F is for Further Follow-up - Micro Vessels

I'd forgotten I'd picked the bits up from the storage unit, to do a comparison, so here's a bit more on the small or 'micro' vessels we looked at a couple of days ago, and some more bits from the Internet downloads folder on naval stuff.

 

Both this and the previous should be viewed in the context of the original post on the very small vessels, which was part of a series of seven articles;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2012/03/s-is-for-ships-and-other-vessels-part-7.html

 

There were also some comparisons in the MPC series a few years later; 

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2015/05/mpc-is-for-mini-ships-part-two.html

 

Which was a two-parter, both series have become dated by the scope of the collection now, and one day I intend to re-do all seven of the first lot, in the same order, but as longer, fuller articles, in the meantime a few more points arising . . .

 

. . . including a colour fan of the Quaker samples which are here at the moment, I know the original sample with all ten mouldings, and other accrued duplicates is elsewhere, so a better version of this shot is in the Blog's future, and looking at these, I think there's some merit to my hypothesis re. Tom Smith?

 

Furthermore, I'd suggest that whoever made these ships, made the Gladiators, both are relatively common in small quantities (down to single samples in mixed 'junk' lots), more common than other cereal premiums, and while there are none here, the metallic green in the original post, is matched perfectly in the Gladiators, originally, also Quaker.

 

Nine of ten, by size, with a hole for the missing one!

 

The two Sanella superstructures I have here, there are at least three, and they have a common hull, sometimes found loose, sometimes found glued together, like that water-film novelty I got from Steve Vickers recently. However, I'd forgotten . . .

 

. . . the larger., better finished liner, also marked Sanella, which is almost certainly a later model? The Manurba seem to have three hull types, not the two mentioned the other day - my bad! Pointed, rounded and flat sterns, and maybe only three matching superstructures? Although, like the Sanella - lots of colours, albeit brighter/primary, as opposed to Sanella's more muted or pastel hues.

 

Recently, with the help of Chris Smith (pink, middle), and - I think - another purchase (red, front), I've picked-up three vessels with WWI/turn-of-the-19th-Century forward sloping prows (there was a silver warship, from Adrian Little, still in a separate bag!), and it turned-out I'd found them online some time ago (2020);

 

Apparently sold in waxed-paper bags of twelve vessels, there are possibly only four sculpts/mouldings; twin-barrelled warship, single-barrelled warship, merchantman/tanker and liner? But with three marking variations (prow - my red one, stern - this set, and none - silver warship), there really aught to be more in the collection than there are?

 

The fate of all this Hong Kong bottom-end/pocket-money stuff is that it was always unappreciated and mostly went to landfill decades ago. So, if you have any going spare, bring them to the Plastic Warrior show, this Saturday, and I'll give you real Earth money for them!!

 

Finally, found in 2021, and as an addendum to that part-7 link above, another game which contains a micro-navy, to add to the games in that post, is the Ariel Games one, Manoeuvre, also sold as Strategy, from 1973;

 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8905/strategy-the-navy-game-for-all-the-family

 

Which is quite bloodthirsty, if you contemplate the number of troops you can have on a troopship! I'm sure there are more games with these micro vessels, and - of course - we've ID'd the slightly larger Silvercorn stuff, since those early posts.

A is for A Few Follow-ups!

A few things raised by stuff we've looked at recently, and despite a slower than usual posting rate so far this year, we've covered quite a bit one way or another, and here are a few bits and pieces related to some of the odds & sods, seen here in the last couple of months, or so!

 

This was an internet sales shot I downloaded a few years ago, I download a lot of stuff which illustrates stuff I don't have, but which it's not worth bidding on, or because I'm not - at the time - bidding, and this is one such. I downloaded it for the little blue Bisque pilot (whom I didn't know was bisque then, I assumed composition!), and, of which I've since picked-up a sample, seen in this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/06/bmss-is-for-more-plunder.html

 

The other stuff above is mostly common lead, some of which I've obtained in the last few years from Adrian's rummage trays, but it seems I'm still looking for the sub-scale chap. top, far-right, or is he the Crescent pilot (which I do have)? And the guy next to the blue pilot, also slightly smaller than the 54mm's. I think the sailor/lifeboat man, two along is a modern production, whitemetal solid?

