Besides vintage space books, my main obsession is with vintage space toys and models. Growing up in the space age, my childhood was replete with all manner of toys, some expensive and complicated and others simple and pocketmoney sized. The smaller and cheaper toys are much less likely to last through the decades, as they were not built to last and were impulse buys or giveaways with sweets or cereal. Amazingly though, some of these simple toys have managed to make it through many hands and years of play.
A favourite of mine was recently given to me by Woodstock and is a japanese sweet shop type of toy, a very inexpensive model of a Saturn V on the launch pad. Very often these type of items came with a packet of candy tucked inside the box. This one was bought at a japanese auction site and appears complete. The box art is typical of the era, with simple graphics and bright colour and the model itself is simply moulded in equally bright plastic.
The gantry and the rocket break down into several pieces and can be re-assembled puzzle style. The whole model is around 3" high.
From probably the same period comes a full blown model kit by Aoshima. The spectacular graphics suggest a highly detailed kit, but the resultant model is under 6" high. Moulded in self coloured plastic, it is a simple build, which makes quite an accurate and recognisable kit. As the model was a vintage version from the mid sixties, the decals provided with it were unfortunately too degraded to be useable, so despite a rudimentary paint job, it remains unfinished.
The popularity of the small cereal kits meant that third party supplier continued to make them as stand alone offerings, even after the main company ceased trading. R & L, a major australian company specialising in these premiums, folded in the late seventies and the dies for the production of a lot of the models found their way to Mexico, where they were used to make new copies from the old moulds. One such model is a 3" Saturn V on a crawler (the gantry may well have been available as a separate purchase) and also a smaller Nova Rocket. The green Nova rocket has been decorated after the Tri-ang Spacex toy version seen here.
The Tri-ang Spacex Interspace Miniatures were far and away my faourite space toy of the period, a small inexpensive plastic vehicle on a card was sold in Woolworths and formed part of a larger range.

Such is the popularity and enduring legacy of the toys, Kevin Davies, a professional model maker has been making large scaled up versions of the line, including the Nova rocket and the Mobile Launch Pad, shown below.
A rare sight on European toy shop shelves would have been toys from the Eastern bloc, such as Russia. Although generally inferior in workmanship to Western toys, the Soviet Union did make some excellent toys, such as the this large plastic 'R7' launch vehicle. The label on the fron reads 'Mir' and seems to commemorate the launch of the space station in the mid eighties.
The rocket booster itself, follows the basic R-7 arrangement, which launched all the major soviet vehicles from Sputnik to present day Soyuz capsules and features four strap on boosters. Pulling up the orange central collar releases the units, which fall away backwards, just like the actual vehicle. The large bulbous second stage reflects the unit used to carry the segments of the space station to orbit, but here houses a single, simple cosmonaut figure, in a pre-school format, so perhaps the toy was designed with educational purposes in mind.
Spanish company Congost made an excellent board game/toy around the russian Lunokhod missions, with a small plastic rover on a landing craft that is lowered onto a cardboard moon surface.
Soviet and eastern bloc toy makers were keen to promote the success of the Lunokhod missions and may tinplate versions of the rover were made, some with remote control and flashing lights.
A very popular kit in the Airfix space range was the Vostok Rocket, first released in 1970, but availble in different releases until the mid 2000's. Although I got it on release, it hasn't survived the rigours of play and I picked up a more recent version again, last year.
Although a comparatively small model - the finished kit being about 14" high - it is packed with detail and includes options to build the Vostok, Lunik (originally listed as Sputnik) and Soyuz launch vehicles. It even comes with a tiny cosmonaut, nut much bigger than a grain of rice. Production artwork by illustrator Roy Cross, showed an all-white vehicle, but as the R-7 was initially a military project, the actual vehicle was actually grey or drab green. The white colouration was attributed to the freezing fuel on the rocket as it sat on the launchpad and a layer of frost which coated the exterior.
Compare some modern space models from Matchbox, as part of the Skybusters line. The Spacex Starship is a sleek, plain missile shape, with canard fins. Skybusters are a range of diecast aircraft and most recently spaceships which have been running besides the traditional car lines since the early 1970's.
Another space related model is the Dreamchaser Re-entry vehicle, a proposed re-useable shuttle alternative. Like the Starship it is a simple diecast vehicle, with no moving parts.
Again from the Skybusters series, a movie tie-in from the Top Gun 2 film, in the form of the beautiful hypersonic Research Vehicle 'Dark Angel'. Once more, the solid casting looks wonderful, but the total lack of any kind of features detracts from its overall appeal.
Wow - what an astounding collection! Everything from simple dime-store toys to fully-detailed models. It does my heart good to see some of these iconic toys saved from the fire. And the box art on that Airfix Russian Vostok would have made me snap up that kit immediately. Thanks for sharing these beauties. SFZ
ReplyDeletePretty sure I had that first one, way at the top of the article. Although I could be thinking of something else (old brain cells). I vaguely remember it coming in a tiny package, probably as a premium for something.
ReplyDeleteWow! Wotan, what a great post!
ReplyDeleteAs a kid, I had the Airfix Vostok launcher and the SpaceX pad.
But WHAT is that blue Dynasoar style Lifting body sitting beside the Kellogg's Launch pad? I have never seen it before, it was certainly never part of any of the Kelloggs's space series that I am aware of.
It looks a lot like the XRV from the movie Marooned!
Hi Looey - thats another cereal premium, from a line called 'Hooty Toots'. There was a ufo, freight rocket, jet and a few others. They don't tend to be listed with the majority of R&L premiums, but were available in Oz, so you might have more luck finding them there! Bill
DeleteTerrific write-up Wotan! Since hooking up with Moonbase I have become a huge fan of Tri-ang/Golden Astronaut, LP, and other brands of small sized space toys! You guyz are awesome!
ReplyDeleteR-7 (LEGO adjacent)
ReplyDeletehttps://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2025/04/rockets-galore.html?m=1
Putin on the fritz
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