One Small Step

After all the mystery surrounding Spacex, it suddenly occurred to me that I had neglected to look at possibly one of the best toys ever made, never mind just in the space toy genre, Major Matt Mason. We've looked at the figures, as examples of fine action figure design, but the characters were just a part of the story. What really set matt Mason apart from other astronaut toys, were the accessory sets.

Look at the price scribbled in biro on the back!

Aside from being realistically designed, all the sets were practical and functional. The Moon Suit had pneumatic arms and the launching pads all sported really powerful mechanisms. The Rocket Launch Pak has a small 'mouse trap' like mechanism which could be loaded with a cap for a loud bang on impact. The Satellite Launcher is especially good, powering the propellor driven satellites high into the air and also slicing into unfortunate fingers if you happened to misfire. One of my favourites was always the Reconojet, which came with a generous amount of black nylon cord, which reached easily from an upstairs bedroom window, down into the garden!  The only downside of this was it invariably became tangled inextricably around everything when it wasn't being used. These few carded examples are from a batch I found in an old newsagents in Liverpool, during the time I was out of work. I happened to be walking by one day with my girlfriend and spotted Sgt Storm sat in the window in his cattrac. When I went in, the whole back wall was hung with almost all the accessory packs, a few Callistos and Sgt Storms and all I had was a fiver...