Continuing the Cherilea Mechanoid/ Space Pod thread here's one of many older posts on Moonbase Central. Over the last 10 years they've popped up a number of times.
This 9 year old post looks at Cherilea spacemen. I've included the three old comments from the time in this edited post too as they were very relevant.
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2009
Continuing with the unusual Italian range LUNIK 2000 I have stumbled across this wonderful example on Ebay. It appears that the toys are made by one Caligaris Tibibabo
The box art is truly stunning and amazingly it is SIGNED! Alas I can't read the signature. If only SWORD box art was signed like this!
Blog friend the Philosophic Toad has pointed out the that the cockpits of the this and the previously posted Lunik 2000's appear to be slightly different - apart from the colour scheme.
Also, the pilots differ; different poses and colours. The interesting thing is that they look like Cherilea Spacemen [below] but with most of the accoutrements removed. Compare with the very top image. Philo Toad believes that the pilot resembles them minus whatever he's holding up.
The pilot resembles the pose of the Cherilea Spaceman at top-right (the one in red) but minus the axe-thing. What do other readers think? Cherilea Spacemen do appear in both white and silver versions.
Did this company buy Cherilea Spacemen and modify them by hand? Or did it make new moulds, leaving the figures hands-free?
Mille Grazie Philosophic.
Woodsy
PS. One other toy I've seen, a train set, is by Caligaris Tibibabo.
PS2. LUNIK was originally the name of the Russian robot moon probe programme!
Wotan:
THE astronauts and capsule at the top were originally made by Cherilea. The capsule is actually a re-used Dr Who Mechanoid mould with a stand added! Rare as hens teeth!
The Philosophic Toad:
I think it is Tibidabo not Tibibabo.
The editor of Plastic Warrior tells me that Tibidabo had a contract to market Cherilea figures. So it would seem that the Lunik pilots are indeed Cherilea Spacemen, or variants of them.
Barrington Bond:
On the side of the Lunik 2000 box the left hand spaceship looks rather like a craft Frank Bellamy drew when he was doing Dan Dare.
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Not sure if this was discussed earlier on, but the LUNIK cover artist is P. Carozzo. Just checked.
ReplyDeleteSuperb Arto. Thanks for ID'ing the artist. Wonder what else he did?
DeleteTwo of the space ships on the side of the box are copied from Dan Dare, in the brief period when Frank Bellamy was drawing it.
ReplyDeleteYes but that comment was from 10 years ago Andy! You sound more confident about it! Where would I find the Dan dare illustrations for the blog?
DeleteSoory, just seen somebody else offered the same comment!
ReplyDeletesee above!
Deleteand again, back in the day: http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2009/08/air-we-go.html?m=1
DeleteWoodsy, take a look at the images on my blog article on another artist's 'borrowing' Bellamy's work and you'll see the image of one of the ships - and the other is shown here
ReplyDeleteSuperb Norman. I really enjoyed the article. I can clearly see the ship thats been lifted for the Lunik toy as well. Thanks!
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