Imperial Toy Apollo Moon Exploring Set No. 304A

Well, I finally got around to taking all of the pix for this next series of photo essays. There may be a pause between some of the posts while I try to find time to edit the several hundred photographs.

As with the Triang SpaceX and Multiple Toymakers Golden Astronaut series of space toys, excellent background coverage of this line can be found in two places on SpaceX Central: the first link is to the LP origins, while the second link is to the Stateside marketing under Imperial Toy.  Just as Multiple Toymakers sold the Triang SpaceX toys Stateside under the Golden Astronaut banner, Imperial Toy of Los Angeles sold these toys made by LP of Hong Kong, under the Apollo Moon Explorer banner.

There are 12 different carded sets in the series numbered 304A to 304L. The background art is the same for all 12 cards with only the border colors differing.

The first set in the series starts with some toys that most kids would have recognized immediately back when these came out in the '60's: the Lunar Module (also referred to as the LEM - Lunar Excursion Module), American flag reminiscent of the type placed on the Moon during Apollo 11, and two astronaut figures in the more bulky suits (and more accurate for Moon landings of the period). Of course, the only toy in set which has no basis in the Apollo program as it played out, is the down-sized version of Mattel's Major Matt Mason Space Crawler. Except for this first one, many of the sets in the series will feature shots of two or even three cards, either because of color variations or to show the different astronaut figures which were randomly packaged with the sets. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The Lunar Module is a rather crudely made toy - the fidelity of detail just isn't there. On the other hand, it was only meant to be a cheap toy and not a museum piece, so the fact that one can look at it and know right away it's the Lunar Module is good 'nuff! The American flag measures 1 3/4" (4.44cm) H and the Lunar Module is 1 3/8" (3.49cm) H.

That large gaping hole on top is meant to accomodate the Command/Service Module set-up featured in another set

This downsized MMM (Major Matt Mason) Space Crawler, while not true to the actual Moon landings, is a cool piece of hardware nonetheless. It is 2 1/8" (5.39cm) L x 1 1/8" (2.85cm) H.

The 30mm astronauts shown below are unique to this set and I have yet to see them included in any of the other sets. They wear the more accurate, bulky suits typical of those the astronauts actually wore while on the Moon and they are silver colored vs. the gold color of all the other figures in the range. The bases are quite thick on these making them a tad bit more than 30mm but that's close enough.

Astronaut figure 1 with camera

Astronaut figure 2 with sample collecting scoop