This is the box art for the Italian firm Baravelli's Serie Minizero Spaziali Pattuglia Orbitale. The image courtesy of the HäT website.
I have covered all these model figure sets before on MC but the box art is just so good I'm giving it another whirl.
As most of Baravelli's non-space box art was by Italian artist Gino Palotti so I assume he did the space ones too. Does anyone know for sure?
Baravelli included LP style knockoff astronauts in their space sets. You can clearly see the posed figure pointing at the spaceship. Its LP [rear] and Spacex/ Golden Astronaut [front] 'pointing' equivalents can be seen here in this excellent graphic courtesy of Paul Vreede from his special MC blog post way back in 2009.
The spaceships in the sets tended to be clones of Japanese sci-fi vessels from Ultraman and also the UK's Thunderbirds TV series. The vessel shown on this particular box is based on the Ultra Hawk 3 from the Ultraman/ Ultraseven TV series.
These sets are very collectable and often discussed on model figures fora such as here on Airfix Collecting.
Amongst other things, Baravelli also distributed the Action Jackson 12-inch action doll line in Italy on behalf of toy giants Mego.
Have you any Baravelli figure sets or toys readers?
Those are about my favorite spacemen in any of their variations. The best I ever saw were the size of the Goldens but in grey soft plastic with decently applied paint on some details. I have no idea what their origin may be; I figured they might be Giant, since they reminded me of many other Giant figures I had as a kid... The Baravelli figs would be nice for projects I have in mind using 45-44mm space figs.
ReplyDeleteHi Thingmaker [great name!], I know what you mean. I love LP and SpaceX spacemen too. There is a possibility that similar figures might have been included in a proposed project SWORD Moon Base Set. You can see them illustrated in the Project SWORD Manual, which came with all the other SWORD toys. I've seen those small painted greys too. I have a feeling they were part of the Apollo Exploring boxed set, which came with Giant robots. For more info about the painted greys read Hugh Walter's fabulous website. Here's a good post of Hugh's http://smallscaleworld.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/l-is-for-lp.html but there are many more. Click 'Lucky-LP' in his side bar for them all. As for Baravelli figures they are expensive. You'd be better off looking on Ebay for some loose LP astronauts. The Greeks issued LP style astronauts as well - try searching for Solpa or Petalo astronauts. Best of luck with your projects. Send us some piccies!
DeleteHi Woodsy!
ReplyDeleteHere is a thread on the Baravelli Spacemen sets: http://danefield.com/alpha/forums/topic/14843-italian-baravelli-spacemen-astronauts-sets/
Quickly, Baravelli produced 3 sets of spacemen: the 6 boxes OO scale one of the LP/SpaceX persuasion spacemen plus vehicles, a two blister set with an exact replica (in white) of the 1/32 Marx "Mercury/Gemini" suit-styled astronauts and a soft packaged series of figures inspired by the 1/32 Marx "Apollo-suited" astronauts (this last one is a 6 pieces series inspired by the Marx ones, but with slightly smaller figures and, IMO, original molds). As soon as I will have the time I plan to photograph them all in a more orderly fashion...
Cheers
Ervino