From C to Shining C

“A shot for the folks back home!”

It’s been an unusually good time here in terms of new acquisitions, as I have been able to pick up a couple of nice pieces and received a generous gift from a friend in the states.

First off, I came across a nice example of the Cherilea Space Pod, which has been around for over a decade since the early sixties. Cherilea are perhaps famous for a very early Dalek toy, as part of the Swoppet line, which was very briefly accompanied by a Mechanoid figure. For various reasons, very few of the latter were made and Cherilea re-tooled the moulds and added parts to create a space module, to go with their successful line of Swoppet spacemen. You can clearly see the Mechanoid shape in the body of the pod, but the few extant examples of the original show that it was in fact a different beast.

http://thespacemuseum.net/cherilea-article

The spacemen which came with the pods - usually packaged in a set with two pods and four figures - were about 3” high and out of scale with the pods, if they were intended as landing craft. I haven’t any of the original figures now, so in order to display the pods with a spaceman, I resorted to another ‘C’ - Crescent. Crescent were also a maker of toy soldiers and contributed a lovely set of astronauts for Kelloggs cereal at around the same time. The Crescent figures originally had transparent helmets, which are rarely found intact, so my moon explorers have benefitted from some pen lids, which are an excellent substitute.

The yellow/orange pod is my most recent find, whereas the silver one was a gift from Woodsy. Both are missing some small accessories, such as a ladder and some retro rockets, as well as the original engine bell on both models. Some kit bashing provided substitutes for both - aside from ladders so far - and a lick of orange paint on one of the orange legs. All the toys are soft vinyl-like plastic and subject to a little deformation and in some cases chewing - the pale blue chap had his flag nipped off by an overenthusiastic child or a curious dog. Either way, the Cherilea Pods and Crescent Spacemen make a great match!

In a similar, but much later vein, I received a fabulous box of goodies from the ever generous Terranova in the states, which included some excellent Hot Wheels Action toys, such as this lovely Planet Micro LEM, which is only a touch larger than the Apollo Moon Exploring version, but much more detailed. It has some die cast elements too. I will exhibit the rest of the range shortly, but for now I just wanted to mark the moment with these quick snaps.