I fell in love instantly with the classic Lido Toys space bling, it all rules. Most of their space production was oriented towards the "Captain Video and His Video Rangers" franchise including a massive Space Port playlet made in collaboration with T. Cohn. The Lido figures have a different intentionality then the precision of Marx plastics: There's a sort of rough-hewn hands on nature to the design, and their aliens are easily the most "cartoon like" of all the 1950s era space plastics. As in they'd be right at home in a twisted Chuck Jones cartoon frying each other with their rayguns while Bugs Bunny chews a carrot & makes wise cracks. Then drops a piano on them.
The fatalist in me is also drawn to how all of the Lido space molds were unceremoniously melted down in 1965 after the company had gone under. There will be no more, where the bulk of the Marx, MPC and Archer etc molds have likely survived. Preserving the lineage as it were, and it has finally sunk into my rather thick skull that Lido continued their space toy production beyond the demise of the "Captain Video" franchise they were probably originally designed for. I recently had the opportunity to land the marvelous 35mm "Beak Alien with Raygun/Pistol" shown above so let's take a look.
In comparison with 50mm version, which if I understand my Lidonian cladistics would have been pressed later as he is a soft plastic figure.
Changes during the downsizing include removing the crest on the top of his beaky head & simplifying the blunderbuss end of his raygun. Since the green fellow likely pre-dates the yellow its stabilizing base was likely a later addition to the form.
NOT MY COLLECTION
In case you skipped the video, here's an as-yet undated Kellogg's Shredded Wheat box from someone else's collection. As originally packaged each would contain what are described as "Satellite Men" in soft bronze plastic on the order of 2 inches in height. Since there is no reference to "Captain Video" my conclusion is the promotion was put together after the show had gone off the air in 1955. The most remarkable part is the back panel (right) which describes names for the eight 50mm Lido space figures utilized.
Question would be, did Kellogg's cook those names up for the giveaway or was it Lido's intention all along? Hit us up in comments or use the message system if you know.
Turns out I do have one specimen of the described two inch soft bronze plastic variety in my stash, hot diggity dog. None of my other Lido figures are of a similar looking material.
Quick guide to the names using 50mm figures from my stash, some hard plastic some soft. And to be honest? The eight year old in me would have been unimpressed by the names as they are random letters which have no phonetic value. I used electronic filter effects in my video to simulate how they may have been pronounced on their home worlds, though something tells me Kellogg's instructed the illustrator of the box to give the spacemen gibberish names. Nice try.
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