The "set" in question. Came bagged with the reproduction header card at upper left in a very modern bag. Twelve ~30mm spaceman figures and a bootlegged Thunderbird 5.
The suspected source of the toy forms, 1970 Multiple Toymakers "Space Case" playset, which also includes a non-wheeled Billy Blastoff space buggy. Unfolds into a space station as shown at lower left.
US quarter for scale. Nice little thing.
No markings.
But it does like something got rubbed out at the mold stage between the 6 and that raised hump.
Here again on the tail at lower, looks like something got scratched out.
Figures are very crudely cast. Shiny waxy plastic, no markings on their base undersides.
For comparison, at right one of the "Space Set" copies, at left figure on the left from a UK cake decoration vendor's set with Hong Kong marking on its base's underside. Notice that the figure on the right doesn't seem to have a pistol, nor do any in that pose from the grouping above, which at first I'd concluded had to be a casting error.
Same sources as above. Figure on the left's pistol is indistinguishable or outright removed. MT/MPC did remove the firearms from their 54mm spacemen in either 1968 or 1969 with a casting change to three figures. The "Space Case" playset these figures are presumed to have been taken from with a 1970 date on it. So these may have undergone some editing prior to being cast. The angular relation of the suit ribbing on their upper thighs is also visibly different.
By contrast these are the four figures obtained from the UK cake decorations vendor. All weapons present.
All four marked Hong Kong, came with a blue lunar module similar to the "Blue Shield" sets.
For further comparison figure at left from the UK cake lady, in white from a different "lot" of vintage plastics. The angular strokes used for the rippling in his space suit different at just about the hip level from the red figure.
Same sources as named above and this time the difference in sculpting is quite noticeable around the hip section. Upper left chest region as well.
Angular relation of the ripple strokes on the back of their thighs is quite different. Their molds appear to have been created from slightly different models.
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The main gist of the update is that this "Moon Traffic" set has nothing to do with the Roxy and Clifford Toys range which ripped off the Spacex & Golden Astronaut series. It is not shown on researcher Paul Vreede's http://www.triangspacextoys.info/and he has nothing like it in his reference collection.
The figures are apparently unmarked LP spaceman copies and the Lunar Module bears a consistent resemblance to the Blue Shield Apollo Capsule party favor sets in size, design and US flag decal. The apparently unmarked Command Service Module is out of scale for its Lunar Module, but the CSMs issued in the Unique Party Favors Space Set packages and Imperial Toy Corp. Apollo Moon Exploring Set #304D are in scale with it. They are also in scale with the Blue Shield Apollo Capsule Lunar Modules which the one in the "Moon Traffic" set appears to be identical to.
???
Dunno. Hope that clears things up!
Any info give us a shout in comments, you don't even have to sign in.
I have been obsessed with the Apollo Lunar Module since the age of four and never hesitate to snag an odd re-working of it whenever an unusual variant crosses my path. This did, and for starters I am not convinced the parachute jumpers are related beyond possibly having been packaged together as party favors. Vendor had no information other then describing it as "Used" and "Vintage". The latter confirmed by being stamped Made In Hong Kong, which to me means likely 1972 or earlier, 1980 or earlier for sure.
Overall size of the LM is about four inches, the parachute dudes somewhat smaller than usual at about 1.5 inches. I especially like the ladder, the radar dish, mysterious green & blue structures, and love the American flag decal.
Observations: 1) The parachute guys do not fit in the central "dish" section. 2) The opaque or colored pieces are all cast in softer plastic, the clear section and parachute guys in hard plastic. 3) The underside of the descent stage base as the number 2 stamped on it. 3) The ascent stage has Made In Hong Kong stamped in front of the green part. 4) The landing feet have what look to be grabber claws on their underside suggesting they are meant to clip onto something. 5) There is a central "plug" piece fitting into the middle of the descent stage's base. 6) There are no outlet channels or "shaker" holes in the ascent stage. 7) Trying to twist or turn the blue and green pieces on the ascent stage does nothing I can discern.
