Multiple Toymaker's Golden Astronaut - A New Series

We're starting a new series today. As mentioned way back when in June, Triang needed a vehicle to sell its line of small SpaceX toys here Stateside. That vehicle was Multiple Toymakers. Many of us know them as MPC and many of us certainly remember MPC ringhands. But MPC/Multiple was more than ringhands with an astounding array of toys which I'm still learning about and which certainly rivals or perhaps even surpasses Marx!

When Multiple took over the marketing of the SpaceX toys for sale in America, essentially two things happened: they changed the branding and packaging, they changed many of the names of the toys (but not all). As with SpaceX, Golden Astronaut was issued in four basic series:

Stage I Launch Site Series
Stage II Space Probe Series
Stage III Moon Exploration Series
Stage IV Interplanetary Patrol Series

The above listed series' consisted of small carded toys (3 each for Stage I and 4 each for the other Stages for a total of 15 small carded), an unknown number of large carded sets, an unknown number of window box sets, and at least one or two large Super Sets. While I have all 15 of the small carded toys, the others have proven elusive, but I did acquire a few so I'll do what I can in the upcoming weeks. As with the SpaceX toys I'll be referencing Paul Vreede's excellent SpaceX website which is referred to as 'SpaceX Central'. If anyone on this planet has the lowdown on these toys it'll be him and it'll be on his site.

Here's a couple of pages lifted from Montgomery Wards and Penney's catalogs showing the toys available in the range. 

 Courtesy of Moonbase Central

Courtesy of Moonbase Central

So what do I offer you dear readers? More pics - many, many more pics in the form of photo essays. I can't really add anything to the history but I can certainly add to the overall photo library.  To that end - Enjoy! Opa Fritz