OK, back to these things. Five Marx vehicles recast in fluorescent flexible plastic -- The kind that jeeps & tanks from your basic Army Man set would be cast in. Obtained to be utilized as subjects in photographic based Space Art, so their provenance was not an issue. Only how cool they look, and by the time I was ready to score had done my basic research, knew exactly what I was getting, and actually kind of like the day-glow colors. When queried the vendor stated they had been obtained from an old store which had gone out of business and was being liquidated, which sounds about right. Cost was about $6/ship, which I count as a bargain.
The package was a loosely sealed bag surrounding the vehicles and a printed "card". More like a printed sheet which just happened to be on cardboard. Nobody ever hung this thing from any pegs, the bag was sealed though with a device using a hot wire to both sever and seal a two layer plastic form with closed sides. We used one in Rhino Records to seal used CDs as an anti-theft measure.
... The colors actually don't matter as the point of having them is to utilize as subjects in diorama pix which then get painted over in any color which strikes the fancy. Anyway I had to have em and here is what was discovered upon opening:
Here's the card after unsealing and it has nothing to do with space ships: Looks like a TinkerToy type building set. My translation came up with READY FOR PLAY / POLI-MAN / "VERSATILE MAN", with "Poli-Man" likely being the brand name of the toys and "Versatile Man" the name of the specific playset.
All totally bogus, spuriously re-used, likely from a leftover stack which whomever was responsible for it there in Mexico didn't want to go to waste. Then they had these space ships and needed a package for them to be contained in. Since the figures on the kid's creation resembled spacemen well, there you go. Borrow a wire sealer from somebody and seal up a hundred to distribute locally to a network of stores who didn't ask a lot of questions and would stock anything that looks like it might sell. Nice painting.
The business corner. MADE IN MEXICO FOR / DYNAMIC TOYS OF MEXICO with their address. Right. Of more interest is the NET CONTENTS X PZS. on the side, with the number 24 X'd out. That would have been the number of pieces in Poli-Man's "Versatile Man" playset pictured on the card.
Which leaves us with this label (and the loose matchbook sized note about a guarantee of quality) mentioning HUNTER PLANES (which I guess would colloquially translate to FIGHTER PLANES, you'll see why) with 5 PIECES and a printed bin number. The printing on it does look modern, as in 1990s or since, and the vendor had stated that the set was packaged in the 90s but they didn't know how old the castings themselves were. I believe them.
Now for the ships. Delving around during the period between first finding the listing and making the buy -- quite a while, actually -- I was able to determine that these were recasts of Marx made spaceships from the 1950s, though not necessarily Flash Gordon spaceships as the vendor had claimed in their listing. Which makes sense as they do resemble the Flash Gordon ships made by Premiere and later Tootsie Toy, though to my knowledge Marx did not specifically market them as Flash Gordon merchandise. They may have hinted at it, and their original castings were done in a very hard plastic with metallic colors of varying hues. To learn more about them here is a link to the venerable Space Plastics database at the Alphadrome web hub of all things related to vintage space toys:
The four space ships unbagged.
NICE.
Right there at the top of the database page is this monster, identified as a recast A WING SPACESHIP #4 in lemon.
That actually does look like something which might have been proposed as a functioning design, and the USAF emblem is strangely fitting -- Never knew our Flyboys had any of these.
Now one bit that is fascinating is that these recasts all have the correct numbers on their bases but in reverse. All I can think is that they used originals as their mould-positives, obliterated the Marx logos and forgot to flip or remove the numbers. "Unauthorized Bootlegs" is what we'd call them if they were copies of CDs or DVDs.
But still way cool!
CLAMSHELL SPACE SHIP (#3), easily the most visually striking of the bunch, and I like how they put the Japanese emblem for a Mitsubishi Zero on its wing.
Gorgeous, whatever its origin.
My favorite touch is the ladder leading across the wing, which helps fix a sense of scale in the mind's eye. I'd bid on a metallic plastic casting of one and gave up at the forty dollar mark, which was one of the things which prompted me to just put these in the cart and make it happen. Brought home one of each for about 1/2 the cost. And as for the originals, to conjure up Chico Marx from "The Coconuts" once again "We'll find time for both."
#3 reversed with what could possibly be a defaced Marx stamping.
On the opposite wheel hub, and again I detect a defaced or removed logo stamp. Also note the uber-simplistic wheel/axle design.
... Thing does kind of look Japanese. Like a Baaka bomb.
DOUBLE GUN SPACE SHIP (#1) in Key Lime green.
The most Flash Gordonish of the batch, I'd say.
Yeah, go strafe somebody with those things. Totally badass space plane.
My favorite of them all, the TWIN FUSELAGE SPACE SHIP (#2). I've wanted a Manoil Blimp Car for the longest time and you know, this is kind of better. The blimp thing is just a car. This flies.
AWESOME.
Backwards #2 and what I am pretty sure is a scratched out Marx logo. Busted.
Six bucks was a bargain. That thing is cool, distinctive, unique, and not at all like anything you can order off Amazon, Walmart, Target. Nope.
Also included to round out the group is this recast delta wing fighter which I believe to be based on either a Convair F-102 Delta Dagger (conceived 1953, entered service 1956) or a Convair F-106 Delta Dart (conceived 1956, entered service 1959) and am hedging on the F-102. Am fairly certain that it is a simplified re-casting of the basic body of another Marx delta jet which had firing missile launchers under each wing. And what is also very interesting is that its markings are not reversed.
Pretty sure that's an F-102. Am not up on my Cold War era fighter jets however and would be delighted to have someone in the know ID it for sure.
Some of the stickers had come loose in the packet over the years, will have fun marking em up! and I want more Zero emblems for the Clamshell. Very very cool.
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