The parachute jumpers do not fit through the plug hole in the descent stage so again I am not convinced they belong together with the LM. Just a random "Lot", chosen for their colors perhaps. Of more interest is that I cannot see how one would extract whatever they load into the clear dish cavity other than by pulling the plug, seen under the red guy's feet. Easier just to take the top section off but then again that might have been the point: Shaking out some sort of confection like a Tic-Tac usually consumed one at a time.
Will offer that what my eyes see as "grabber claws" on the landing feets might just be protrusions meant to spike into the frosting of a cake as a decoration piece. Any thoughts are welcome in comments, and you don't need to sign in to chime in around here.
By Ajax, "vintage 1950s". Has the atom bomb backpack seen below. Missing his fitted clear helmet but those aren't impossible to find, presuming he had one. And I like the yellow. It's different.
Left: Made In Hong Kong, maker/age unknown.
Center: Ajax, early-mid 50s.
Right: Maker/age unknown.
Had parachute jumper army men as a kid & loved them to death. This was my first encounter with the concept in vintage Space Patrol era astronaut form. Both jumpers cast in a softer Army Man type plastic, Ajax in hard brittle dense plastic. Am convinced their forms were derived from the Ajax design.
Green dude and Ajax guy both have what I am calling atom bombs strapped to their backs (more likely rocket packs but it's my blog). Blue dude's back feature looks like more of an afterthought.
Blue guy has totally different boots, less of a ray gun but sharper details. Green guy's features much more closely modeled on the Ajax design. Blue dude looks like a low-cost knockoff by a company who was already making PJ figures & wanted to add a spaceman to their line.
... I gotta admit, those boots on the blue guy were a selling point just because of how different they are then the green one.
From the playbook I subscribe to, Made In Hong Kong = 1960 - 1972. I think it's a safe bet to opine that he is early to mid 60s, though I have never seen an Ajax/Archer type spaceman with Hong Kong markings on it prior to this. Who in Hong Kong was copying those forms?
Mouth open, eyes protruding.
Mouth closed, eyes sunken.
Ajax's triangular chest feature is checker-cut with diamond shaped points, the other two raised dots randomly placed to fill the triangle.
Decided last week that my LP Toys box had become overstuffed with Checker Rockets, Apollo CSMs, Major Matt Mason vehicles and all those damn Golden Astronauts. Did some shifting around within the boxed collections -- I am the kind of collector who lives to put their toys away -- and freed up a nice graduated snap-lid storage box by Sterilite to house the loose Spacex & Golden Astronaut vehicles from the middle deck. Which I'd kept in the LP box even thought Multiple Toymakers are credited with actually pressing the moulds: They are all woven up in the same legacy of Made In Hong Kong Space Toys, and the best way for those interested to learn about it is to visit the Commodore's Triang Spacex Golden Astronaut website by clicking here.
After Operation Moon Base it is the shit when it comes to Space Toys. And unlike Moon Base's closed universe there will always be more of this Hong Kong stuff to find.
Obtained as a "New But Opened" unit, and I do believe it was even though entropy has not been kind to the packaging. Above the most dead-on shot I could get of the blister card art without peeling the remaining plastic off. Will maybe try that acetone method so it can go on the scanner; love those diagonal lines.
Set unpacked, with anonymously made three-stage Cap Bomb rocket Made in Hong Kong and the rocket gantry from the Remco Space Shuttle set I obtained for its spacemen. Well, and the gantry too. Without a gantry for your rockets you are just waiting for a stiff breeze, Holmes.
LUNCH SITE ... Mom liked that. Helped me edit pix and likes the Security Copter best. She also has a "thing" about mispronouncing the word as "heel-ee-oh-copter", much as she insist on calling performer David Bowie as David boo-wee. So I like showing her the helicopters in my little collection such as yea, and referring to it as "David Boo-Wee's Heel-eee-oh-copter" and it always gets a laugh out of the old gal. He had to have security for his concert, you see, so they used a heleocopter.
Some artiness here ...
