Little Plastic Spacemen

Those of you who have been reading my stuff for longer than just this blog are no doubt asking yourself, “How long until he tells the story about the little plastic spacemen?”

Well, with me still in Seattle until sometime tomorrow, the answer to that very good question is… how about now?

Oh No, It’s a Rerun!

“Little Plastic Spacemen”.  It’s a title that I’ve used before.  It’s a story that I’ve told before.  In zines and in blogs.  Presented as articles, columns, and posts.  It seems to eventually find it’s way into almost all of my longwinded nonfiction projects.  Case in point:  It’s arrived here today. 

A Brief History of the Galaxy Laser Team / Star Patrol

This story actually begins way back in the 1950s with a company in Illinois called Processed Plastic and its subsidiary Tim-Mee Toys.  Tim-Mee Toys was in the business of producing and selling little plastic figures sold by the bunch in a clear plastic bag.  I’m sure you’re familiar with what I’m talking about here.  The best known example of this type of product is the green plastic army men. 

And while Tim-Mee did have those tiny plastic soldiers, they also marketed a whole lot of other stuff, too.  Farm animals.  Dinosaurs.  Cowboys & Indians.  Circus animals and performers.  (That one included clowns, although they also did a series of just clowns.)  Rodeo riders and animals.  Cavemen.  Fairy tale characters.  If people were willing to buy small plastic representations of something, Tim-Mee Toys would produce it and sell it to you. 

Then came the late 1970s, and the people at Tim-Mee were witnessing the phenomenon of the Star Wars action figure line flying off of store shelves.  I can only imagine that it didn’t take long for someone to say, “Hey, we gotta get in on this!” 

And so, in 1978 the Galaxy Laser Team was born.  (Alternately marketed as Star Patrol.)  A couple of astronauts, a couple of space age adventurers, a couple of aliens, a robot, and the token female. 

They came in four different colors.  Black, white, hot pink, and lime.  Also included in the package was something they called an X-Wing Rocket.  (Why that didn’t trigger a trademark infringement incident I have no idea.)  The ‘rocket’ in question was basically an F-16 with an extra pair of wings.  Also, to be functional as a vehicle for the Galaxy Laser Team, they would have to utilize some kind of shrinking technology on themselves.  Not exactly in the same scale. 

Speaking of scale, a year after the GLT’s debut, Tim-Mee came out with a set of Galaxy Laser Team figures that were a full 5 inches tall, just over double the height of the standard issue team member.  These were sold individually rather than in a group, and I don’t think that all of the figures made it to the ‘big leagues’.  If I remember right only one of the astronauts got the size upgrade.  And there were no 5 inch tall spacewomen. 

These figures were apparently very, very popular, given the number of nostalgic testimonials you can find online.  “I had those!” is a common brag. 

Advent 1978

Growing up, there’d always be a cheap cardboard Advent calendar in the house come late November, with the 24 little doors that opened up to reveal pictures (usually either religious or Santa based).  But in 1978, Mom had a much better version of the Advent countdown for me. 

This calendar was a sturdy fabric and plastic wall hanging, and instead of doors that revealed pictures, it had pockets.  And when I first saw it on the morning of December 1^st, each pocket had something wrapped in tissue paper tucked inside. 

Some days it was a couple of pieces of candy.  I think that there may have been a Hot Wheels or Matchbox car one day.  But for the majority of that Advent season, the daily prize was a little plastic spaceman.  (Or spacewoman.  Or robot.  Whatever.) 

These figures absolutely blew my little seven (almost eight) year old mind.  Toy soldiers?  Boring.  But toy space adventurers?  Now you were speaking my language. 

(I would eventually discover that the Galaxy Laser Team came packaged at around thirty figures to a bag.  Advent only had twenty-four days, and not every day got me one of them.  This discovery came years and years after that Advent, and when I asked Mom what had happened with the rest of the package, her response was a simple, “I don’t know.”  I kind of felt cheated out of some of my spacepeople.) 

The Generic Nature of Unnamed Characters

One of the greatest things about these little plastic spacemen was that they didn’t have names or backgrounds.  They didn’t come complete with their own stories.  Which meant that I was free to customize their identities.  Their histories.  Their relationships to one another.  I could cast them in whatever role I chose. 

I couldn’t do that with my other toys.  A Luke Skywalker figure is always Luke Skywalker.  Just like a Spider-Man doll is always Spider-Man.  Bert and Ernie?  Always Bert and Ernie.  But my little plastic spacemen?  They were going to be who I decided that they would be.  I’d never had a toy before that allowed me that kind of control. 

