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

WAS Unk Mfr (Unmarked) - Astronaut 4" / 100mm - Silver SP: NOW Marx Recast

Thanx to the guys in the fb groups, I have now identified this as a Marx recast figure still being sold as part of a group of eight poses. As with other unknown figures I've since identified, all the photos have been updated and are posted here with correct file names. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

This are being sold by David Méndez Ortiz on his 'Marx Toys Recasts' fb page. The toys are made in Mexico using the original Marx molds and David can be reached via 'Messenger'.

'Marx Toys Recasts' photo

Marx No. 1726 Kennedy Space Center Astronaut

I'm still finding photos on the computer that haven't been edited yet. I spent yesterday evening editing this set of photos dsating back to 2018. This MarxAstronaut was sold as a souvenir at the Kennedy Space Center, although mine was bought off of fleaBay. This thing got sold off a couple of years ago because it just didn't fit in with my particular space toy interests, but it's still kind of a neat piece. Unfortunately I never got around to scanning the booklet that came with it - oh well. The figure is essentially Marx's Johnny Apollo action figure repackaged for the Kennedy Space Center and measures 7 3/8" (17.78cm) H. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

ADDED INFO

the off-color, more 'greenish' gold pieces (two shown lower left, and the pistol) are not Marx-issue pieces, and didn't come with this set