 

While this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/05/d-is-for-donations-peter-animals.html

 

Reminded me I'd downloaded these wooden flats, when I saw them on sale, again, not the common poultry girl and chickens, but in the same vein, and like the farmer in Peter's donation, slightly better decorated. I've never seen the Wild West figures before, but will look out for them.

 

On the subject of the mazes we looked at, on the London Underground, it struck me, back in April, that the tiled panels at Warren Street (geddit? Warren = labyrinth, maze), should get an honourable mention! I think there's a deliberate mistake in this, but need to check it with the other panels, and there are several per platform and four platforms to check.

 

But if you look at the 7th tile along from the left in the second row from the top, it's not right? Breaking at least two rules - two red lines adjacent, and a shadow-wall falling away at the wrong angle?

 

The various Hulk's we've seen since Christmas! I think the oldest is the pencil top, and there are others to look at one day, so we'll return to Hulks at some point if I'm granted the time, by the powers that be, but the weather this week has suggested we might, none of us, have the time left, we've been hoping for or counting on!

 

I've got the blues! I thought there were six shades here, but actually there are seven, so the early works on Kellogg's jig-toys were pretty generalised in their colour lists, and clearly there were many runs of the tools, and cereal premiums was only one of several issues, for these polyethylene jig-toys.

 

These got left off one of the Peter Evans' donations, and are mostly Hong Kong small scale with a few kit-figures and other bits (central bag), but all grist to the mill! When I'm better organised, these will all go on the But Is It Giant? blog (no, none of them are!), and with both my own quite large collection of carded, bagged and blister sets, and the many I've also downloaded from the Internet over the years, we will make sense of them all, and annotate most of them!

 

Further to the recent purchase from Isaac's friend at Sandown Park;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/06/t-is-for-two-diver-sets.html

 

I took this image from evilBay back in 2021, and you can see the same soft 'polythene' ships (sans the hard 'styrene submarine), with one version of the sailors, taken from Britains hollow-cast US Marines, but what it would seem to suggest is that there's an ABC-CMV-HK link to some or all of these sets, more work needed, or a couple of confirmatory finds!

 

Sticking with vessels, these are a purchase a while ago, of the Quaker cereal premiums, we added five the other day, courtesy of Chris Smith, including a new colour (white), and while I haven't managed to shoot them all together, one day we'll unite them all and cover all the colours and all the vessels (ten?), however, I suspect, from the breadth of the colour range, these, like the Gladiators, found their way into Tom Smith crackers at some point?

 

I should have credited the seller at the time, name long-lost, and they probably don't even know of the Blog, let alone follow it, but this was a cheap BIN I got back in February '23, and this is how they arrived in an otherwise standard envelope, and I thought they were beautifully packed to ensure they arrived as they were seen in the auction shots.

 

The cereal premium submarine has all four periscopes/air-tubes/exhausts up, which was the real reason for bidding, the Quaker and Manurba vessles (middle pair) were grist to the mill, and the yacht might be from a board-game, but the keel suggests not? Maybe the water-bowl equivalent of Blow Football?!

 

And mentioned in passing in another plunder-post recently - the Tallon (UK) packaging of the Manurba vessels, I have quite a few Tallon packs now, but this one has eluded me so far, it'll come; nothing made after 1950 is 'really' rare!

 

There are two common hulls (flatter stern and pointed at both ends), to which two or three superstructure types are added, to each hull. We've also seen similar ships from Sanella, who had the one hull, and several suprestructures.

