He is the Man (in space..)

No examination of space toys, especially spacemen, is complete without a look at Mattels' Man in Space. Major Matt Mason arrived in 1967 and changed the nature of toys forever. He can be considered to be the first real action figure - whereas GI Joe and Action Man had ventured into space, Matt could be said to have truly conquered the final frontier. The smaller scale of the figure allowed a much broader range of accessories from special extreme environment suits to moon crawlers and flying back packs to complete flying space gliders and a fully fledged moonbase.

Matt was a revelation to me and remains the fixed point in time from where space toys can be researched from. Often imitated but never bettered, the line was massively successful until interest in the Space Race began to wane in the early seventies and toy companies would abandon the space theme until the advent of Star Wars changed childrens' perception of space travel altogether.

Four astronauts comprised the Mattel force - the eponymous Matt Mason, Sergeant Storm, Doug Davis and the rarest of the four, Jeff Long. Not content to trudge about on a dusty barren moon, Mattel pictured space exploration as an exciting, colourful pursuit and gave the team all manner of fabulous gear - rocket probes, satellite launchers, mini water pistols and inflatable tents.

One of my favourites was the remarkable Gamma Ray Gard Pak ( i was always impressed with Mattels 'space talk') a large tripod mounted cannon that fired rolls of sprung gold foil and gave the distinct impression that lasers had arrived early. The larger brother of the Gamma Ray was the magnificent Firebolt Space Lazer, a motorised, flashing tank of a toy with a massive barrel laser. Oddly enough, the team were joined early on by a much larger figure - Captain Laser, a hard plastic, jointed figure with flashing eyes and accessories - a gatecrasher from another failed Mattel project, hastily added to a successful line to recover production costs.

To add a sense of otherworldly mystery and a little local colour, two aliens were brought in, initially with the Mason-scaled Callisto, Matt's friend from Jupiter and much later towards the line's demise, the more exotic Scorpio with flashing eyes. Almost District 9 some forty years early!

All the photographs here are from Paul Vreedes collection and much more from this seminal line can be found on John Eatons website : http://www.wildtoys.com/MMMPage/index.asp