M is for Marx Space - Other Bits

A few other images I took while getting all these posts into some sort of sense or order, mostly from the loose stuff I had here in the sort of, last 24-months-odd acquisitions pile, there is plenty more in storage, I've always regarded all the Marx, MPC, Briatins, Timpo, Starlux, Elastoline &etc., stuff a bit 'box ticky' as there's tons of it around, plenty of collectors and loads of sites, but actually, in doing these posts, I've found either a dearth of decent Info, or gaps/conflicts in what is presented, or said, so when I do get everything together, I'll try to box-tick more of the supposedly common stuff!

 

These were already in the recent stash (rather than the collection), and they highlight one of the more interesting things I've noticed about all these Marx sets, each set has adjustments made to suit that set, which has lead to lots of variations to collect, more, I'm sure, than the few I've mentioned. Here - for instance - the tall rocket tower in gunmetal, doesn't sit flat, because it has two longer spigots in its hollow underside to local into a base-moulding that only came with some/one set/s.

 

While the yellow set here, which I assumed was a reissue, is actually a third size, to the two I've already highlighted. Also down the front you can see the triple-disc thing, now complete, along with a sort of searchlight thing, and the 'computer-table', now complete with its radar basket/salad dryer! Note also, the middle silo of the fuel-storage facility now has an extra collar at the base of the joined-pipe.

 

To which end, I shot these three, and you can see there is a 1.5/2'ish millimetre difference between the three mouldings, more than can be accounted for by shrinkage between harder and softer polymers, say, but, in fact they are all of similar density, although the gunmetal is a 'styrene, the mustard probably 'ethylene, and the lemon maybe 'propylene (and a Mexican re-issue?), however, the fact is - they are three separate tools.

 

Which does rather call into question, the whole 'mould (or 'mold') shot' shtick, some American collectors have been using to annotate their research, could we, in fact be looking at one tool list, from one factory, or one period in the company's history, or one auction?

 

We know some Marx figures (Warriors of the World and Miniature Masterpiece) could be produced in several factories (US, Hong Kong, Taiwan, 'Holland', Germany, Swansea), sometimes at the same time, and it looks like the same may be true for a lot of Marx's output, and that maybe, the tool lists are only a guide to some production, for a limited period, in one region/territory? While other, duplicate tools were authorised, or sent-out, with changes to the 'standard'?

 

A comparison between the 45 (Moonbase), 54 (Kennedy) and 70mm (Woolworths?) figures, It's not terribly clear, as I should have placed the tape-measure the other way up, so it started level with their feet, but you get the idea!

 

While I was shooting that, I shot this, the 7 humans from the 4-ich set.

 

But the white Alien was in another bag, which led to this all-Marx 'scaler' shot, with my only polyethylene 45mm, one of the Space Patrol, in the same metallic-blue as the 70mm robot. And I have another PVC-rubber crawling alien, not mucked-about with added home-paint, like the PVC sample!

 

The red figure is from the Mystery Spaeship, the yellow a re-issue 70mm, the sea-green a 4-inch original, and I added a spare 54mm silver astronaut, I also had here, there may be more of the smaller ones elsewhere in the storage.

 

The yellow 70mm was also in a separate bag, and has now joined these chaps, three reissues (Mexico, courtesy of Brian Berke) and one blue original, I think I have the whole set in blue somewhere!

 

Another one, I seem to have shot at some point, with a load of vintage stuff!

 

While Theo van der Weerden sent this to the Blog, several years ago, and again it seems to show the Mexican reissues (or are they from Marx Germany, Marx Holland, Heimo or a Charmore tool?!), in two shades of yellow and blue, with red, silver and green.

 

There were other things which seem to have missed the photoshoot, or just been lost in the first box-content's shot, a couple of the base-mouldings, again one was from the Moonbase sets. A NASA lifting body type thing, missing its missiles, in 'Marx' metallic blue, but made in polystyrene, got put to one side and not photographed, and there were other bits, so I'm sure we'll return to it all one day, not least - once I've found enough rocket sections, to make sense of all the part rockets, I've still left from the Kennedy and Space Patrol sets!

M is for Marx Space - Space Tanks! Alright . . . Space Plant!

Also in the Captain Space box, but actually from the Luna sets, was a trio of the tracked exploration vehicles, which one needs to colonise a dusty ball of pumice and "orange dirt!" One or two of my existing white ones have crept into other posts over the years, but here's a slightly grubby pastel-blue set!

