S is for Still a Question Mark!

When I started this Blog, I was happy to get 40-hits a day, within a few months I was expectant of 400-hits, and that was the case for another twelve/eighteen-months or so, since when it's steadily climbed to the point that excepting bot days (20,000-plus!), if I don't get 4000-hits a day, these days, I assume something as monumental as a Bank Holiday, Royal wedding or cup-final is occurring, or where are you all, and why aren't you reading my blog!

But, joking aside, it means there are many more loyal (and not so loyal) readers now, and many more here, than over on the Airfix Blog, which is more of a niche interest, even if these may end-up there one day, preferably ID'd, to which end, I'm going to ask this question again, in the hope we can get an answer! It has been asked in Plastic Warrior magazine too, a year or two ago now, but generated no replies if I recall correctly?

Who made these?

 

Copied from the Airfix HO/OO model kits, I think specifically the 25lbr, Quad and Limber kit, but two of the poses were shared with the Bren-gun Carrier and 6lbr. They are approximately 45mm, manufactured in a dense polyethylene, or - more likely - polypropylene, and must go with an artillery-gun toy, but Hong Kong, European die-cast, or, something else?

The painted one is probably a home-paint, done to match the Marx figures issued with the Power Mite truck (mentioned a while ago)? And they have integrally-moulded bases, not the glue-on's of the small-scale originals. The lower figure having been removed from his. When they were in PW there was the sitting gunner as well, but also on a base, and I think the whole-shell guy? I only have the empty-case guy, but that puts them as copied from the 25lbr, not the 6, as I've yet to find the standing guy in this guise?

 

25lbr, Quad and Limber

Holding shell

Holding empty-case

Pointing

Swagger-stick NCO

Seated at gun

Seated in Quad

 

 6lbr and Bren Carrier

Holding Shell

Pointing

Standing

Seated in Carrier

But, have you seen them in the packaging, do you know what they accompanied, can you put a maker's name, or brand-mark to them?

 

Because I've mentioned the Airfix Blog - I added a bunch of my own stuff to the early figures post a while ago, followed that up with some shots from Chris, and his own and donation figures, also a while ago, and have just found and added some more shots from Glenn in New Zealand, so there's lots more on that post/page;

https://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/2010/06/1949-1960-approximately-early-toy.html

E is for Eye Candy - Crescent Highlander Swoppets - Late Follow-up?

I have a folder simply marked 'George K', dated July 2020, which I suspect might be the follow-up images mentioned in the comments, last time we looked at these, back in 2018;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/11/s-is-for-swivel-not-swoppet.html

 

Or related to them in some way (there are two years between the events), in which case, this post is a follow-up which never happened, but it was a bloody odd year, and, with Mum and Girly-Girl both leaving this world, over Christmas, a rather shit one, in which I had other things on my mind, but many thanks to George K for sending them, and here's the officer who was missing last time.

 

This time the marching rifleman's the missing chap, Crescent's 60mm 'swoppet' Highlanders, marching, fighting (the Officer) and dancing, I think that sums-up Glasgow on a Saturday night? Thanks again to George K.

N is for Not u'Nuthurrr One!

Oh yeah! Winging its way to me just before I went off to work yesterday . . . no, it had been there for a while, but I was ill the day before, and a bit slow yesterday! However, I promised to post it by last night, only to realise I couldn't extract the image from a PDF, Doh! So a bit late, but, in case anyone hasn't seen it yet (it's been on John's, Stads' and PW's Blogs already!) here's notification of . . .

 

. . . the 41st year of Plastic Warrior'ing! Some of you may notice it's slipped another couple of weeks in the calendar, but if you're one of those whose spent out at Sandown Park in May (guilty as a Perp in Mega City One, m'lud), you'll now have seven or eight weeks to save-up for Twickenham's polymer-fest . . . Bargain!

 

Full details here, I'll try to post something similar closer to the even, as will Brian Carrick, I'm sure. 

 

4th July? That rings a bell? . . . Hummmm, 4th July . . . oh yeah! Battle of Klushino, upstart Russia taught a lesson by the Poles in 1610, that'll be something to commemorate! See you there!

