I saw these a while back on the Spanish auction site Todocollecion.
Seen once before years ago here on MC,
they are Mexican cereal models
in the R&L space style.
These models appear to be
based partly on the space vehicles
and moonbase art
of Ed Valigursky, the NOVA rocket, the Booster Rocket, MEV2 and the Moonbase modules.
Below we see a chromed garage module with a ramp, which I believe to be a model of Valigursky's rendition of this shown beneath it. I can see the MEV2 vehicle inside the chromed model.
A lovely lot and one which I'd love to see fully assembled.
I never had one of these but I remember the Brazilian team so clearly from watching it on telly at the time. My folks got a colour TV for the occasion, a huge expense at the time. I remember neighbours coming round to watch matches.
That Mexico World Cup was captivating to me and probably a lot of kids. Every game seemed to be bathed in glorious sunshine and the football appeared to be magical, as if played by Supermen.
Brazil were the inspired team of the Cup, the most brilliant footballers any of us had ever seen. Blessed with Olympian grace and speed, Brazil were on another level altogether.
Their fantastic skills were equalled by enthralling names that sounded like their first names and we all felt sure they didn't
have a surname. Supreme beings with a single name: Tostao, Rivelinho and the glorious Jarziniho. Even Gerson sounded
exotic in such company.
Mexico 1970 was a high point in soccer for me. At age 9 it got me interested.
I supported Leeds United after it was all over, another gifted generation. I bought Shoot comic religiously and collected football cards.
It didn't last, my love of football. By age 11 it was all over
Did you see Mexico 1970 readers? Do you follow football or any sport?
I always like seeing toys I had appearing in different parts of the world. Its good to know I had kindreds across the globe back in the Sixties and early Seventies.
Major Matt Mason was a major part of my life [ see what I did there ] but I never had a Scorpio. I think the Mason expedition to the planets had run out of fuel before my Mum and Dad could get a purple alien. Or maybe there weren't any Scorpio's in Preston, although Bill got one down the road in Liverpool!
Anyway, kids in Mexico had Scorpio's courtesy of Mexican toy importers CIPSA. Its fun to find CIPSA stuff on the net and see if there are differences to Mattel's originals. So, here's the CIPSA Scorpio from their Capitan Meteoro range, which I assume means Captain Meteor, a rather nifty name if you ask me!
Did you or do you have a Scorpio or any CIPSA toys?
If like me you like seeing vintage toys from around the world you should likese videos.
They feature MADHUNTER, a Mexican toy dealer who is like the Toy Hunter of South America. He travels the world for toys but specialises in his native Mexican heritage.
His stock is totally mind-blowing. Think of any vintage toy you had and he will have a Mexican version. Major Matt Mason, GI Joe, Johnny West, Stoney, Bonanza. You name it he's got it.
These two longish videos are just a sample of MADHUNTER's prolific You Tube channel.
Mini Capitan Boy was a Mexican hybrid of SpaceX toys and miniature Billy Blastoff toys.
I first stumbled across it last year on You Tube in a video about toy firm Lili Ledy.
Beyond this new information has been scant about this unusual brand of toys.
However it is possible from the film to see some of these Mexican toys quite clearly. One of these is the miniature Scout Car pictured here from an online auction. But just how small is it?
The mini Billy Blastoff figure is 1.5 inches tall according to a Worthpoint auction listing.
Guessing how small the scout car toy is can be estimated from this.
It would appear to be 2 to 3 inches long to me.
Also this group shot below has several mini Billy Blastoff figures.
For a sense of just how scaled down the range was compare the normal sized Billy Blastoff Scout car centre left and the Mini Capitan Boy version front centre above the letter T in the word ROBOTIN.
You can also compare large and small versions of the rest of Billy's range too including the Walker and the buggy with pincers at the front.
Another possible yardstick of size is this similar little red Scout Car knockoff which appeared in several LP and Apollo Moon Exploration style sets like this pictured.
This could very well be the same scale as the Mini Capitan Boy toy.
Fortunately its dimensions and features have been beautifully catalogued on blog friend Paul V's Triang Spacex Toys website.
Looking at the dimensions on Paul's site the orange scout car may be smaller than the Mini Capitan Boy version. Its hard to say without having them side by side.
