In March I started posting Lido spaceships. As a companion series, in April we kicked off a look at their spacemen and I am finally able to put a cap on it! Or am I? It seems that whenever I start one of these series it takes me down a rabbit hole I wasn't prepared to go down. Okay fine. Let's see what was covered to-date. Enjoy! Opa Fritz
This blog series only covered those Lido figures that were connected to the Captain Video and His Video Rangers TV show airing on the DuMont network from 1949-55 (I have since learned that this was just a portion of the space figures Lido released). Here's what we got so far:
Lido 90mm Futuremen
Licensed tie-ins to the popular DuMont Network Captain Video and His Video Rangers TV show. Four Figures. The Wikipedia write-up states:
"The series, set in Earth's distant future, tracked the adventures of a group of fighters for truth and justice, known as The Video Rangers. They were led by Captain Video (no first name ever was mentioned). The Video Rangers operated from a secret base on a mountaintop whose location was unspecified."
HOWEVER, in one of the few surviving episodes (from 1952) one of the surprises I encountered was finding out that Captain Video was the head of the Interplanetary Mail Service! They were mailmen! At least in the episode I watched. It is impossible to totally decipher the show's story arc as over 1200 episodes were filmed and only a few survived and - to the best of my knowledge - none of the scripts survived either.
(L) The figure on the far left is Captain Video.
(M) The two figures in the middle were not given names but may be Captain Video's teen-aged companion, simply known in the series as The Video Ranger plus an unidentified character.
(R) The Robot is 'Tobor' - the robot depicted in the Captain Video and His Video Rangers TV show at the time these toys were made. The robot was an important, semi-regular character on the program, and
represents the first appearance of a robot in live televised science fiction
(The robot has been erroneously called 'Grag'. It is NOT 'Grag' - that name appears nowhere in sci-fi lore!)
Lido 35mm Mars Men, Space Men, Satellite Men
Another rabbit hole. This group of figures went by several names over the years.:
1) According to "BLAST OFF! Rockets, Robots, Ray Guns, and Rarities from The Golden Age of Space Toys!" by S. Mark Young, Steve Duin, and Mike Richardson, these were referred to as "Mars Men' in the earliest ads. But where? Comic books, 'Life', 'Look', 'The Post', 'The New Yorker', 'Amazing Stories'??? Where were these ads they're referring to??? Does anyone out there have them? Can we see them?
2) The original sponsor of the Captain Video TV program was Post cereals, and under Post they were referred to as the Captain Video Space Man figures. Available as cereal premiums, 8 Aliens and 4 Humanoids, these were made in both hard plastic and soft plastic in a wide variety of colors.
3) After the DuMont network suddenly went belly up in 1955, Lido found a new sponsor with Kellogg's cereal. Under Kellogg's the name changed once again - to Satellite Men. Apparently, only the aliens were included in the cereal and they were all in bronze soft plastic.
Complete Set of 35mm Figures
When the blog series started, I was missing two of the poses. Good fortune smiled on me and I was able to acquire the missing pieces.
Complete Set of 50mm Figures
When the blog series started I was missing two of the Humanoid poses, but yet again fortune smiled on me and I was able to complete the set.
Lido 50mm Satellite Men?
-I'm confused. The toy community tends to call these figures collectively as "Satellite Men' YET that refers to the later Kellogg's entry of which it appears that only the eight aliens were included, NOT the Humanoids.
-How were the 50mm figures sold? I had assumed that only the smaller 35mm figures came in cereal boxes. Did the larger 50mm figures also come in cereal boxes?
-Lido offered boxed sets of their small spaceships. Were the 50mm figures included in these boxed sets? Did they have their own boxed sets?
-These eight aliens were included in the T. Cohn (aka Superior) Space Port along with a set of 'Rangers' (basically Army Men with clear space helmets). The Humanoids didn't appear to be included in the playset.
Miscellaneous Discoveries
Along the way I discovered several things:
-The eight alien figures were given names by Kellogg's (as seen in the cereal box to the right), most likely by the artist who designed the box art (total guess on my part BTW):
It's hard to make the names out in this low-res photo, and a couple of poses as shown in the artwork don't match the toys exactly but I found a blog/website that confirms what I had already concluded on my own: Space Garage
-The two sizes of figures are actually separate sculpts. Often times toy companies will pantograph up-or-down figures to make them in different sizes and the details are consistent across the size ranges. However, after comparing the Lido 35mm and 50mm figures, there are far too many inconsistencies. Poses are not exactly the same from large to small (heads or arms may have slightly different angles to them from one size to the next for example) and details differ.
Some examples of inconsistencies among sizes. Can you spot them?
-Lido made these in both hard plastic and soft plastic. Often times a company will offer a line of toys in one or the other, but not both. Except for Lido. At least in the 35mm and 50mm Satellite Men figures. The 90mm Futuremen were hard plastic only.
-Later in the '50s and '60s the figures became available as cake toppers. I don't know if Lido sold the tooling to another company, made the figures available on a contracted basis, or made and sold them themselves. In any case, these figures had a much longer life-span in the market place than many other toys!
1963: My bear-shaped birthday cake made by my mother, surrounded by Lido space toys
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