This was meant to be a final installment on the kinds of reduced size space figures I'm utilizing for my art projects.
Click here to open video in a new window for fullscreen playback options.
Rarely seen LP Toys four inch astronauts with 50mm counterparts. The smaller three are correctly marked with the distinctive LP Toys logo.
Quite hard to find.
No base markings but a fairly safe bet they were pressed out at the Lik Be Plastics & Metals Factory sometime between 1967 and 1974.
Learn more about LP Toys' astronaut figure legacy at this page here on the Triang Spacex Golden Astronaut Toys website.
The sizes I usually work with up front. What led me to them was wanting astronaut figures roughly in scale for 1/64 diecast Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars. Which are great, but dude get me more of these spaceman figures. In fact to heck with the Hot Wheels, there's Golden Astronaut bling to score.
What I call Pistol Lunch Box Guy in 1/36 and HO scales. Smallest white figure at front center is a Multiple Toymakers "Space Case" copy.
The 26mm LP figures best known around this neck of the woods as the figures from novelty company Blue Shield's marvelously absurd Apollo Capsule Party Favor playsets. Each with an eggshell fragile miniature Lunar Module and seven 26mm LP astronauts.
The Lunar Module toys in the sets (as well as ALL of the Lunar Module toys of such size I've seen) has a rectangular hatch for a front door, a design change NASA implemented in or around January 1969. Prior to December 1968 the LM had a round docking hatch as a front door, which was changed to the rectangular pressure hatch as a weight saving measure. No Lunar Module with a round hatch ever flew, and the first LM flown by astronauts on Apollo 9 had the rectangular door, as did every LM thereafter.
Point being that if the Lunar Module toy has a rectangular door it had to have been made after January 1969. If it was made before then it should have the round docking hatch. Since all of the Blue Shield and LP fabricated LMs have rectangular hatches the earliest they could have been made was 1969.
Multiple Toymakers "Space Set" bling with simplified Thunderbird 5 space station and twelve figures based on the 26mm figures germane to the Blue Shield sets.
Not My Collection - The figures and Thunderbird 5 again in a "Space Case" folding playset, dated 1969.
The MT figures are very soft, blobby, waxy looking and crude. But most interestingly they have no weapons. One even has no hand.
... Must have been a long day at the plant.
With yellow Blue Shield strain, who is not only taller and more sharply defined but has his pistol. I would never be so crass as to suggest that MT simply used a Blue Shield variety figure as a positive for a cheap little ripoff mold and then wiped out the gun. But it sort of looks like that's exactly what happened. The only question would be what the extent of LP's involvement may have been, if any.
In case you blew off my video at top, an iteresting side note in how the removal of the guns matched was a change Multiple Toymakers (or Miner Industries, their parent company) implemented for their own flagship spaceman figures as well. For whatever reason, in 1968 some executive at Miner or MT decided their spacemen were no longer to be armed.
Two items come to mind, first the Peace Power anti war sentiment seeped into the popular consciousness. Second is that the Space Race and prospect of actually having men set foot on the moon ceased being science fiction. Our astronauts would bring cameras and sample bags not firearms or explosives, primarily because there was no one there to go out and exchange hostilities with. We were not invading or conquering the moon, a change in sentiment quite at odds with the more militaristic minded 1950s.
Space Rifle changed to Walkie Talkie
QUICK! - How would that work in a vacuum??
Pencils down! It wouldn't.
Pistol Lunchbox changed to Pistol Grabbber Stick
QUICK! - Would a metallic cartridge pistol work in a vacuum?
Pencils down! Yes, but the effect of recoil could be hazardous.
The spindly arm of Rope & Sextant Guy was also lowered and his body mass increased for better stability. Which strain is more common would be an interesting topic to pursue, with my best guess being the original sculpting. The figures first went on sale in or by 1963, so they'd had six years to churn them out by the time the casting change was implemented. The figures were a phenomenal hit, millions were pressed. By 1970 there was enough competition in the plastic space toy market to dampen further market dominance, including from companies like Payton who ripped off MPC's designs.
1967 bagged set with the weapons.
1968 bagged set with NO weapons.
I have only seen bagged sets which are either/or, never mixed, and all bagged sets I have seen dated 1969 or later have the updated weaponless figures.
Funny thing. I started using the space figures as a way to help get around the goofy awkwardness of my human figure skills. And now I have all these little astronauts to paint but they're so poorly formed they look like my goofy spaceman drawings. Checkmate.
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