See, after Marx's "Operation Moon Base" this stuff is the shit. Exactly the kind of colorful flimsy dollar store quality plastic crap from Hong Kong that my father would have stridently opposed our having as kids. We had our sturdy 6-inch Marx guys, Space Buckets, a succession of model kits which were loved to pieces, and then the "Adventure Team" era G.I. Joe astronaut stuff -- never had the space capsule, but I had that thumb-powered heleocopter -- after which we were done with Space Toys. It was all G.I. Joe & Hot Wheels in that house from maybe 1974 on.
The G.I. Joe connection is also prescient as that it was likely searching for ATV 6x6 forms which led me to the T-T Terrain Tiger vehicle, which was even yellow just like G.I. Joe's open top yellow ATV. Wanting to learn about it led me first to the Alphadrome Indexes of Space Toy forms, then to the Triang Spacex Golden Astronaut website maintained by Commodore Vreede. Been hopelessly hooked on the aura of the toy range since, only cure being to try and make my own. Like something from the past that I would have no way of remembering as I'd never experienced it. Shielded, likely, from such forms during forays to the toy stores. I woulda had to have every last one of them.
And indeed I was too young to have seen a scrap of this as a kid. Born in 1967 and never heard of Golden Astronauts at all before encountering The Ancient Mariner over the winter. Instantly hooked: The Spacex/GA Moon Base is a Holy Grail List item for sure. Just warming up with these very basic Earth-bound vehicles, and had already obtained compromised examples of each.
Left: T-T "Terrain Tiger"
Center: Forklift 7 "Lift Loader"
Right: P3 "Security Patrol Copter"
Untouched, unplayed with, New Old Stock examples. Hallelujah.
Our Golden Astronauts with L5 driver. "Golden Astronaut" striking me as subtle homage to Gerry Anderson, whose "Project Sword" publications were the source of many vehicles from the Sx/GA range.
Roosevelt Dime for scale, and my first "new" loose GAs.
In it's original 54mm size the figure on the left was intended to have been holding a flag, its shaft trimmed off for a more universal mould size so it could be cast with the others. I'd obtained a rubber "giggler" version of it over the spring and was puzzled about its purpose until learning such.
All of the Sx/GA astronauts were made by LP Toys in Hong Kong, apparently still in business. Figures are cast in black plastic and painted with a chromed surface, then dyed yellow (or not) for the Golden Astronaut look.
The T-T "Terrain Tiger", new/unused example at left. Compromised T-T at right has no grapple hook + twine and a damaged middle axle.
Another note about the Terrain Tiger is that its name is very similar to the Matchbox "Terrain Tracker", also a favored 6-wheel off road ATV and I mix the two names up all the time.
New/unused example only marked "Made In Hong Kong", as were all of the Spacex & Golden Astronaut toys, with production pretty much running late 1968 to 1971 or so. Copies and clones continued to be made into the late 1970s, and basic components of the larger toy set collection still surface as new/sealed cake decoration toppings.
Compromised T-T, missing its twine + grapple hook. Still works fine as a diorama subject! All its gotta do is look cool.
Compromised T-T has the complete Triang Spacex logo along with a "Made In Hong Kong" in a smaller font.
The two also have windshields of differing hues & luminance. At left the "new" T-T with a greener tint to its casting, at right the compromised T-T with a bluer and more opaque "glass".
Variations in such casting nuances are to be expected. While endowed with a very special aura the Sx/GA stuff is dollar store quality. Flimsy, inexpensive, drop it on the hard floor and you are crying delicate. I keep even the broken ones bagged up and in a storage box when not making pix.
I've managed to score three of the L5 "Lift Loaders" and the one at left was my first Sx/GA vehicle, obtained from a vendor in Belarus & likely a Spacex version. New/unused "Launch Site" example at center, and at right another suspected Golden Astronaut version missing its top bracing bar on the lift. Both of them have a lighter and "bluer" plastic than the one on the right, which is darker and more opaque.
Driver figure. Ever since seeing him driving a golf cart, whenever tagging my videos on YouTube I always add a tag for "Bez Driving / Flying a _________", blank being whatever the video is about. So that's Bez, the dancing maracas guy from the Happy Mondays, driving a Space Forklift.
