B is for Best Christmas Present Ever!

Obviously my childhood self might argue with that, my Airfix Pontoon Bridge Assault Set says otherwise, as well! But, yeah, I was given a slightly lumpy parcel, in lovely robin-decorated paper by Adrian, late of Mercator Trading, which is no more, only a couple of days ago, and I suspected it might have an assortment of early, British made, vehicular-plastic, attic-finds, or a bunch of small scale and/or circus stuff, or something equally interesting, but what I found was quite sublime, so we're going to look at them.

I hope this finds you all well, sated with fine food and the tipples of your choice, I've slept off mine, bit of a Christmas tradition since I was quite young to have a nap on Crimbo' afternoon, or in the evening, depending on when the meal is! Happy Christmas to all Loyal Readers, and those hangers-on who pretend they've never been here!

I've shot the living bejeezus out of them, so let's dive in - Kellogg's Rice Krispies premium Spacemen, from 1960, believed to be manufactured for them by Crescent Toys.

 

(Image from Wayne Radcliffe's Cluck I)

 

As advertised in the comic (TV Express Weekley, September 1960) and other press of the day (I think the tabloids would sometimes carry these Ad's in the weekend editions), and this was being conceived ten years before man set foot on the moon, so would have been a real pull for kids of the time . . . I wouldn't be born for another four years!

And the first correction of the limited information found online, they are not from 1959, nor are they from 1962, but that's Giselle over at Mokarex, and she's a plagiarist who posts anything she can find, not bolted down, without checking, or knowing! Giselle also states they are modelled after the movie of the same name? What - Free Spacemen? And goes on to make a laboured remark about astronauts, when the word 'Astronaut' is never mentioned!

Text:

Free!  SPACEMEN

Super set of six models

It’s a space age and here are SPACEMEN --

FREE, for you to collect!

 

SPACE HELMETS Each spaceman is perfectly detailed complete with

breathing apparatus and detachable space helmet. 

 

SET OF SIX You’ll find a free spaceman model

in every Kellogg’s Rice Krispies packet marked

‘Spacemen’. Start collecting now and swap

with your friends to get the complete set

of six super models!

 

There was also a TV Ad.

 

Slightly battered, but one of those packets - FREE SPACEMAN MODEL INSIDE - that's the Coco-Pops out of the window for a few weeks isn't it!?

When the Magic Roundabout figures (Tatra product) were in Ricicles, when we were kids, a decade later, Mum went to the Cash & Carry in Aldershot (which became Peacocks, then the United Carriers (Bunzl) depot (where I worked for two years!) and has now been redeveloped, all three previous tenants, long gone, now!) and came home with a huge carton of what was probably 40 boxes, and which totally filled the rear of the Morris Traveller!

The other half of the story is a tad tragic, as bulk-purchase boxes didn't have the premiums in, so no figures, and Finn MacCool our Irish setter, got as fed-up with Ricicles as the rest of us, at least he got his mixed in with his meat!

 

© By Kellogg Company of Great Britain Limited 1960

 

The boxes also had a load of information about the space age, and the six sculpts, slightly quixotic, both in phrase (amazing how the language has evolved so much, in just 65-years, that even spellchecker doesn't like chunks of it, I kept wanting to throw-down commas, didn't they pause for breath in the 1960's!?), and in the individual descriptions, points I will raise as we go, as I've transcribed it all, to go through the figures one at a time, there's also an information panel on the side about the moon;

 

E X P E D I T I O N

TO    THE    MOON

The moon is 238,840 miles distant. The gravity on its surface is only one-sixth of that on the surface of the Earth. Communication by radio is restricted by the greater curvature of the moon’s surface. There are no ionized layers such as we have on Earth to make radio transmissions over long distances possible.

Moon explorers will have to wear heavy spacesuits to give them protection against the extremes of temperature on the moon (ranging from 130ºC in the day to -130ºC at night). They will have to be supplied with air at the right pressure to breath; and means of radio contact with each other as the moon has no air to carry sound-waves.

The first men on the moon will have to use the ship as a base for exploration. Later it should be possible for a base to be set up inside one of the many caves which undoubtedly exist.

Information about the moon and spacemen models has been supplied by Mr. L. J. Carter, Secretary of the British interplanetary Society. 

[

From Google AI - so subject to inaccuracy!

 

L. J. Carter (Len Carter) was a long-serving and highly influential figure in the

British Interplanetary Society (BIS), holding the positions of Executive Secretary and editor for several decades. 

Key Details about L. J. Carter

• Role and Tenure: He was the society's executive secretary for many years after its headquarters moved from Liverpool to London. He was also a founding member of the post-war BIS Council.
• Key Contributions:
  • Editor: Carter was the editor of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) and the book Realities of Space Travel: Selected Papers of the British Interplanetary Society, published in 1957.
  • London Office: The society's permanent London home in the 1970s tied in with his personal interests; he was a collector of ceramics from the local Lambeth potteries, and his collection was later displayed in the meeting room.
  • Continuity: He was a central figure in ensuring the continuity and serious work of the society after World War II, helping to establish it as an authoritative source of information on spaceflight.

