Sixty years ago, Kelloggs included a neat little premium in their Rice Krispie cereal, nine whole years before the Moon Landing, of a set of pioneering lunar spacemen. The six figures were made by toy soldier manufacturer, Crescent and were single piece colour plastic mouldings with detachable transparent bubble helmets, which bear a strong resemblance to early designs suggested by Arthur C Clarke in his book 'The Exploration of Space'.
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| original examples |
The six figures are rarely found with the original helmets and are often missing parts of the soft plastic moulding, such as the minesweeper attachment or the U.N banner. As a keen collector of cereal premiums and spacemen, I managed to get a set of these figures, both at a toy fair and via ebay. Although I have had them for some time, when I came upon two other figures this week in a lot of other space toys, I realised that I would be able to fashion replacement helmets for the team from some highlighter markers that I had picked up recently. With a little cutting to shorten them, the caps fitted beautifully and look remarkably similar to the original helmets.