R is for Real Odds & Sods

The folder is called 'Odds & Sods'! I found it languishing in 2023, and all or some of it may have been seen here at Small Scale World already, all or most of it may be from a Sandown park show (some definitely is), most or a few bits may be from a visit to a friend's house, and bits but not all or most may have been a "Found these, if you want them" type donation in passing!

 

A large Indian, probably Tudor Rose, but others did do such figures and I haven't looked it up, scaled with a Kellogg's/Crescent ringmaster, to reveal the 90/100mm size of it.

 

Some of this is in the next shot, so definitely a Sandown or part Sandown lot, with highlights including all four Lone Star Wild West children and the bear-fighting backwoodsman (who can also fight the corresponding Indian, who can also fight the bear!), I remember posting the good Doctor Thadeus P. Tripp and his hidden bottles, from Timpo, while two Belgian composition stick-out at the back.

 

Posted a variation of this at the time, definitely Sandown, and fully covered somewhere? The Taxi went on to another home. We've since also seen a colour variation of the racing car, Rosedale I think, and possibly three in the collection now?

 

Not sure if I've posted these before? The Plasty ACW Union soldier is grist to the mill, but the Lone Star 60mm swoppet is a very different beast, it's the only one I've got, I've probably never seen the whole set, except in an article somewhere, and they are very hard to find, not least as they are getting brittle (my base is going), so a nice find!

 

A handful type donation? Three blow-moulds, two Japanese novelties, maybe Christmas cracker prizes in 'styrene, and a larger bear, probably Hong Kong and possibly once flocked, although that would mean somebody added the eyes after the flocking had come off? An acid-etched (or acid matted) pug-dog in poured/moulded-glass is a fun find, and some other odds and sods!

 

Two French figures on the left? Historical characters? Rural dress/regional stereotypes? Or just from a large wagon model-kit? A Marx dog, from the Hong Kong arm, in Warriors of the World style, possibly? And a Marx TV Tinykin definitely!

 

Prone to laying about; the Marx nude as a re-issue, a fallen but still fighting African Native from Elastolin, apparently not rare, as a whole sack-load or two were found when the factory closed-down, and one of several similar 'tied-to-a-tree' figures from various European manufacturers, and I never know which is which - Jean, Manurba/Heinerle, Dom, Texas, Hugonnet?

 

Kinder (technically; Marajà) Zorro, incomplete, but I already have three different colour variations, complete, with others still on the runner, so just useful spares, a Spanish (or Argentine copy?) horse, for which a rider may already be waiting in the pile, and one of these odd artillerymen, we saw here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/10/m-is-for-more-mashed-military-men.html

 

Eight years ago! Where does the time go?

F is for Follow-up - Marx Space

As a follow-up to last Spring and Autumn's posts on the rather mixed contents of my two Marx playset boxes, and associated stuff, here are a few scans with a bit more info'. Not much, but it'll get Burbank attached to the Marx Space tag, and may have clues as to one of the size variants of space-base accessories?

 

So, Burbank Toys of Wellingborough, were the Marx sales 'arm' of Dunby-Combex-Marx, although I think they also carried some Mattel items, and they issued at least one glossy catalogue (in 1979), which has three space-related playsets.

 

This is the Martian Landing Playset, and you can see that the 'Aliens' group (presumably all Martians in this case!) is the same six figures which keep turning up in apple-green, not the seven claimed elsewhere? But that could be a British thing, either a Swansea leftover or a Burbank-specific detail, however it might explain why I have picked up a few of them, now?

 

The Air Command set is, like the Kennedy sets seen here last February, more realistic, and has the trucks and ground crew of those sets, with four delta fighters, while Star Station 7 has the NASA'nauts with a full set of vehicles and most of the accessories. Note also: the Balloon-tyre mould tool seems to have gone missing, or stayed in the 'States!

 

It struck me that the colour of the accessories in both sets here, matches the smallest version we looked at in September, so it may be that they too, are Burbank-specific, which would make sense, as these sets were literally among the last iterations of Marx, and as part of the 'far-flung' UK arm, might well have got a third, or copy set of tools?

 

Schmidt in Germany produced a board game, Weltraumfahrt 'Space Travel' (On Board Game Geek), with four glow-in-the dark astronauts, and you can see the artwork draws (heheh!) heavily from the Marx tower accessory, for the ship which takes our intrepid Weltraumfaher to their destination.