D is for Donation - Chris - [Not] Paratroops!

The exception which proves the rule! As we saw Chris's most recent parachute toy finds/donation in a post at the end of April, I thought we'd look at the civilian vehicular portion of the last parcel, and there haven't been any in the three recent tranches from Peter, so it all sort of balances out!

 

Vessels, and we have an all new - to me - sailing ship, possibly a game-playing piece, or just a novelty? A variation of Hong Kong mini bath-toy to its right, both versions of cereal premium baking soda submarine, and  Marx Miniature Masterpiece rubber boat, all good stuff!

 

Five of the Quaker cereal premiums at the back, two of the commoner Hong Kong Minic knock-offs. but in the less common blueish-sea green, and another of the forward sloping prow vessels, which were new to me, when we saw a silver one recently (probably also from Chris), this pink suggesting the bottom-end of rack toys, such as those parachutists who would come in a bag with a couple of aeroplanes and a cyclist or something . . . something like this ship?!

 

Another pair of cereal premiums, this time the R&L plastic-kit types of US locomotives, from different sets I think, and a similar Hong Kong effort in black, all three are in polystyrene.

 

A couple of Kinder or Kinder-like racers in the foreground, with something more interesting behind, it's in the style of a blow-mould, but is actually PE mouldings, plugged-together, however, what Chris would like to know (as I would), is . . . 

 

. . . who made it? It's clearly marked 'Made in Finland', and there can't be that many Finnish toy makers; we've heard of one or two, in the Space Toy business, courtesy of a loyal reader, on the Blog passim, but does anyone know who made this?

 

Micro-stuff included a Star Wars Micro-Machine, and one of the MPC 'minis' copies, out of Hong Kong, all useful grist-to-the-mill, and one day we will look at all the Micro-Machine stuff in better detail.

 

Vehicular jalopies aplenty! Game-playing piece, back left, I think (one of those car-park/traffic jam puzzle-games?), bits of some Kinder or similar model railway vehicles, a soft-plastic copy of the old dime store 'Morris Mini-Minor', the die-cast is a Hong Kong take on a Marx or Tootsie Toys mini, I suspect, while the charm-looped actual 'jalopy' is probably a cracker toy.

 

It's funny ironic too, as it's probably taken from those Japanese slush-cast minis carried by Shackman and others, while it is also aping the actual silver, or plate charm objects, of the sort well-to-do young ladies collected on a bracelet?

 

Back, centre is an interesting, all-plastic American muscle-car type (or Japanese sports type?), marked 280 ZX Fairlady, which Google revealed is a Japanese model - the eponymous Datsun-Nissan to be accurate, I don't know anything about the maker of the toy version though, do you?

 

Interesting, but very large, and will probably end-up on the swaps page, this is a Play Craft [sic - usually Playcraft] large-scale ('Big', G-gauge or LGB) hopper-car, for an all plastic floor/garden railway, the wheel-base however seems to match the soft ethylene infant railway, which shared the gauge of Brio wooden sets!

Heading to the card and paper tub (a Really Useful Box 35lt job), these are a pleasant mystery! Not apparently configured for slotted-wooden stands, but having clearly had the home-cut fragments of magnetised rubber sheet added by an owner, I don't recognise the characters, but they would seem to be recognisable comic creations? Can anyone add anything that might serve as a further clue? Batman?

 

A Gerry Anderson tie-in from Allen Industries; Super Car, see comments.

 

Thanks again to Chris for all these, the highlights, for me, are probably the pink vessel and the card bits, it's always nice to see things you've never seen before! Although a racing car from Finland is pretty special!

B is for Bagged, Boxed and Blister-Carded!

Now, there's a title I should have, could have, aught to've thought of years ago, having decided to stubbornly stick with the 'A is for . . . ' trope. Especially when I could have dropped it the first month, after we got to zed, or the next month after we'd gone back up to ay? But, whatever, we've had it now!

