MPC Clones: Unique Industries No. 8889 Space Cake Set

While we're still on the subject of MPC 54mm astronauts (ahem, were we? I thought I finished that up yesterday - oh well). Here's an interesting set from Unique Industries, the No. 8889 Space Cake Set. It is cake topper set consisting of a combination of candle holders, an LP Mobile Launch Pad (minus the wheels) and three MPC Astronaut figures. The set is undated and at the moment I couldn't tell you if these are clones made from different tooling or made from the original tooling which apparently was still somewhere to be had in Hong Kong??? Anywwho - Enjoy! Opa Fritz

MPC 54mm Astronaut Color Variations

I haven't had a lot of time to take pics out in The Cave but thought it would be a good idea to cap off my series of MPC 54mm Astronaut photo essays by showing the various color variations.  These are all the variations I have and there may be more out there. I'm thinking yellow - did they make yellow? Yes they did - a quick search while I was typing this post revealed some yellow ones out there. I'll be on the look-out for anything different than what's shown here. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The Case For Too Much: Multiple Products Set No. 1011 U.S. Air Force Astronauts Command Force 1964

It's 1964, the Space Race had been heating up since the October 1957 launch of Sputnik by the USSR. By 1958 NASA was formed and in April 1961 the USSR had another first when it sent Yuri Gagarin up to became the first person to orbit the Earth. We  followed shortly thereafter in May by sending up Alan Shephard. It was against this real world backdrop that toy comapnies found a way to interest kids in space and more and more space toys were being offered. Slowly-but-surely the Buck Rogers/Flash Gordenesque type toys were being supplanted by astronauts, Moon buggies and rovers, and hardware that looked a bit more like what kids were seeing on TV OR by the designs inspired by the likes of Werner von Braun.

Marx released their Astronauts (which I covered here on the blog a few weeks ago) in 1961 followed by Multiple Products. I'm not sure when Multiple released their first sculpts but this header bag is dated 1964. This set was produced in the pre-Miner Industries era of Multiple's history and the colors are a garish Halloween-ish orange and purple. I've mentioned before how UN-rare Multiple's astronauts are and we can see from this early glimpse of their product marketing that they pumped these out to the public like a fire hose sprays volumes of water on a conflagaration! It was a spacey time to live in and I suppose Multiple thought kids wanted more and more of these. We can look back and say it was too much but I would be interested to know just how well these sold. If they sold well, then that would be justification enough to keep pumping them out. In any case, when some Schyster tries giving you a line that these things are rare - spit in their eye and tell 'em to get bent! Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Notice the date: 1964

Here's another good example. Looking at this objectively, this Space Control Center set really only has two small pods (or modules), plus two other small vehicles. Nice pieces mind you - great for setting up a Moon colony. But why the need for 50 astronauts?

This set is dated 1969 and we can see that Multiple moved on to other colors.

Here's a pic my Orbital Lab as I received it. Unfortunately mine didn't come with any original packaging or instruction sheet but it appeared complete and included an extra module and a bag of Multiple's astronauts. A bag of 155 astronauts! Obviously I can't prove how many came with this set but this is still a good indication of the volume of figures out available there.

MPC / Multiple Toymaker 54mm Astronauts - Pt 1

Well, well, well, I kinda dropped the ball on this one. After going through all the trouble of photographing the MPC / Multiple Toymaker space playsets I didn't bother to do photo essays for their non-ringhand 54mm astronauts like I did with the Marx 54mm astronauts. Bad on me! We'll get started with this post although I have to try and carve out some time to get out in The Cave and take more pics. 

MPC / Multiple issued their astronauts in a veritable plethora of colors with the most popular arguably being the gold ones - AND NO THEY ARE NOT RARE, regardles of what some misguided fleaBay seller may have you believe! You have to understand, MPC / Multiple absolutely flooded the market with these figures. The goldies don't appear to be as prolific as the other colors but they are not rare by any means. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

This was just a job lot of goldies I bought on fleaBay and these pics were originally made for posting on facebook. 

Here are the ten separate poses I have in my collection. The red, white, and blue (how patriotic!) assortment was a common one for playsets but there were other colors as well - more if you include clones and knock-offs.

Just a slightly different angle