 

I'm not sure if I've got the figures/contents, or if the box came with something else in it, or even empty from a friend, but I scanned it, during a scanning-session, before it went to storage, I was buying a lot of space-stuff at the time, and most of it went to storage unshot, you may remember the shot of the car, all packed up with space. sci-fi and fantasy, when we looked at the pocket sets a few years ago.

 

This is from a Marx branded fold-up flyer which probably came from a toy, you know the kind of thing, Spears and Waddington's were always including a leaflet in their board games, it also included the wheeled skier set (which might help date it?). Not dated, but pre-1971, from the pricing, which equates to about £2.40p.

 

I have a vague memory of a friend having this, and it being quite heavy, I mean to the point where, as an eight-/ten-year-old, you were happy to surrender it when it was somebody else's turn, as your wrist was getting achy! There's a small, pre-digital, record-player and speaker in there, long before true miniaturisation! U2 Batteries became SP2 and are now known as D-cells.

F is for Follow-up - Fantastic Flying Fancies!

So, as promised, I fired-off the recently found (and seen here) Tom Smith novelty artifact, the 'Surprise Space Rocket' at our Christmas Breakfast (more of a brunch) meet, and we can now look at the contents and finish studying this delightful example of how Austerity Britain cheered itself up in the 1950's! Actually, probably the 1960's!

 

This has a video of the launch in the middle, but also has all the images from both posts as an accompanying slide show, and I didn't know whether to put it at the start or the end, but the whole point of the thing (post and event) is to see what happens, so it should go first!

 

So, the contents were a bit disappointing, in that I had hoped they might be space-related, astronauts, spacemen, little UFO's or something, but actually they were pretty standard budget-end novelties, classics in fact, with two whistles, one a novelty face, a 'magic' fortune-telling fish, plastic 'tangram' puzzle and small red balloon. In fact, it's all a bit red!

 

Not a game - see video - there was also a very simple card rocket kit to cut out, and glue, the only real nod to the theme of the container, I will scan and print it, laminate it to some stiff card, and make up the duplicate, as a future follow-up, to this follow-up!

 

The six pieces are one-sided (colour/print-wise) as I may be able to build it on a card tube or wooden dowel of the correct diameter, and reinforce the landing legs with tooth-picks or coffee stirrers?

 

The party hats were the bulk of the 'shot', being the sort you see in old TV sitcoms, soaps or drama's from the 1960's or early 1970's, so it may not be the 1950's item I thought it might be?

 

Much taller than modern Christmas Cracker hats, and manufactured in crepe-paper, they have tissue frills around their tops in the same pinky-orange paper as their restricting-for-packing, paper 'vest' wraps, and one is decorated.

 

The decoration is more Easter-themed, with rabbits, bears and little flowery things (it looks like), than Christmassy, but of the same mawkishly sentimental style as wrapping papers of the era, I can still, well remember. So these 'poppers' were clearly aimed at the birthday and other celebratory market, to take up some of the slack of the quiet period between Christmas cracker seasons!

 

Construction was a loosely overlapped card tube, held together with the decorated rocket paper, with chip-board discs sandwiching the spring, and lighter fibreboard or hardboard discs holding the toys in another sandwich above the hats. A gap of about 10-mil, helps the spring generate acceleration, before the contents meet the lid.

 

Turns out the top just slides out, and I'm hoping to carefully feed this back behind the outer wrapper, eventually. For now, I've folded it down to preserve the folds and prevent the loss of the hardboard piece!

 

You will notice from the video, the toys go one way and the hats another, one suspects that if the quite substantial, bed-spring type wire-helix, hadn't been in compression for 50 or 60-years, everything would have flown further! There was no pyrotechnics though, I thought there may be a snap, as with crackers, but nothing of the sort!

M is for Maruzem Beretta 92SB

Yeah! Don't tell the Rozzers, they shoot you for owning shit like this! Fortunately, it's buried in a storage container, and is only a lighter! But it's made to resemble the real thing, and is unusual for being a lighter, these Japanese-licensed toy guns are usually air-soft BB pellet firers, not lighters.

