Triang Knock Off Cricket P-1 (UNK MFR - Hong Kong)

Here's a nice Triang (or Tri-ang) Cricket P-1 knock-off I acquired recently. The toy is covered in detail in Paul V's awesome Spacex Website. Here's the differences in the two:

-The most obvious difference is the color. The knock-off is a pale cream with hints of yellow. 

-As well, while the grill on mine is missing, the knock-off's grill is thicker and has less louvres. 

-The knock-off's cannon is just there for show and is non-operational (and on my sample, it has been glued in place so cannot swivel)

-The knock-off has a smaller clear plastic dome

-The manufacturer's attribution is crooked! The lettering does not line up nice and neat.

Enjoy! Opa Fritz

My Cricket

Original Cricket / knock-off comparison

(Courtesy triangspacextoys website)

My sample

Triang SpaceX Base Patrol Cricket P1 - Redux

I posted this Cricket back in 2016 when I thought - wrongly - that I would be continuing the series. Okay, so here it is again but with a bit more information and in order of Triang SpaceX's 4 series. Of all the SpaceX toys this one really struck a cord with me as it was based on Remco' Hamilton's Invaders Mosquito Jeep from 1964, a toy I had as a kid! The full origin story is here at SpaceX Central. The downsized Triang version is fairly faithful to the original - except of course for the pull-back string activated motor - and shoots shells from its functional rear deck cannon which rotates and elevates. Unlike some of the other vehicles in the SpaceX range, the Cricket is actually a good size fit with the figures that come with it and looks right at home alongside them. The Cricket measures 3 1/8" (7.93cm) L (hull only) or 3 5/8" (9.20cm) L to the rear of the cannon x 1 1/2" (3.81cm) W x 1 1/2" (3.81cm) H. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Triang SpaceX Base Patrol Cricket P1

I believe I'm finally going to start posting my miniature space toys before it's too late. I began to collect Triang SpacEx, Multiple Toymakers Golden Astronauts, Imperial Toys Apollo Moon Exploring and some others. This whole project began shortly after the blog was started back in 2010 and I managed to acquire and photograph quite a few of these gems. My goal for collecting these was nearly complete, I was really only looking for the carded toys and not the boxed deluxe sets, although a bunch of those did end up in the collection (I wonder how that happens?). Everything was photographed and I was holding out on posting anything until I got one missing piece - just one - and then...

.

...and then I lost the external hard drive on which all the photos were stored. There was one saving grace to all this. That hard drive wasn't the only place photos were stored on. We saved photos to the laptop, two smaller external drives, and then there were all the photos we already posted on-line here or in facebook. As a result, slowly but surely we've been recovering a great many 'lost' pics. Some were irretrievably lost but we've saved a great many.

All that being said, this kind of started after reading the excellent Moonbase Central blog run by Paul Woods, Bill Bulloch, and Mike Burrows on 'the other side of the pond' over in the UK. Their coverage of these miniature gems was awesome and they've managed to cover not only the toys but the roots of their designs be it from comic books, space art, NASA or other space agency designs, etc. I'm not going to attempt to pin down timelines for when these were made, who made what, what variations appeared etc., I leave it to you the readers to hop on over to Moonbase and take a gander at their posts. 

One day if time ever permits, I would love to build a diorama using these small figures as a basis. This first post features the 'Cricket' a popular spacey Jeep-like vehicle. I had a much large 'Cricket' as a kid as part of the Hamilton's Invaders playsets I got when I was 12. Each card contains either a space ship, a rover, or vehicle and one figure. The figures could be any one of a number of poses made by Triang. 

Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

Here's the Cricket posed beside a Pyro X-300 space ship