The Dan Dare gun

Dan Dare Atomic Jet Gun, Crescent Toys, U.K., 1952

The Americans got Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, but their British counterparts quickly got their own Sci-Fi hero. Dan Dare (created by illustrator Frank Hampson who also wrote the first stories) appeared on the cover of the first issue of the weekly comic strip magazine, Eagle, on 14 April 1950. Later on the stories were broadcasted in the form of a Radio Luxembourg serial for five years from 2 July 1951.

HAHAHAHAHA !

Laughing robot, Yonezawa, Japan, 1980's

I am all plastic and will laugh at you at a touch of my head... Also got a black cousin somewhere... and a silver one.... and ?

Going home ?

E.T. plush, ?, China, 2010's

Put your sweater on ! It's just plain cold in space !

Buck's raygun

This one came in a number of colours. Basically a flash light and buzzer. It came with a handy little leaflet with the Morse code...

Buck Rogers Sonic Ray Gun, Norton-Honer Mfg., USA, 1952

Ulysse's ELIOS

Elios, Popy, Singapore, 1980's

Another really cool ship is this Elios from the Ulysse 31 series. Fully transformable, from a flying saucer to... this.

Robotan

Robotan, Popy, Japan, 1980's

Do you know this one ? It went to the Arabic markets... but is pure Japanese cutiness !

Let's play a movie !

V35 movie viewer, MUPI, Italy, 1979

Before the VHS, and the DVD, and the Blueray...
Kids had to crank it up to see a mute 30 second film of their heroes.

It was better than the viewmaster - because it had "movement"... But each and every system had different cartridges and none seemed compatible with one another... Normalize, folks ! normalize...

Blues in space

Spaceman, ???

This one is tiny. Really tiny. (3.3 cm - about the size of the small CO-MA astronauts)

The cool thing though is he does have a helmet. Anyone knows who he is ? Maker ? Has a certain 1980's flair...

Modernism

Here you have a bunch of modern loose bots found at fleamarkets and Chinese thrift stores ...

 Most of these are of Chinese origin.

Voltron

Lionbot, R.O.C., Taiwan, 1980's

This one came in a huge box. I got it as a travelling student in the South of Spain (Malaga I think), and carried it in my backpack for a number of days. It visited the Alhambra in Granada and went for tapas on the banks of the Guadalquivir. Olé ! Still need to get rid of some of the sand in the packaging...