 

The fuel/water bladders, treated as wheels, something various militaries have experimented with since before I was born, but which don't ever seem to have caught-on in general use, or commercially? The actual tractor for them (like MPC's, a rather clumsy-looking, bulky affair) is missing from the box, and only the Dozer 'tank' seems to have another, suitable towing hook.

 

Bladder parked-up and dozer engaged, dome-space is carved out of the crater-floor!

Is this a simplified version of an old Marx battery-operated floor-toy?

 

After a quick clean, which the other two also got, before I shot them!

 

This is the crane, or tow-truck/wreaker, and we can see where Giant (and to a lesser extent/greater stretch, Lik Be) got their little centrally-placed domed cabs from, for their own space tanks. But Marx has the better-sculpted running-gear, of the three fleets!

 

The Space Tank'er, a pun so good it's worth using twice! Embossed into the tank-ends, on both sides, are the same Florine, Hyrdrogen, Oxygen scripts of the stickers surviving on one set of my fuel-tank silos, I have a mind to get a few more of these, old or reissues, and 'do' something with them, paint or conversion wise?

 

All shot with the Marx exploding mountain in the background. 

M is for Marx Space - Silver Astronauts

Also in my box, and definitely from the Moonbase and other 'Luna-themed' sets, was a near complete set of the Silver Astronauts, larger than the other sets we've looked at recently, they are closer to 54mm/1:32nd scale, but were often issued with the 45mm green Moon Men., and to be fair, are 'small' for 54mm, especially the two guys wearing dustbins, who are closer to 50mm figures.

 

Year-book photo', the upright poses are the ones which were used for both the 25mm Miniature Masterpiece window-box sets' figures, and some of the 30mm human poses in the Mystery Spaceship centrifugal wind-up UFO set, the seated figure is the same one as the chap riding the Mercury capsule, while we will look at the two 'bin men' in a few minutes.

 

Close-ups of the simple figures, I'm missing the pointing guy, found in other sets, and a couple of duplicates for the full 'mould shot', not that I worry so much about things like that, I just want one of each, before I die! The four sculpts to the right were in the Mystery Spaceship, all of them appear in the window-boxes, painted or unpainted, in polystyrene or polyethylene.

 

 

 

Speaking of not seeking duplicates (unnecessarily), I've gone from none to three, I think, on the Mercury capsules, in less than three years! With the one we looked at separately (with the part-work Ad's), then another came in with the Cape Kennedy set, only for a third, in the same leery-orange to accompany this silver chap!

 

The 'bin men' are actually both wearing suits which were serious propositions back in the 1960's, with a NASA procurement competition being sent out and two designs taken seriously enough for many trials, new versions, press-junkets leading to colour-supplement articles, public exhibitions/displays, and the like, leaving a fair bit of info., on the Internet.

 

This was the Grumman-developed rigid or semi-rigid prototype S-100 Space 'Moon Suit', tested in 1965, plenty of reading on-line, so I won't bore you with the minute, but suffice to say I think of the two suits you find pictures of, the Marx model is slightly closer to the number 8-suit, than the number-3, with the more rounded skirt? Matt Mason's was better!

 

But they got the more acute angle of both suit-body versions wrong, as with the [reversed] helmet window angle, so the plastic figure is only an approximation. Also, while constantly presented as a Grumman product, it was almost exclusively the work of an Allyn B. Hazard of Space General Corporation.

 

Marx did much better with this, the 1961, Republic Aviation prototype Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) Suit. Apart from not fully-modelling the fold out rest-break tripod arms, it's a pretty faithful reproduction. And in both you can see where the Kaled Survival Suits (Daleks) came from!

 

I had this figure, sans suit, for years, as his 50mm made him part of the small-scale collection, where I thought he was a Frankenstein's Monster sculpt - basic overalls, beseeching arms, starey face!

 

Scale is a moot point here, with both the Rex Mars and astronaut figures being of similar size, Marx liked their 'floating' astronauts/spacemen, and there is a third sculpting out there, in the '60mm' set, although when I posted them here, I thought they were closer to 54mm, so I'll have to check them!

 

The only accessories with this photoshoot, the errant legs of an MPC space station!

M is for Marx Space - Moon Men & "Aliens'

So, to the aliens, known in the later (1970/80's) sets as Moon Men, and six of a possible seven poses. I've only ever seen the crawling alien in the gray PVC, and we've seen him, so he got left out!

 

The set of six, in a softish 'Airfix' polyethylene, a bit bright, but not as bright as the orange-red of some of the space stuff, and it's the whole slime-monster lagoon-radioactive-neon lighting trope of a lot of sci-fi - this colour was common on comic art and pulp-paperback jackets, spilling, radiating, blasting or dripping! Even the 'lobby-cards' and posters for black & white movies would have plenty of florescent green, lime green or yellow-green!

