Marx 65mm Soft Plastic Swoppet-Style Spacemen - Pt 1

I'm still fighting a cold and not feeling up to par, but figured I could sneak in a simple post. This next series of spacemen is real small - only three poses. Made by Marx, these three astronauts are large - at 65mm - and were copies of Cherilea's Swoppet-style spacemen. I don't know the history of these sculpts and how Marx ended up making them after first being produced by Cherilea. They're called 'swoppet's' because one could swap out the heads, helmets, and gear. They're made of soft plastic and their biggest drawback is the tendency for them to warp out of true enough such that cannot be stood up. I've tried dunking in boiling water, positioning them, then letting them dry but for some reason they never maintain the corrected shape for long and always revert to the warped state. Oh well. That being said I managed to get these photos with them all standing long enough for the camera. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

These photos were culled from fleaBay and show what carded examples look like.

An inventory shot to show what figures I have

There's only three styles of helmets that I'm aware of.

It's a lot easier to just leave the heads inside the helmets when swapping.

Original Cherilea gear. There are tabs behind the pieces which fit into holes on the figures. Unfortunately the tabs on the Cherilea gear are too thick to fit into the holes on the Marx figures. There are no maker's marks on this gear.

The Marx figures have no makers mark, but the gear all have the 'Mar-X' Marx herald.

Marx Swoppet sans gear! Gotta love that pointy head! LOL 

As tall as he is, the Marx spaceman is dwarfed by the Archer dude