Grandmother Stover's C3 Spacemen / Astronauts

Another brand to link to the lesser of the three copies of the Giant Spacemen here, with small packets from Grandmother Stover's one of the smaller (but like SSCO relatively common) cake decoration, pocket-money novelty and craft/doll's house accessory suppliers.

A small'ish set contents-wise helps explain why they are the harder to find, a lot would have been lost piecemeal over time, but these will turn-up from time to time, I haven't opened it as I have a reasonable number of loose ones, including the odd metallic-maroon painted ones!

You can see the distinctive circular marking for the C3, which is my numbering system, no need for anyone else to use it, but it helps get them in 'an' or 'some' order! There's about 12 figures, but they seem to be a good mix of poses, whether you actually got all ten with some extras, or a totally random pick is a moot point I may try to work out if I find a couple more samples!

===============================================================

But is it Giant

As I said last time: these like the C1 and C2's are copies, clones, piracies . . . there's nothing Giant here, but we have the additional Grandmother Stover's for the archive!

Giant and Giant-like Astronaut Spacemen - Part V - Copy Type 'C3'

So to the hardest to pin-down, they seem to have gone head-to-head with Giant, or appearing shortly after Giant, so could be earliest, but I suspect they are contemporary with but copied-from and a few months later than C1, with the C2's also copied from C1? But anyway, this post is on the C3's which are the poorest in quality really?

 

Binoculars are reduced to different sized blobs, but the 'bazooka' keeps it's shape quite well, so 'swings & roundabouts ' there! Flash is greater, and pieces of runner have been left on some of the figures. the weapon of the radio-operator ending-up looking like a fancy aerial!

I believe the paint here is 'factory', and they may have been painted to compete with the later, 1970's, bi-coloured packs of Woolbro's Space Explorer Set's? I have had more than one sample come in with the paint, same shade, and it's painted over the runner-stubs (forth from left) which you feel a modeller/war-gamer - even a young one - might have trimmed-off first?

Marking is a circular 'MADE IN HONG KONG', often double-stamped, or over-stamped, not always clear and in a more condensed font, while the bases are the largest of the four types (C2 are the smallest).

The same mark appears on at least one of many generations of Monogram GI copy, and a small-scale Blue Box piracy cow I have, so whoever this company was, they seem to have been quite busy churning out generic clones for unprincipled Western buyers, or unethical Western contractors!

While I have similar quantities of both, that could be down to coincidence, as the next image would suggest unpainted should be more numerous, but later-produced figures survive better (that's the law of attrition), so if painting came later there would be proportionally-more still around.

Old internet shot - a direct take of Giant's own set, but un-branded and in full colour, with no apparent accessories - despite the artwork - the code number would tie this in with the direct-copies of Giant Wild West sets I have in the pile.

No paint on the figures and the Giant rip-offery, would point to this effort being earlier, with later sets put-up against the Woolbro set, with paint, or 50/50 paint? This set also suggests that there are non-Giant 'Giant' space-tanks out there?

Here's another space tank . . . er! Posed with Marx's tracked Chlorine/Hydrogen/Oxygen rocket-fuel tanker, this is a re-issue I think in a white plastic which could be a dense 'ethylene polymer or a polypropylene? The figures are - of course - and like the other four sets - all softer polyethylene plastic.

===============================================================

But is it Giant

These like the C1 and C2's are copies, clones, piracies . . . there's nothing Giant here, but this type is trying hardest to be Giant with the total copy of card-art and accompanying text . . . including the probably non-existent rocket-firing tanks!

Giant and Giant-like Astronaut Spacemen - Part II - Giant Originals

So, to the figures issued by Giant in the early to mid-1960's, the same figures would have been found in The Toy House or World Toy House (same firm) packaging. Figures are marginally the largest at a tad over 21mm and a mean/average, and also the best sculpted, these can paint-up well, but are scarce, so better to use commoner copies for that sort of thing!

The boards I used t shot these have left a bit of a shock on the eye, vis-à-vis the base-marks, but if you enlarge the images (right-click and 'open in new tab', or window, then left-click the image if a plus-sign is showing) you'll see they are clear enough.

This is what I call the command poses, four-of-nine, with detector man (it's sci-fi he could be detecting anything, not necessarily mines!), a spotter with binoculars, a squad/section signaller/runner and the O/C - Officer Commanding; we know that's who he is as he's the only one with a side-arm . . . or ray-pistol!

The squad troopers, armed with various lengths of space-rifle and a recoilless, tube-launched weapon, undoubtedly capable of some cosmic devastation on an epic scale! Giant originals are all clearly marked with the mark more associated with the later retail production (black and silver knights, Mongols &etc.), including the spurious ⓟ-mark! - "GIANT ⓟ MADE IN HONG KONG"

Someone sent me this about ten-years ago, maybe twelve (2007/8?) and I can't find the eMail to thank them, they are - sadly - only empty cards, but I think we can tell they would have contained - from the left; a random (of three designs) space-tank and a handful (20-odd?) of figures [3907 Space Patrol], a larger single blister of (40/50-odd?) figures [Space Men], at least two tanks, with the missile-launch mechanism of a third, along with a sample of figures and possibly one of two things yet to be identified (?) [5933 Space Brigade] and finally; one of the big rocket-ships with a dozen or so figures [5932 Space Launch].

Not clear in this low-res shot is that the Space Launch set has an integral sunken tray like the Viking longship sets, and later simpler blister-packed sets existed including another Space Men and a Space Explorer set.

I don't have the tanks or rockets yet, so until I track them down, which I will, here are a couple of past feeBay lots with two of them, they all have the same twin missile-launcher as a plug-in and the same dodgy running-gear as the WWII tanks, but three different superstructure/bodies of which there are two seen here

Compared with the 23mm'ish Airfix Astronauts, you can see the diminutive size of Giant's figures, the bino's guy looks smaller-still because he's bending forward slightly and foreshortening has 'dwarfed' him!

This image (left) is now on 'Worthpoint' except theirs is a fuzzy thumbnail you have to sign-up to see properly (which I'm sure involves money or endless spam, probably both!), but the eBay original can still be found at a higher resolution, it came in an opposite colour-way (blues for reds and vise-versa) and while being now some sixty years of age, bears a remarkable resemblance to Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship 'Heavy Lifter' (main image), which is designed to land on its tail fins like all those 1950's pulp-cover artwork and kids comic vessels!

Vintage and modern as the current HexBug Nano - Nano Space/Nanobot's space ship disgorges a troop of Giant's intrepid finest to  . . . err . . . check something out! Please note; There were no gold astronauts from/issued by Giant

I think I've bored you with this before, but Giant's figures are problematical for me with what passes for OCD in an Aspergic; namely they are armed, so should be 'Spacemen', but they are clearly wearing NASA-era spacesuits which makes them 'Astronauts' . . . doh! And hence the titles of this series 'Astronaut Spacemen'! Although Giant get round the quandary (it's real!) by using the separate words 'Space Men' across the whole line - not 'spacemen'.

===============================================================

But is it Giant

Yes! Apart from the obvious prop in the last shot, the four Airfix and most of the figures in the filtered first image, this IS the Giant Plastic Corp of New York & Hong Kong issued product.