Having gotten the nice, but rather plain, Lido 35mm Satellite Men astronauts out of the way, we can continue our journey with the fun guys - the aliens! There are eight poses in a rainbow of colors. I knew of course that the 35mm figures were made as 'Post Raisin Bran' cereal premiums (while the 54mm set was included in T. Cohn's Space Port playset) when DuMont's Captain Video and His Video Rangers TV series was airing. But then DuMont folded rather suddenly in 1955 while the series was still running. Apparently, Kellogg's picked up the ball from there and offered them as the Satellite Man series. The most recent issue of Playset Magazine (No.128 Mar Apr May 2024) has a photo of all eight aliens in a nice bronze soft plastic that were included in boxes of Shredded Wheat. And then, by 1963 they were being sold as cake toppers by, I suppose, whoever wanted them made. One of the most interesting aspects of this whole odyssey is that whoever drew the 'Shredded Wheat' box art for the aliens gave them names! If you enlarge the photo you can make out their names and while most of the toy figures were easily identifiable to the fanciful art, a couple needed a bit of educated guesswork. The names are all whimsical and I can only guess the artist was either a) bored or b) had a good sense of humor.
I'll post these in alien-name alphabetical order, so today we look at 'BRLT'. Hmmmm, just how would you pronounce that? Enjoy! Opa Fritz
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'BRLT' The Claw-handed alien robot
That's fascinating mate! I never knew the Kellogg's connection, I'll have to look out for those PE bronzes! US or US & Canada? And maybe the soft-plastic 'French' ones were later premiums too?
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These things are hard to come by in any color Hugh. I lucked out getting a complete set recently but paid dearly for it and it's bloody hard getting a set together that's all one color. These would have been U.S. that I'm aware of but as for Canadian and/or French connections -I have no clue.
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