Paper Spacemen (Iberic Peninsula)

 

Soldados do Espaço, ?, Portugal
1950-60's

Comandos del Espacio, Recortables Bruguera, Espada, Spain,
1960

Portugal and Spain had a lot of things in common, and on the political front both countries were dictatorial states where Franco from the Spanish side and Salazar from the Portuguese side ruled their people in quite a nationalistic way. They were also (and especially in the 50's) both very poor countries, where the cheapest of toys was all that most of the population could afford.

From the nationalistic side of the coin are of course the toy soldiers (There were quite a lot of Germany made Elastolin products distributed here before and after the war - without speaking af course of the "soldadinhos de Porto": lead casted soldiers from different historical timeframes). The poorer part of the population had to do with paper cut-outs, to be glued on pieces of cardboard. Most of these "soldier sheets" I could find are actual military soldiers, tanks, airplanes etc. But the 2 sheets above form the exception: space men ! In the group are quite a lot of blonde specimens... (hmmm, Portuguese are not very blond...) and uniforms that look more like a Gestapo themed Buck Rogers than anything else I have seen (wait, rubber horse riding boots to go to space ?) But hey, on hte plus side, we do have helmets, oxygen tanks and rayguns !