 

Compared with the Rex Mars set's versions, and as we'll see in a second, they are 'versions', all six were found in the Rex Mars set, with one or two also found in Tom Corbett or Space Patrol sets.

 

'Big Ears', the only one found in all four sets, and the similarities between this sculpt and the Fireball XL5 character 'Zooney the Lazoon' is almost certainly not a coincidence, as the Anderson's raided the entire 1950/60's toy oeuvre for their various TV series', the fact that they ended up with a character in a 1962 production, which resembles a 1950's space toy from the other side of the pond, is beyond accidental!

 

Note also, all the bases (and feet) are quite different, these are variants, not the same tool . . . with each being re-cut/finished as it was included in whatever set, the six 'ethylene Moon Men having their own tool, leaving the crawling guy in the Tom Corbett set, as the outlier, not included here.

 

I've seen a Tom Corbett Space Academy set, with all three PVC sets, so you got three Big Ears, but helmets for the Rex Mars sculpts only, it had pale-blue 'office furniture' and was dated 1952, ten years before Fireball XL5!! 

 

Likewise, the 'Frogman Assassin'; 

completely different bases on each of my three samples.

 

I already had four of them in a different shade of green, whom I had shot for the archive, and actually found the bag first, whilst putting the others away, then remembered I had shot them, and you can see in the lower image a clear colour variation between them! No accessories in this post; I'd run out of things to pose the figures with by the time I got to these chaps/chapesses/whatever's!

F is for Follow-ups - Various, Old & New

A few follow-ups which have been accruing over the last few years, and an eclectic mix of bits enhancing older posts and a couple of more recent ones.

 

 

A couple more KUM pencil sharpeners, these being a small pistol, and a revolver with a drum magazine! We looked at KUM, with more relevance to the Blog's interests here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/search/label/KUM

 

While this is an advert for pre-printed bookplates, with an emphasis on Sci-Fi / Fantasy, there's also a more traditional, even 'monkish' design. Found on the Internet and credited to David O. Knuttunen, it's the back cover ad from IF (not Galaxy), October 1966, and enhances this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/04/b-is-for-bookplates-1-overview.html

 

BEM - Bug Eyed Monster, an acronym which has faded from favour!  

 

Meanwhile as a backup to the recent posts on Holly, Lik Be (LB) and the 'Gygax' monsters, on the left here is the copy of the Monster Manual, which I was using along with the later lever-arch file.

 

The other two, which came in at roughly the same time, are a fascinating book on the Tommy Gun rival to Action Man, made by Pedigree Toys, and it's surprising how much Tommy Gun stuff my brother and I had, thinking it was Palitoy-Hasbro, because most of our stuff tended to come from the Church fêtes and Jumble Sales of Heckfield and the surrounding environs, or the local tip (dump)!

 

While the other book is a useful history of Marx, an updated volume, I still don't have Vol.I in any version . . . it will turn-up, everything does! 

 

The Mechanoid bits in the smaller inset, came in a while back, and the two ladders are the real treasure, as none of mine had them, now two will be completed, and the radar disc will finish the green one, while a near complete one came-in recently, with nice turquoise legs - also needing a ladder!

 

Looking at them, I think I may have a couple more spares in the 'unknown ladder' drawer of my old multi-drawer cabinet! So when it all comes together I should have three complete, another one with two-each different coloured legs and the gold-accessories one still needing a ladder, along with a few bits - that's a fleet!

 

 

A couple of rather poor images of a set of the Marx copies, and a generic set of the same copies of Cherilea astronauts/spacemen, I actually managed to buy the foot-pump set, twice from the same seller, because I'd forgotten I'd bought the first one (generics from Italy), so we will look at them properly another day, but all three above adding to this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/03/e-is-for-expelling-few-myths.html

 

While this will add a bit to this post from two years ago

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/05/e-is-for-eggcellent-effigies.html

 

He's a Humpty I shot at Sandown Park this weekend just gone, is a lead-solid from Sacul, and has had the base repaired/replaced.

M is for Marx Space - Rex Mars

I don't know if the Corbett license had expired, or if its sales were dropping to a market saturation-point, which Marx would have recognised from other sets histories, but for some reason they 'invented' a non-TV/Movie, royalty-free property of their own, Rex Mars, with figures similar to both the Tom Corbett and the Space Patrol these were issued with in bigger sets (I haven't even tried to work out the sets, there are dozens of them, stretching over three decades). And that's what this post is looking at, with more of the scenic detritus from my two partial sets.