 

February's Sandown resulted in lots of nice things being added to the pile, and these are all those - we haven't seen yet - which came/come with their packaging, there not being enough stuff for thematic posts, I'm finding other ways to run-off shots from the main folder!

 

This was an amazing find, on the nostalgia front, not because you can't probably find them regularly on feebleBay, but because I hadn't thought to look, having forgotten this for several decades, but this was my Brother's piggy-bank, when we were kids. I had the hard polystyrene 'pillar-box', with three black bands, numbered as a combination lock (which I have seen, but not while I was buying), from Hong Kong, while my brother had this, also from Hong Kong, imported by CODEG Productions (Cowan de Groot)

 

It's not exactly the same, as his was yellow plastic under the flocking, which came off quite soon, ears first! So our Rupert was plain yellow for years, probably until we moved house in 1980, while this one is actually red polythene, so at least two production runs for this.

 

We loved Rupert, and had quite a few annuals from the Church fête, it was all a bit Edwardian, prep-school and jolly hockey-sticks, but kids don't mind, same with the Enid Blyton stuff, prejudices are passed-on by grown-ups, kids just like reading that other kids are having adventures in a pirate cave with a pet mouse in their pocket, or - in Rupert's case - chasing a Bramble Imp with an Elephant in a suit!

 

Purchased purely for the card sample, we looked at the figure set a while ago, as I have them all loose, but at that time I only knew about the five or ten set cards, now we have pairs, for really poor kids!

 

Close-ups; Slinger (below) and Stinger!

 

Box-ticking, I now have complete sets of Romans, Greeks and Egyptians, and most, if not all the Wild West, but I only had one nurse from this set, maybe another figure? Although, looking at the card-reverse, I still haven't found the firefighters!

 

Unusually (especially when you consider there are ten firefighter sculpts), there are only six poses in this set, with four duplicate pairs and two 'uniques' for the ten-count?

 

Contemporaneous with all those magnetic novelties, was this, Falbala the Fakir, from Fairylite, who could be cut in half, yet remain whole, I say 'could', because his - probably - phenolic-based polymer has warped, and he actually falls apart rather easily and stays together only with delicate intervention!

 

When new, you would prise his two body-halves apart, enough to get the sword in, then, upon slicing downward, would push a locking key out of the way. There are three of the slightly curved keys on a revolving wheel (think the Coat of Arms [legs] of the Isle of Man), so as the sword pushed one out of the way, another would come round and lock in behind it, so the Fakir stayed together as the sword went right through him!

  

From the 'Empire Made', I'm guessing this was a Swansea-operation corner of the 'Kins universe, if it was the US arm of Marx behind it, it would usually be 'Made in British . . . Hong Kong, Crown Colony' and/or etc. The seller had several, some with two Fairykins, some with common window-box accessories like the dog-house, but I thought the semi-flat guardsman was a bit different, and needed to be in the master collection!

  

More Humpties here;

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

 

100% sure this is Airfix, no pattern number, and no banner-logo, but in every other way mirroring other known examples of early Airifx novelties, plastic colours match the animal flat/building block/baby bricks, and the micro-aircraft I've also called as Airfix, while the card is very similar to the one the animal flats came on, and I bet those 'planes came from similar cards? I will add more imagery of it to the Airfix Blog, in a day or two.

 

Finally, a cereal premium Hulk, mint in 'food-hygienic' pack! Called 'Desktop Buddies' and issued in 2003 by various Nestle properties, including Golden Nuggets, it's actually a relief sculpt with a hollow back, but a packaging sample is always useful!

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! They've even given him an extra acetylene tank, below his air tanks!

 

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 moving, 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 first developed!

 

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, ships, 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), and 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 joints, but if a human needed joints 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 (Brownish)
• 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 a 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, industrial 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, for second palce, with two rounds to go. An android with Senna's 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!

 

Proper scans added 2th April 2026.