He was a contemporary of other notable BIS figures such as Arthur C. Clarke, Philip E. Cleator, and Harry Ross. His work was fundamental to the society's operations and its mission to advocate for space exploration]

 

♪♫♪♫ Meet the gang because the boys are here  . . . ♫♪♪♫

 

There was also an intro' paragraph above the artwork, and another explaining the figures; 

Super scale models of Spacemen making up a complete lunar survey party. One in each Kellogg’s Rice Krispies packet with the special flash. Each at least 2” high in tough, brightly coloured plastic with detachable transparent plastic helmet.

Six explorers have just arrived by their rocket-propelled spaceship and are engaged on a survey of the lunar surface.

(read the side panel for more details about the expedition.)

 

A - The leader of the expedition is looking for a vantage point on which to place a sighting and radio relay beacon, as the party plans to explore regions further away from their base ship.

The 'radio relay beacon' is a lollipop-sign with the UN logo on it, and as both Plastic Warrior magazine and Wayne Radcliffe said as much, 30-years ago, I'm not sure why some people on-line, state as fact, it isn't, when it is! And not just on dodgy Blogs or personal websites like this, but in videos on YouTube! The entire internet is becoming what people want to say, rather than what needs saying!

 

"The emblem depicts an azimuthal equidistant projection of the world map, centred on the North Pole, with the globe being orientated to the International Date Line. The projection of the map extends to 60 degrees south latitude, and includes five concentric circles. The map is inscribed in a wreath consisting of crossed conventionalized branches of the olive tree." 

(image and text - Wikipedia)

 

B - The leader is accompanied by a colleague carrying a climbing pick and rope.

 

C - This explorer, using a Geiger counter, is seeking radio-active materials below the surface which may provide some evidence of the moon’s age.

 

 Actual size? Check!

 

The Geiger counter looks suspiciously like a mine-detector, something Crescent (if it was them) were particularly favoured of, producing four or five (?) other figures with them, while contemporaries, Charbens, Lone Star and Timpo had produced a few between them, too! 1950's Geiger counters were either a boxy backpack, or a hand-held device about the size and weight of a full .303" or 7.62mm belted ammunition-box.

 

D - The cameraman of the expedition is using a special camera to photograph the lunar terrain. These photographs will be the permanent record of the expedition and will include microscopic pictures of objects of interest found on the lunar surface, such as micrometeorites of strange composition, and evidence of past life-forms. The photographs will be transmitted to Earth by radio.

When they actually went, they took heavily modified, silver Hasselblad 500EL cameras, which didn't look that different from the camera depicted, one can assume NASA were by 1959/60 (the figure set would have been a while in planning/production) using/trialling similar cameras in the deserts of Arizona or Nevada?

 

E - This explorer is boring for metals and testing the chemical composition of the moon’s surface.

Boring with an oxyacetylene torch! I suspect this was (as with A and F), the more fanciful musings of the Kellogg's art department or press people, rather than the intention of the sculptors, who knew what they were equipping their figures with!

 

I have a 1960's one in storage, I used a 1980's one to cut-up a Dutch barn in 1983, a mini adventure in itself, as 3 or 4 ton pieces of I-bar broke out of the trailer and clattered across the concrete while I carefully walked backwards trying to keep an eye on everything movin,g while Richard laughed at me from the safety of the Bray 4000's cab! While the one on the right is on Amazon right now! They haven't changed much since they were invented!

 

F - The last explorer is preparing to check over the rocket. It landed tail-first, its speed of 5,000 m.p.h. being slowed down by retarding rockets to about 100 m.p.h. just above the surface, the final impact being taken by shock absorbers in its landing legs. In spite of reduced gravity, the vehicle suffered slight damage on landing and repairs are necessary before the return take-off to Earth.

It's a single, open-ended slogging spanner, not the 'plug-spanner' one commentator elsewhere has called it! And while a 150-ton ore-truck might have plugs the size of your fist, this is the sort of spanner you use on agricultural or mining machinery, oil rigs or AFV's!

 

The hands seem to be based on the suits we looked at while covering the Marx spacemen a while back (Bushy the Twig found a use for the images a few weeks later!), the 1961, Republic Aviation prototype Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) Suit;

 

Specifically the version on the left, although the claws  are out on rods with that one, and this suit is dated to '61, but I dare say stuff had already been on the drawing-boards, and/or in boys books/magazines/comics. 

 

There are similar attachments on deep-sea diving suits, designed to operate at extreme depths, which are known as Atmospheric Diving Suits (ADS), which often feature claw, pincer or tool hands for manipulation at depth

 

Previously seen on the blog, but we're going for broke today, this was my original sample, I've since picked up a few more, and I'm pretty sure I have a UN lollipop-man in Orange, this red one is a short-shot moulding, something the mine-detector chap also suffered from; when the mould is cold and the hot resin doesn't reach the finer extremities of the cavity, before cooling, imagine lava, getting halfway across your living-room floor, then stopping!

