New Maps of Hell

Before Woodstock invited me along to plaster my vision of the toy world all over the blog, my perception of the space toy field was seriously limited. It was essentially defined by the toys that I owned and knew existed, but over the last few years, that perception has grown exponentially. With everything that has come to light and the discoveries that have been revealed about the origins of toys on the blog, its now become almost impossible to comprehend the 'big picture'of how each toy relates to each other without some serious thought and illustration.

Meanwhile, back at Mars Base, I sat down with a pad and a biro the other day and went right back to first principles. Thinking back to when I was a lad, I considered what the main attractions and favourites were for me and tried to map them out in a graphic fashion. The basic favourites havent changed over forty years, Spacex, Sword, Matt Mason etc are all still high on my list, so I placed them centrally and began to work out from there, including the main toy makers of the day and the toys that I enjoyed. After that, I started to link together thematically connected toys and designs which appear in several series such as the 'walking wheel' from Matt Masons Moon Crawler and the Booster Rocket from Sword/Spacex. So the blue dotted lines indicate a tenuous link of some fashion while the bold coloured lines connect the same family or maker.

Its the tip of a huge iceberg to try and fit in all the influences from my childhood which are still with me today, when the chart is ultimately finished it will be huge and include all kinds of other stuff like books, comics, non-space items and all manner of other stuff, but for the moment its a fun distraction and helps me identify gaps in my knowledge and in the old Wotan Archive too!