New/unused unit, distinguishable by the wavy pattern to the excess chrome paint on the lift bottom.
The "first" version I obtained from the vendor in Belarus. Chassis a noticeably darker blue then the new/unused example above. Only real flaw is that its lift platform won't stay in the up position. Other than that good to go, which makes sense as it was both the sturdiest constructed and least interesting of all the Sx/GA vehicles. My fondness being the result of having made a "Forklift Arena" deathmatch level for the shooter game SiN, which had nothing but drivable forklifts. You'd smash each other into bits & the exploding vehicle would send its driver flying. Or just squash each other into a pulp. Lots of laughs!
Markings identical to the "Launch Site" LL, and according to the Sx/GA site the Spacex and Golden Astronaut ranges' Lift Loaders were identical including markings. But I think it was Spacex because of where it came from & what the vendor described it as. Seeing that the plastic is also of a darker hue than the other two just makes the conclusion more firm: Produced in different batches if nothing else.
ITS BEZ! AND HE'S DRIVING A SPACE FORKLIFT <3
I'd watch that show.
Compromised LL from a US based vendor, with the happier bluer-blue also seen on the Launch Site LL. Not that it means anything.
Half an astronaut. Ends at his waist.
Same markings on all three.
Trying to compare driver figures ... Pretty sure they are identical.
And off they go.
P3 / "Security Patrol Copter", easily the most delicate of the Sx/GA vehicles I've collected. I won't even deal with trying to get the new/unused "Launch Site" copter's rotor in place. Using a bit of sticky putty for the pix, with the compromised unit on the left. I also have a still-carded Spacex P3 on the Ogle Wall and will add a pix of it after we sort the rest of this out.
David Bowie's Security Heleocopter. Please note that the more pinkish hue is from the cheap desk lamp used to illuminate this surface.
Using flashlight to discern the Triang Spacex logo, and even that's not the right color.
Access hatch. I'm not messing with it.
I know there was a variation on the rotor blade design, not sure which one I have.
The notch which fits into the chassis to hold the rotor in place is slightly bigger than its totally non-reinforced hole. And since I have no need to see the rotor spinning went the sticky putty route. 1001 space toy uses for that stuff! starting with just getting your astronauts to stand upright. Get some next time you are at the pharmacy.
That'll do ...
... Rather than risk this, marking the P3 as another toy which appears to have been designed specifically to be destroyed. Hard fragile thinly cast plastic, chinsy little wheels which barely roll, imprecise seams & little in the way of reinforcement. Likely has a plain strip of metal inside just to help weight it down. These were low cost disposable toys meant for sale at newsstands, drug stores or airport gift shops. None of it was meant to survive long enough for the kid to even get bored with it, and surviving examples in even this good condition are a marvel. In spite of that broken rotor pod + missing window hatch, somebody took care of this long enough for me to stumble along.
Same markings as the "Launch Site" P3 including the same serial number, begging the question of what its purpose was ... ??
One good thing about this one is that its canopy had come off as well, giving me unfettered access to its chromed half an astronaut.
NEXT WEEK: BEZ FLYING A P3 SECURITY PATROL COPTER.
I could see a whole series of just Bez driving various outlandish vehicles and being Bez. I'd watch it every week and order the DVD.
... Looks like Darth Vader.
The poor package, which hey: Gives us access to its picture. Will get a scan together next time I'm at the studio.
If describing this for trade-in value at Rhino Records, my inventory slip would read "Blister appears to have been used as both a tennis racket and sponge", and consider it a score even in this stage. Back side shows how the Spacex and Golden Astronaut toy range was divided up into four "series": Launch Site, Space Probe, Moon Exploration, and Interplanetary Patrol. Blister design shows the three other 3-vehicle sets made for them, with other vehicles in those series as well.
Will have to find a minute to get the Golden Astronauts back in their nooks. Other than that, wrapped up, safe as a church, ready to be pinned back onto the Ogle Wall to be ogled.
Ohhhh MAN............ I want to join the Golden Astronaut Club too!!! Or help re-found one.
