One of the pride & joys of my New Old Stock stash. "Space Vehicles" works as a name I guess, and the graphics do match. Carded set assembled by "LMR" - whomever they were - from simplistic plastic toy cars fabricated in Hong Kong at an as-yet undetermined point in time. Fell in love with the line instantly and maintained a display of admirable restraint in not opening the set, kept "sealed" only by staples. The act rewarded this fall by a score of four loose vehicles which appear to be from the series.
If anyone has any information about this toy range or the others shown below I am all ears, you can comment or message without being logged in.
I've been enjoyably puzzled by the things since first sight. Bodies are soft or stiff plastic with a hard plastic dome, simplistic wheels and what looks to be a plastic body cast from a die. The vehicle designs reek of 1950s futurism and would look right at home as miniatures in an Antonio Margheriti "Gamma One" movie.
Size & stylistic comparison to Hot Wheels' 2020 "Mattel Dream Mobile" which also has prominent bubble top and tailfin features. Vehicle first marketed in 1953 in a 1/24 scale friction drive toy designed by Elliot Handler and Joseph Kossof. Hot Wheels 1/64 scale version by Ryu Asada and Neal "Neelco" Smith, also ships in teal blue and key lime green. The stylistic similarity suggests contemporaneous design era, use of soft plastic suggests 1954 or 1955 as the earliest Hong Kong cars would have been in production.
Not My Collection - Further nosing around that well known auction site leads to some answers in the form of this batch which appear similar but are quite different. This group all manufactured in West Germany with interesting fictional vehicle specs stamped on their undersides. The fit & finish of the cars is also noticeably better then the Hong Kong vehicles, which one must conclude are copies of the German rigs. I do not have any examples of them in my stash just yet so I do not know if we are looking at hard or soft plastic hulls & wheels.
Cheers to the original uploader of these pix which are not of vehicles in my collection.
From the texture of the underside of this specimen I'd say that's a soft plastic body, the wheels as well.
The designer must have been having a ball when concocting those vehicle specs.
My favorite of the designs. That thing is all boss.
Another set with the same attributes. Yeah I want that Space Truck, on my desk, lookin' at me. Also quite noticeable is how uniform and well-crafted the bubble domes are in comparison to the Hong Kong cars.
So, an attribute to look for are white wheels. If the wheels are black it is likely a Hong Kong copy. Check the markings to be sure, and give me a shout if there are any extras to go around.
Still very sweet, and from my eye cast from the same mold (die?) but with less care. The fictional vehicle specs from the underside of the German cars are all scratched out with Made In Hong Kong stamped over the mess. Would they be "copies" or "recasts"? To me a copy means a new sculpt including using an original toy as a mold positive. So my opinion is that these were recasts made from the German molds with the stamping information removed. Then fabricated in Hong Kong by a toy company less focused on quality then pressing units.
"Wild Wild Planet" car.
Note poor forming on that right headlamp.
I think this one's my favorite of the looses. Rolls the best of the bunch too.
This one may end up in a space artwork with its body repainted. Don't care much for the pink. Bubble dome is also unevenly formed.
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