Its interesting to note that Paul's site also features one of the Mini Capitan Boy Spacex-based toys, the T-5 Tractor lookalike with the double launcher
This is clearly visible in the Lili Ledy film on You Tube. Here's a still. The double missile launcher yellow tractor is just behind the front P3 helicopter.
Comparing the sizes on Paul's brilliant site, its also interesting to note that the dimensions of this toy were slightly bigger than the Tri-ang SpaceX T-5 and Golden Astronaut Terrain Tiger originals.
Were all the Spacex-inspired toys in the Mini Capitan Boy range slightly bigger than the Tri-ang/ Multiple Toymakers versions?
We will just have to wait for a Lili Ledy Mini Capitan Boy range to surface before we'll know exactly what the rest of Spacex-inspired vehicles look like, how big they were and if and how the little spaceman could sit on them!
Located with an East Coast US seller, I noticed this unusual spaceman late last year. This is the picture from Ebay.
Its a Marx Apollo Astronaut carded set from 1970. The figure is names as Colonel Hap Hazard.
It all looks so familiar and I may well have had one of these sets. I was 9 in 1970 and 10 that Christmas.
But I can't help thinking that all the accessories look so much like Major Matt Mason equipment that that's what I'm actually remembering. Its hard to say. I suppose I'm now wondering whether Marx simply cashed in on Mattel's success with Major Matt. What do you think?
There are also countless knockoffs of this Marx set especially in Mexico where the body has many colour variations and different heads including Callisto like these from the amazing Madhunter collection.!
Interestingly Marx released Colonel Hap Hazard in an earlier guise as a tinplate robot in 1968.
Here's some footage on You Tube of the robot by gfu collectible.
In this hobby some doors close and some doors open.
Here's a cool discovery I made this week whilst browsing You Tube.
Its called Mini-Capitan Boy by Lily Ledy and is basically...
Mexican SPACEX toys!
Check out this cool clip from 0.35 seconds onwards till 1.02 minutes.
I love this mute film and its animated spacex toys! Its amazing!
Capitan Boy was the Mexican version of Billy Blastoff.
Mini Capitan Boy was a tiny variant and it would appear that it was mixed with SpaceX toys!
Some vehicles are actually different like the double-cannon Tractor in the middle of this screengrab.
We've actually seen this before on the blog but could never put a make to it. For detailed pictures see Paul Vreede's comprehensive page on this T5 clone.
Equally fascinating is how Lili Ledy appear to have placed a Mini Capitan Boy figure on top of the vehicles, which you can see here on the Moon Prospector. He seems to ride them!
For me the icing on the cake are the range of carded sets, which appear towards the end of the segment. They look like Golden Astronaut carded sets from this angle! You can see that each one appears to contain a mini Capitan Boy instead of a toy astronaut!
The larger set is made up of miniaturised versions of the standard Billy Blastoff range rather than Spacex.
You can see from this shot by El Viejo just how small mini Capitan Boy is as compared to the normal sized Capitan Boy aka Billy Blastoff. He's tiny!
What do you think?
So, has anyone got any Mini Capitan Boy De Luxe toys aka Mexican SpaceX?
Anyone looking for a relatively cheap and slightly unusual addition to their SpaceX toys collection might want to consider a cereal model premium from Mexico.
I understand that these are based on the R&L Kellogg space model style although I have never seen any old adverts for them or seen them available outside of Mexico so they may have been produced solely for that market. They include the Nova Rocket as appears in the SpaceX and Golden Astronaut ranges of toys.
Currently I can see individual 2 Novas on auction:
Other models, like the Nova, are based on Ed Valigursky's space paintings from the Man and Space book of the 1960's.
I've blogged about these before here: 'Cex Mex and Mexican Valigursky, which even include the building modules for the moon [pair, bottom left] and the Booster Rocket [top right second down]
If you have any maybe built up and painted we'd love to see them! Email address at the bottom of the page!
I have collected four other R&L Mexican Cereal Space premiums over the years.
There are two more astronauts - one also labeled "Astronaut", but with a flag instead of a rope and pick and a second one labeled "Astronaut II" that does not have any accessories.
There is also a Command Module and Floatation Collar - 3 and a Service Module - 4 (the command module can be perched on top of the Service Module).
A few years back I got hold of this small Mexican knockoff of the Spacex P3 Helicopter. So I was surprised to see a Maks 'Super Jet' water pistol which sort of reminded me of it. I suppose its the goldy brown trimmings on the gloss black bodies that look similar.
