Today, Toys & Stuff has a wonderful selection for our Sci-Fi and Fantasy Saturday, the Pyro X-200 Space Ranger coming from what is known as the Golden Age of space toys. Buck Rogers gave birth to the Golden Age in the 1920s and Sputnik killed it off in 1957 giving way to the Silver Age with a whole different design ethic. Pyro made a series of four spacecraft in the early 1950s: X-100 Space Scout (featured on Toys & Stuff back on May 5, 2012 - Pyro X-100 Space Scout); X-200 Space Ranger; X-300 Space Cruiser; and X-400 Space Explorer. The designs were sleek and reminded kids of the time of the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials which were being replayed on television a lot during the '50s.
The Space Ranger we're featuring today comes in yellow and blue but they also came in silver and measures 7 1/4" (18.4cm) L x 3 1/2" (8.9cm) Wingspan. In addition, Kleeware and Tudor Rose of Great Britain received permission to produce this series in their factories which resulted in an unknown number of color variants. The Tudor Rose version though was given more detailing and they also had an awesome Space City Control Tower with two X-200s connected by wires to a central tower. In the late 1950s, Moldex of Australia made a larger 11" (27.9cm) L version and in the 1990s, Dimestore Dreams made a smaller version! For a more detailed look at the Golden Age of Space toys, I heartily recommend the book "Blast Off" by S. Mark Young, Steve Duin, and Mike Richardson (Dark Horse Books). Enjoy!