It's actually scaled-down a bit too, maybe 30%'ish? But you wouldn't carry this around now, it really could get you shot! All the rage at a leisure-pit, keys in the fruit-bowl, bright, patterned skirts, long hair and flares, freak-off, in the early 1970's, how times change!

 

When we were kids, we loved stuff like this, we'd spend our pocket-money on it, on a day-trip to France with the school, but you don't even see it for sale over there now . . . my brother bought a flick-knife, a proper one!

 

It's a gas-burner, filled via a nozzle hidden in a small recess in the pistol grip, and a small flame-adjuster is hidden in a recessed slot near the trigger. 

 

There is a more obviously novelty one, petrol/lighter-fluid fired, but it needs work, the Bakelite handle has come loose with warping, and the mechanism is jammed solid, so, I thought, maybe, if I ever get the time, and manage to settle down, I'd do it as a project for YouTube, I've seen people work wonders with solid lumps of rust, this just needs a bit of TLC; disassemble, clean, straiten, lubricate and reassemble!

A is for Another Book Plate!

I'm working through a folder of over 800 scans, and came across (became reacquainted with!) this, which probably should have been in the posts on bookplates a while ago!

It's actually printed into the front flyleaf of an 1879 imprint of Goethe's Faust, translated by Anna Swanwick, the blank area being for the owner of the book to sign or print their name, as a form of pre-printed bookplate. I've worked on it in the contrast tool, to make it a little clearer, the original is quite feint.

The signature below the etching is that of the artist Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch (1779–1857), a German painter and etcher known for his outline illustrations of classic literary works, especially those by the aforementioned Goethe, and Schiller. There are another 40 etchings "engraved on steel after the works of Moritz Retzsch" in the book.

 

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_Retzsch

 

As I go through the folder I'm also adding various minor-make entries to the A-Z Blogs, and there's been a couple of disambiguations added too, so I may concentrate on the A-Z's, this year?

I is for If I Have To!

Not really in the mood, so expect an intermittent service in January! In case anyone else hasn't noticed, the World's going to hell in a hand-cart, and there's no sword-based baby to save us. And who had Putler turning out to be the mere Mussolini to Trump's Hitler, on the card for 2026?

 

Happy New Year!

I know from my job, this was generally, a crap Christmas, the most telling sign of which, was that all the fairy-light shit and illuminated/inflated, technicolour bollocks in peoples front gardens (hey, you can do it tastefully, or you can do it as half-arsed shit, or OTT classless excess, most chose one of the latter two options!) had gone by the 5th. Last year many were up through the second week of Jan', and we weren't swamped, at work, like last year.

 

Anyway, plenty more to say, and I'll keep saying it; those who pretend it's not happening deserve everything that's coming, for never getting involved! Getting back into the saddle with a simple box-ticker, this is from the UPC scans folder, and follows-up, or follows-on from the previous posts on the subject - Monograms many copyists.

 

I was promised a load of stuff on the subject back when we looked at them on one of the other occasions, but I've heard nothing more, and suspect Covid may have changed those plans? We looked at them, in no particular order, here:

 

Revell/Roco-Minitanks - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/07/m-is-for-monograms-many-mates.html

 

UPC (1st post!) - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/05/u-is-for-universal-powermaster.html

 

Fujimi - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/07/us-army-is-for-more-clones.html 

 

Model Power - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/08/r-is-for-roco-as-rack-toys.html

 

Hong Kong's finest! Still needs a lot of work, but this was a reasonable primer! https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/m-is-for-monograms-men-made-much_10.html

 

You'll also find Past the Post and ABC, and others, on the Monogram Tag, but this is the UPC supporting stuff:

 

Box art from the HO set (3034), copied from Roco.

 

Rather dodgy early photocopy of the instruction sheet from the James Chase collection. 

Catalogue image, 1968/9.

From the same catalogue, the image (and box art?) for the "1:40"th set (5149), actually the same vaguely 1:35th of all the other versions which aren't reduced to HO/OO.

An instruction sheet I happen to have, and which may sort the question over some of my polystyrene samples, which seems to hint at an alternate box-art, closer to the Revell 'convoy ambush' artwork, of one of the larger sets. In fact, that's a clue as to Roco's being copies of Revell, as the Patton Figure was only in that large 4-kit set, he being the Sherman tank commander?!

 

That's it, just a box ticker!

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!