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?

D is for Dinky Dan Dare Derringer!

Nothing to do with Dan Dare actually, beyond my looking for an alliterative title! I picked this little sweetie up at the Autumn Sandown Park show, more because of the maker than the subject, the last thing I need is to start collecting ray-guns, but this comes into the category of novelty, both by way of its diminutive size and the fact it's a water-pistol!

 

It's very small, and the sort of thing we might have got in a Christmas stocking back in the day, if not this actual one? Also, it's quite robust in construction, still works with no cracks or leaks, and may have been retailed by Poplar well into the late 1970's, although I don't believe Springwwell Mouldings had a stab, but they may have?

L is for Lone Star's Luna Shooters!

Trawling the archive for more rayguns and water pistols, it quickly became apparent that Lone Star would tick both boxes for us! Isn't that nice of them, now the gloves are off, and we need to get this stuff posted!

From the 1958 catalogue comes the Dan Dare Space Gun, which, like most Lone Star cap-firing guns, would take a whole real of 'amorces' (we need em' for our forces!), and get through it in proper quick-time!

 

Mum would go spare "I'm not buying you any more caps, that's the last two rolls, use them sparingly, when they're gone, they're gone, that's IT", and if Dad was around he'd mutter "Use aimed shots, conserve your ammo.", neither of which entreaties would have any effect on us, as once the caps had run out, we just started "Bang! Bang!" 'ing each other, or the Collidge gang from Mattingley!

 

By 1963 Dan Dare was out, and generic sci-fi was in, with a quick renaming of the toy to The Space Ranger Pistol, which, even from black & white artwork looks to have been a tad more colourful?

 

Also from the 1958 catalogue, was this Trick Jet Water Pistol, with very 'spacey' lines, and if it was die-cast (possibly with similar brass fittings to the HR one?), there should be a few survivors out there, not that I intend to start collecting such things I have neither the room nor the budget!

R is for Renolds' Radical Rayguns!

Famous last words - "Hey, if I live for another 40 years I may never have cause to mention HR again on the Blog so I might as well tare the arse out of the imagery this time!", because, here I am, a mere 7 years later, mentioning them again!

 

HR Production (no 's') again, the Atomatic - see what they did there! And little known beyond the fact that they are water-pistols, in a non-stable polystyrene, which has warped slightly over time, but with a quite robust system, let down by a weak trigger which has gone for a Burton's on both examples, as it has on another, HR design I've seen. 

 

But the plungers both work (they'd make your finger sore), and the brass nozzle will be good, it's whether the tube is still performing full-suction that stands between victory or defeat at the hand of some dreaded Mekon from the next street! And note, the foresight is a space-ship!

Funny, despite posting some rayguns before, I don't seem to have Rayguns, or Water Pistols in the tag list? I best get them tagged up huh? Start collecting those dozens, nay, millions of hits from Google, I mean, it must be millions, to be worth falling-out after 15-years?

DY is for Dah Yang

Not often we have bone fide Taiwanese stuff on the Blog, I'm sure some slips by under the 'generic' label as Hong Kong/China, but Taiwan (whatever Beijing thinks) is quite a different place, and these are a lot of fun!

Equally - not often we have ray guns on the Blog, but it has happened before, although I won't know until I publish whether I tagged them as such? Also - do you think the gun is based on the artwork (nicked from a comic, annual or pulp paperback), rather than the artwork reflecting the toy? It's all a bit Dan Dare or Buck Rogers!

Dah Yang; new to me. The gun has a double mechanism of cap-firing and dart-firing and looks to be more modern that the card-art would suggest? This is a 'proper' ray-gun, with the dish-thing that makes it really lethal, the stacked-disc ones are all show and no firepower, I read it in Ray-guns & Ammo Monthly!

They make handguns too! Not only does this one have stacked-discs, but it's got the in-line tube/ring things too; Ray-guns & Ammo Monthly has very little good to say about them! But it's a repeater, and in enclosed spaces?

Just imagine; if only we could get every teacher, shopkeeper and bus driver to have their own - legally held - ray-gun, how safe the world would be?

A is for Alien Arsenal

So to past show-table photo-shoots, about a year ago I think for most of these - and most photographed on Mercator Trading's stand; some possibly still available?

Ray guns! Water-pistols or sparkers, rattlers, torches or cap-guns, everyone had a couple of these in a childhood, now the local copper's are likely to kill you real dead if you carry one outside...best keep them in the packaging!

This is a sparker, with it's distinctive heavy trigger from Omed Srl. near Naples, and possibly quite modern, the company seems to either be still be in business, or to have only recently vanished. The clip-on telescopic sight is a nice touch, but memory serves it was always the first thing to break!

An importer from Milan (Interglass Sas.) brought this one in from Hong Kong; another sparking toy. The card says Super Ray Gun but I think the wacky graphics on the body of the weapon are actually trying to say Spider Ray Gun? A tad older then the previous one I'd say; from both the card design and the plastic colours, and it's got one of the less comfortable flat triggers...hey, this stuff matters when you've got small hands!

Ideal Toys water-pistol, but not that 'Ideal Toy Co.' of the US...this Ideal is (or was until 2003) actually J.G. Schrödel of Nuremberg, Germany, now part of the Heinrich Bauer Group...indeed the frequency with which these turn up suggests they were in production recently? I just want to convert it into a space-ship...Look! Small-scale crew!

This is clearly the fighter to the bomber above! a single pilot with a determined countenance powering his machine into the enemy system to splurge them with sun-heated tepid water...Summer days huh?

Ah! Yes! ... The least rare 'ray gun' in the history of ray-guns...this one is a crank-handled 'clicker' making a noise similar to the great Marx Tommy-gun we had as kids, these were originally made by Pyro as the Pyrotomic Disintegrator Rifle in that distinctive mix of bronze and silver plastics which sums up the Pyro range, but has since been found to have been produced in Argentina, Brazil, Portugal (where these five Hercules hail from) and Spain.

There are differences between the various guns and these Portuguese one's were all over the place about three years ago following a warehouse find!

If you think that line-up is fancy, check out Geoff's Post on them!