Early Cherilea plastic figures were the perfect plaything; chunky and action posed, mostly well modelled they covered many historical era’s. I remember going into Woolworths in Portobello Rd and finding a counter overflowing with them, all mixed up and the same price, of all of them it was the Vikings I wanted. More about them some other time, today it’s their 1st version plastic spacemen, another favourite, that I’m showcasing.
I am not sure, but I reckon in the late 1950’s, I went into a local sweetshop near my grandparent’s house in Leicestershire and saw these spacemen for sale, they were sold individually, quite cheap and I am sure they were in cellophane packets hanging from a backing card. So many different variations to choose from, and assembled randomly.
Since then they’ve been remade\remodelled by Cherilea and by Marx, and copied by various Hong Kong makers and others.
There were six original poses but some of the re-issued sets have less. Collecting all the variations, packaging, accessories from the long lifespan of this set is a theme itself. Here are some of the variations of the original set in my collection.
So many variations could be achieved by the multitude of combinations of colours and different styles of equipment. All these are as originally sold. I can’t find any of the last figure in the set, the fellow standing, left hand empty and a sort of radar thing raised high in his right, I must have them somewhere, when I find them I’ll update the post.
For comparison, here is a much later Cherilea boxed set, complete with spaceship, and even this boxed set comes in different version, including the moon-terrain based figures. I might return to this theme in a future post, but there are many other Cherilea toy soldier ranges in my collection, lead and plastic. The figure I can’t find from my 1st version figures is on the left; the back one.
As always click on any image to enlarge. The next post will be my first on Hinton Hunt 54mm figures.
Jim's Vintage Toy Soldiers 
Cool toys
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