 

The suits are quite bulky, almost as if pressurised from inside to an uncomfortable degree! The use of the moniker 'Michelin Men' for them is not unwarranted! But I thought I'd try and find the inspiration; 

 

The first shot I found has a couple of very early ones, and a couple of much later rigid or semi-rigid suits, the one on the right is trying very hard to replicate the movement of human musculature, with angled rotating joins, but if a human needed joins like that, they would have developed naturally through the 11th-to-17th centuries in suits of steel armour, that they didn't, suggesting the suit on the right has been over-engineered?

 

While here, we have two artists renditions and a mock-up of a suit with the correct, corrugated-rubber joints at knee, hip, elbow and shoulder to the left, these were a 1950-onwards series of developments, while on the right, the closest thing to a Michelin suit is the more recent NASA AX-5 spacesuit. Artist of the guy with the red tank is John Polgreen.

 

But, I think these are the suits the sculptors had on their minds when they were working on the Kellogg's set, from the movies Destination Moon (1950, upper image), and Flight to Mars (1951, lower image), reused with the helmets painted, and extraneous equipment reduced. They even give us some of our colours!

 

 (Photo USAF)

 

But those sci-fi suits were apparently based on the 'tomato worm' (a type of caterpillar) suits, coming out of the MX-117 program to develop a pressure suit, during the Second World War.

 

Which - back to colours - several comenters on YouTube and elsewhere on the internet keep stating are only six? Again, seen on the Blog previously, and from the archive, I have John Begg to thank for this one. There are eleven colours there, and even if you discount one of the yellows, one of the THREE distinct blues and one or two of the red-orange-browns, you still can't make it less than eight! The camera doesn't lie, and they've been on the Blog nine years, since before most of the other's made their "six-colours" claims!

• Permanent Yellow
• Lemon Yellow
• Tangerine Orange
• Scarlet
• Oxide red/Chinese Orange
• Dark Red / Pale Maroon?
• Dark Blue
• Sky Blue
• Mauve
• Cobalt Green
• Mint Green 

 The helmets have a small lip at front and rear . . . 

 

. . . which clip over the shelf to the front and rear of the shoulder-line, if they stay loose it's usually because the lips have been slightly chipped-over the rim, and you can usually push the deformed plastic back-up, out of the way, with a smooth finger-nail, or the tip of a coffee spoon, and the helmet should stay-on more firmly.

 

Don't force them, they will split up the non-lipped sides and, eventually, break in half, the bane of all early toy spacemen's separate helmets, which are nearly always made of particularly frangible polystyrene.

 

Open to question, but I think one head/face sculpt was used, but in replication, two suffered a squishing to the right side of the helmet (green and bottom yellow), while blue got his right face cove-in, probably by a finger, the heads being replicated by shoving a plug of modelling-clay into the cavity of a plaster head/face master mould?

 

Two final points, one a thought, the other more contentions, but related to the thought. The thought first - there are very few examples of pod-footedness, in British toy figure production at this scale, those are, early Cherilea, Li-lo (one figure pose known), seen here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/12/q-is-for-question-mark-british.html 

 

 and the set of eight Magic Roundabout figures from Tatra, seen here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/f-is-for-follow-up-magic-roundabout.html

 

And I wonder if the same sculptor was used on these, as designed the Li-lo figure, and/or the late set of Magic Roundabout figures? They all have the same plumpness about them, and they all have chubby pod-feet?

 

The more contentious point is that, given the above, maybe Tatra made these, not Crescent? People say Crescent, as fact, but as far as I know, it's never been more than 'believed to be', and there is no direct evidence? I still favour Crescent, on the colours, but it's not firm.

 

So to recap on what you'll find elsewhere on the Wibbly-Wobbly-Way;

• Not issued in 1959, nor 1962, but in the Autumn of 1960
• Called Spacemen, not astronauts
• Not named after a movie?!
• At least eleven shades of at least eight colours, not six
• UN-logo'd lollipop board, not generic, nor invented 
• Only 'believed to be' Crescent production, might not be
• Oxyacetylene torch, not drill
• Heavy slogging spanner, not plug-spanner!

 

 

"No dude, I have to film, it's a live feed to Woomara, just in case you blow us all up, waving that three-foot spanner about!"

 

"What do you mean, 'Where's the keys', I got out first, YOU locked-up!"

 

The FIA Formula Mach-500 Silverstone-Pluto rally. An ageing Lewis Hamilton is neck-&-neck with Michael Schumacher's's clone, with two rounds to go. An android with Senna's brain DNA is leading by 8-points.

 

You can't 'light-up' until the lollipop-guys are off the grid, and woe-betide any driver who hits one, on a pit-stop, you can't find enough atoms left, to fill a jam-jar, and the relatives sue for billions!

 

There was a lot of climbing planned!

 

My probe's bigger than yours!

 

That's not a camera, mate - this is a camera!

(I know, it's a missqoute) 

 

Well, I started this at about 7pm? It's now nearly 5am, but I had a snooze earlier, and sometimes you can't leave something alone until it's done, which it now is! The Cereal Offers page is here;

 

https://cerealoffers.com/Kelloggs/Rice_Krispies/1960s/Spacemen/spacemen.html

  

That's all folks!