Premier Plastics Flash Gordon Solar Commando "Rivet Ship" Space Cruisers 1950s Hard Plastic and Later Soft Plastic Clones.

I just like saying "Rivet Ships".

Premier Plastics "Flash Gordon Solar Commando" and other similar figures with a selection of the related hard plastic Space Cruiser (?*) toys which would often be packaged with the figures. Both believed to have debuted in 1952 and were packaged in all manner of combinations & color variations. The ship designs feature rivet marks running their width and length which are distinctive to these forms. Most hard plastic spaceships are smooth and sleek, making the rivet points a distinction important enough to earn the epithet Rivet Ships among various collectors *who can't remember what their formal name was, if any.

Current collection with one each of the two ship designs in their four more common sizes. A monster 9 inch version of the wide body ship has been seen by my eyes as well. The yellow and bright blue vehicles are soft plastic knockoffs of undetermined age.

Not My Collection - The nine inch fullsizers courtesy of Collector's Quests.

Not My Collection - Original Premiere packaging, early 1950s

Not My Collection - Someone's 1950s packaging found with Google. Dig the crazy red/blue swirl at upper right.

Not My Collection - Very nicely matched chromed set.

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Video tour of my stash, which is essentially in pix below

Two ship designs in two sizes, this the "wide body" model.

No name for this one. "The other ship".

Get the soft plastic clones out of the way, re-engineered to remove any landing gear so they sit flat on the table. No clue as to their origin, obtained c.2019 with other vintage space toy forms. So my presumption has been pre-1980, likely pre-1970. Any hints in comments welcome, you don't have to sign in to chime in.

Like the soft plastic Marx spaceship bootlegs outta Mexico their redeeming quality is being virtually indestructible. You would have to work at destroying one, where the hard plastics need to be handled with a certain amount of care.

Landing gear just eliminated. I'd love to find a few more of these in like bright green or red, keeping an eye out.

The two wide bodied, and my apologies for not thinking to clean the larger ship before the pix session. I usually leave things in the condition they arrive.

UPDATE! A YouTube follower pointed out that this ship design was adapted for the Zorgon spaceship featured in the book & film ZATHURA, including a toy release.

Click here to open video in a new window for fullscreen view options, and yeah that's it! Gonna get that book for the nephew, he will eat it for breakfast.

This one does have a swirl to its plastic in grey and black, which is odd. It's not paint, I tried to clean it off and its the plastic.

The shadows thrown by these hit my geek spot. Will feature it in something.

Plenty of lines on that dome though none appear to go through to the underside. That's how it came out of the mold.

The only one with no mold position number, or whatever those numbers mean.

A real monster. Am intoxicated by the shadowplay.

The other ships. Smaller lavender is also a swirl blend with silver.

A flaw on the windows of the blue ship though it does not appear to be a fractured part. Bad pour.

Note damaged rocket intake.

This one does have the flaw behind the last window.

More bad pour fun: Ship is crooked. I am aware that Premiere made their figure molds available to others and have wondered if the same goes for the ships. This one cast in what to my eyes is an unusual semi-translucent blue plastic encased with the dust of ages. Am convinced it is vintage 50s, am open to the notion that it's not Premiere's. Quality control isn't quite there.

Doesn't look good but the ship is sturdy, doesn't rattle and does not appear to have adhesive remains. So it may have been a very long day at the plant.

One side item that came up which I guess had just slipped my attention is that the side panels at back on either side of the vertical stabilizer have a diamond type pattern to serve as platforms for the Premiere figures to ride their ships like The Silver Surfer,.

Not My Collection - Image courtesy Alphadrome.net space toy database. That's actually pretty cool.

Not My Collection - Image courtesy of a fellow collector. The figures in this image are actually glued to their ships and their is advertisement art to indicate Premiere did the gluing for some of them.

Next time a look at the meager stash of Premiere type space figures I've scrounged up, see if this Silver Surfer idea works with the wide bodied cruiser.

BUSTED! "Archer Space Figure" Found to be Glencoe Models Re-Issue After Two Years of Not Noticing

UPDATE! Video lays it out.

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Our subject, obtained summer 2021 with an inexpensive "Lot" of other figures, most vintage, and presumed I'd gotten lucky with an undamaged Force Field Guy. Passed a "clink" test where you'd gently rap it on a wood surface, and both the color and swirl effect to the plastic convinced me I'd gotten lucky.

Only reason the issue came to light was landing a nice heap of all vintage figures (see last image) which included three in this pose. Sat down to make some comparison pix and was startled to learn something new.

My only explanation would be that at the time the figure was obtained I was so paranoid about that intact hose/cable connecting the device to his belt unit that I bubbled the thing up immediately. Boxed em up, found other figures to mull over and simply haven't paid much attention to my Archers since. All lame: One closer look should have tipped me off.

First indicator is the sice of the C in the circle above his suit tanks, and in my defense it isn't very clearly stamped. But from this angle one can clearly see that it's a rather small C relative to the size of the circle.

This was the shocker - I had not understood the underside of his projector was marked, and it is clearly stamped PAT.PEND. in the smaller modern fonts Glencoe used when manufacturing their re-issues.

With this new bundle came the green figure at left, which is the first time I'd had another of that pose to compare the lavender one against.

Difficult to see with something of a crack through it, but that C almost fills the circle, one of the indicators of a vintage Archer.

And the stamping is poor, but that is clearly the older PAT.PEND. script.

And yeah, those don't match. I'd only known to look for the script on the rifle butts of the two figures carrying long guns and the device that another figure is about to toss. I had not understood that the force field generator was marked as well.

The new bundle also featured some chromed figures which also pass the vintage test.

The helmets are wedged on too snugly to pull off for a picture - and look too damn good in place - but there is a large copyright C on both of the chromed guys which matches the green one.

Same vintage PAT.PEND. on all three.

I recall another detail about how one of his hands had to be re-constructed after the original mold had exploded? Or am I thinking of another pose. All that NASA era polyeurthane space plastic has rotted out my memory.

More on this soon. Best figure buy of 2023, other than Parker & Brett.