Its well known that im a huge fan of the famous LP Robots and its a personal mission of mine to find as many variants of the bell shaped figure as I can. Ive had s et of the rubber ones since I was about 7, having bought them from Woolworths along with the usual collection of 'Teachers Pets' or 'rubber jigglers' as they seem to be named in the US. I next came upon them in the Apollo Moon Exploring sets, in tiny chrome figures. Since then, ive discovered or been shown many examples in different materials and forms. Historically, I always considered them to be armoured or suited aliens as opposed to robots and always though my angry little friend was the leader and came from Jupiter!
I asked Maverick Collecting for his take on the mysterious Robots:
"Although much harder to find than the Astronauts, I'm assumimg all six are available in each type, just haven't tracked them down yet.
First we have the chromium-plated ones, in both scales, then a Matt silver on a hardish vinyl (the only one I've found, either robot or astronaut), note also he has been converted to novelty status already with the addition of a key-chain loop. Then some soft ethylene gunmetal small scale, which match the similar astronauts (they look silver in the photograph, but it's just flash-wash). All the above are wearing the LP Monster-in-a-starburst' on the base underside.
The rest are marked with an uneven HONG KONG, the first three - running round the suction-cup, the second three - running down the suction cup. I would think these were not LP, but may have come from the same factory, only the moulds have been re-cut on the second (lower) sample.
2nd pic
Again with the full Monster-mark, these accomany an unpainted white astronaut, and will probably come in the middle of the above sample issue-time wise."
And just for good measure ive added in a couple of shots of my little collection. On the base of the sucker cupped figures are the letters 'ATS' in a kind of motif - anyone any clues as to the identity ?