 

The family portrait! I seem to be missing one sculpt, a chap holding a walkie-talkie near his face, and again, paint is going to have to be removed at some point! 

  

The landing party helping a 'red shirt' back to the shuttle! This time I have the female sculpt, but it's unclear who's who, as it's a made-up set with no TV serial or Movie to help guide the eye, it's all down to the kid's imagination who's boss! I put the lady in charge, she's the tallest!

 

The slightly more active component, they have the same rubber-ducting on knees and elbows as the Space Patrol, but other details are closer to the Tom Corbett sculpts, but with circular helmet-collars, they take the bobbled helmets with a couple of protrusions in the clear-plastic, which turn-up in mixed lots from time to time; I have a few somewhere in the spares pile, so some will get protection!

 

The Aliens, six in total, and rather like Lik Be's robots, all completely different! Which is fine if you want them from six different planets, but not so logical when they are the 'Moon Men' of the Moonbase set? They have their own post, probably next in the sequence.

 

There were, again, two unpainted ones in my sample.

 

The quadruple sonic-death-ray-beam traginator weapon, or boring radar thingy, depending upon your propensity for war toys - there were lots of them in the box, in three colours, but most in the mustard yellow! And something which equated to the morse-signaller boards we saw in an earlier post, apparently it's a solar battery!

 

Three of the landing pads for the Mercury capsule, it has a little hole in the heat-shield! And a ribbed, domed building/laboratory/accommodation unit, which is so remarkably similar to a gold-chromed lid off a touristy bottle of plum-brandy (with the plums in it), from Spain or Portugal, which I've been carrying around for about 50-years, after the Christmas we polished it off, waiting for a chance to scratch build (Terry Wise and the rest told us to keep everything!), I can't wait to dig it out and compare it with this, as I suspect one is based upon the other? But I'll have to wait, won't I!

 

The space-station, which I think can be similarly stuck on the rocket-engine building in the previous post? It's hopelessly out of scale, but so are most of the vehicles, in both my/all the sets!

 

Welp . . . I don't know . . . on the left we have the closest thing to an infantry heavy weapon/death ray, but it's too tall for any of the figures in the three sets we've looked at so far! In the middle, we have an 18thC telescope drilled through a 1950's parking meter! ! While I can't work out if the thing on the right is a sightseeing glass, or a 'What The Butler Saw' peep-show! Cum'on, design department - you can do better than that!

 

Help needed here, what I do know - the two tripods and two bent legs are from the MPC space station, the triple-disc thing is a broken instrument we'll see in a later post, the basket (front, left) also returns (and is part of the thing I mentioned in an earlier post, with the TV desk thing), but that's it.

 

I think the blue loudspeaker, may be from a vehicle, possibly a Hong Kong plastic toy, but it could clip into a tinplate 'wall' of a building? While I have no clue on the bowl (front, centre) which is hollow, the red bit might be a 'sprulette' (my own word), but there's a better shot of a silver one in a later post, so it seems to be a feature of these sets? And the two 'mine detectors' would seem to be from a 3 or 4" action figure? Anyone got any ideas on any of these five?

M is for Marx Space - Space Patrol

Some of the stuff which did belong in the box, the Space Patrol figures, and basically a set of generics who could also fatten out sets with the Tom Corbett or Rex Mars figures at their centre. Indeed, they have, pretty much, the same uniforms as the Rex Mars, but make useful 'ground crew' for the Corbett's.

 

Family Photo', I'm missing the two girls, one standing one crawling, and a seated figure (for the 'office furniture'!), and again these seem to be home-painted, and not brilliantly, with the black, particularly, splashed all over the place!

 

One of mine is a heat-shrinkage victim, but as it just makes him look like he's bringing in a still hovering machine, or, waving it away before it hits him, or lands on his noggin, . . . it's quite a cool mistake!

 

I got two each of most (one each of the Aliens) so it would seem to have been a full set, and the missing figures, including a pair of the seated chap, really are missing!

 

The Moonbase station, I think you can mount the 'doughnut' station on the top of this three-part contraption, which looks more like how the V2 ballistic missiles engines were nestled within the rocket's outer casing, than anything else!

 

Fuel storage tanks, I'm missing the pipework for the yellow-green version, but the silver fits, which is useful for photography as without it, the whole moulding rocks like a banana! But, as you can see, it still has its stickers, so is the better example, and the fuels; Oxygen, Hydrogen and Florine, are the same as those labelled on the sides of the 'space tank'er!