and causing the underside of the foot to dome, making them even harder to stand up than the British donors!

 

In part included for Pompey Dave, as I told him the other day, that they were on the blog somewhere, when they weren't! And with thanks to Adrian Little for a couple of the shots, and someone whose name I can't find, but who corrected me on the green 'Mechaniod', for that is what they were called!

 

The correction being that I had been told the fully-open/lattice-topped Mechanoids were rarer Dalek command ships, and the alternate open/closed panel ones were common 'UFO's, but apparently that's a fourth myth! They are two of several design variants, which don't have a Dalek-non-Dalek rule, anyway, they are all missing a plug-in ladder, and mine's missing its electronic mast thingy!

To complete the spacey nature of the exercise, two Daleks! I've said in the past I thought my other was black, but it's actually silver, so I have three metallic ones and no black, or flat colour versions. Steven Smith has been posting the most extraordinary collection of them elsewhere, for the last four years, and there's quite a selection, especially of the Mechanoids.

 

It's more of an unmanned-probe isn't it! A quick scaler, the Daleks are pretty good for the 60mm figures, most Doctors (Dr. Whoms!) were about six-inches taller than the scabrous Skaro survival-suits, so baseless Cherilea spacemen are just about the right height.

A Nucorp set, as well as Marx, I've seen them in Larami, Unique and Jak Pak livery I think, and somewhere I have two unmarked-generics from Italy (I think I'd forgotten I'd got one, and bought another from the same seller a few months later!), with a squeeze foot-pump rocket launcher, they are not rare, in either form - HK or UK.
 

We've seen this 1974 catalogue here in full, not that long ago, but here's the 'Astronauts' cropped-out, I consider them 'spacemen' in my universe, due to the whacky webbing/backpacks, helmets and weaponry. It was this era of production which Tibidarbo seem to have received quantities of, mostly these white ones, but also numbers of the pale blue figures.