An Even Smaller Step

It’s been a good month for vintage space toys and today it was made even better, as Woodsy kindly sent me the plastic astronauts he found at a car boot recently. To speed them on their way, he also included the tiny ‘Blue Shield’ Apollo Capsule set, which originally came in a small carded baggy. Six tiny spacemen and a tiny plastic LEM.

We have seen the Blue Shield set many times on the blog and the LEM is a smaller and less detailed version of the Apollo Moon Exploring version, probably intended as a cake topper or small commemorative toy. At just 10c, the set was clearly not intended to be played with much and it’s remarkable that any have survived beyond 1969! Here it is on the right, next to a modern Hot Wheels Planet Micro LEM and a standard Golden Astronaut for scale.

The astronauts that Woodsy found at the boot sale are simple unbranded copies of the classic GA poses, which are echoed in the tiny Blue Shield figures and are also found in the slightly bigger LP painted figures.