GALACTIC PLANT HIRE

I recently posted an article around saucer based toys, which included an example of one of my favourite japanese lines from Shinsei.The Blue Silver saucer was a flagship in a fleet of heavy duty die-cast eartmoving equipment, a far cry from the usual spacefaring fantasy spaceships that appear regularly from far eastern toy makers. Ive only been able to find two examples of these unusual toys, but the original range and the expanded range under the Star Mites header was much bigger - Ubercollector Ferryman takes up the story:

"Some of my examples are from an American reissue range called Star Mites sold by Empire Toys in the States. The unusual thing about this range is that it was initially comprised of the original 7 Shinsei toys but was then increased to a bigger range that included 7 new toys that to my knowledge were never sold under the Shinsei name.

I have read something about the design original range of toys that date back to the golden age of Popy Chogokin toys in the mid 70's. The original versions came in card boxes with polystyrene inners similar to the Popy toys. My ones are the second issue which were packaged in a similar way to the other regular Shinsei models. I think the plant hire focus comes from Shinsei's normal area of specialisation in construction related toys. The UFO Camander 7 toys come with mini comics."

Watch the skies for further updates on this unusual range...