Of course, I was consistent.  I wasn’t creating new characters for them to portray at the start of every day.  No, once they were given names and personas, they kept them. 

Styrofoam!

I’m not 100% certain that Mom would have gotten me the spacepeople if she had known how much Styrofoam that they would cause me to collect. 

One of the things that my little plastic spacemen were in desperate need of was an environment in which to have their adventures.  And on Christmas morning after the presents were all unwrapped, and the gifts taken out of their boxes, I saw one of the Styrofoam inserts that had protected whatever it was that had been snuggly nestled inside of it. 

“Can I have that?” I had asked.  A reason was requested, so I explained that this specific pre-formed indentation in the insert was obviously a giant viewscreen.  And this other larger section was somebody’s bedroom.  And since my little plastic spacemen needed a place to live…

I’m sure that my parents figured letting me have a Styrofoam insert was harmless, and that would be the end of it.  But I was only 8 years old at the time, and how well could my parents have really known me in that short a time?  (Cue maniacal laughter.)

 

From that point on, and for the next several years, any time that any of my relatives got a new piece of equipment, I was there to lay claim to the Styrofoam packing inserts.  Pristine white with their odd little nooks and crannies.  Space age architecture.  Sometimes alien architecture. 

The greatest day in the lives of those little plastic spacemen was when my grandparents got a brand new television.  One of the old-school cathode ray tube this is a legitimate piece of furniture beasts.  And inside of its huge cardboard crate, guess what it was packed in?  Humongous styrofoam inserts.  The new pride-and-joy of my Styrofoam collection. 

(Years later when I got into the G.I. Joe action figures, I wanted the big expensive base.  Didn’t get it, of course, because as I said: ‘expensive’.  At 4.75 inches tall, G.I. Joe was far too big to set up base in Styrofoam.) 

My Cast of Characters

In my “Autobibliography” post, I talked about how those little plastic spacemen were the inspiration behind my first writing efforts.  I wrote (and crudely illustrated) some of their adventures. 

The sketchpad containing this chronicle is long gone now.  And my memory of those events now 40+ years ago is hazy at best.  But these were the characters that I grew to love so very much. 

 

This Buck Solo looking sci-fi archetype was the primary fighter for the forces of good in the galaxy.  I cannot remember his name.  (I’ll probably say that several times in this section.)  He was the lucky one that was in a relationship with the token woman. 

 

The token woman.  I had four of her, one in each color.  They all had different names, but those names were all anagrams of each other.  Again, I couldn’t tell you what the names were, but for some reason that particular naming convention stands out in my mind.  These women were the group’s computer experts, given that they were the only ones with computers. 

 

Ah, the astronauts.  I couldn’t forget their names if I tried.  After having mustered up all of the creativity and originality that my young brain had to offer, I christened them Astro One and Astro Two.  Snazzy, no?

 

The little robot’s name is also burned into my brain forever and ever.  Because I named him Bloooperer.  That’s right.  Three ‘o’s, two ‘er’s.  He adventured alongside the others, but for some reason, lived by himself in a cave.  I no longer remember why.  (If there even was a ‘why’.) 

 

I think that this next guy was probably my favorite.  To me, he looks like a cross between a Wookiee and someone from the Planet of the Apes (the originals from the late sixties/early seventies, long before they had good prosthetics and better computer graphics).  He was a soldier and did as much fighting as the guy with the gun pointed out in front of him.  And once again, his name was apparently unremarkable enough to elude me. 

 

Now we come to the villain of the piece.  The real alien looking dude.  Why did I automatically make the least human looking one the enemy?  Probably because that’s just what you did in those days.  I’m fairly certain that his name had either an X or a Z in it.  Beyond that, I’m drawing the expected blank. 

These were my first characters.  Theirs were the stories I told.  They were what kicked my identity as a writer into gear. 

Meanwhile, In Argentina…

Unbeknownst to me, there was someone in Argentina who was not only writing and illustrating their own stories featuring characters based on these little plastic spacemen… but also publishing them.  It was an Argentinian children’s magazine called Anteojito, and each month brought a new chapter in “Ekaton, the People Lost in Space”. 

Each character in that comic strip was undeniably based on the Galaxy Laser Team.  I’ve seen images of the strip online, and this guy was drawing the same people I had been, only in his case, using actual artistic skill. 

I keep meaning to dig further into this story, but have never gotten around to it.  (And instead of doing that as research for this blog post, I am instead frantically building MOCs before we leave for BrickCon in Seattle several days ago.  Building MOCs in my time, leaving for BrickCon in your time.  In case my mangling of tenses confused you.)

A Bucketful of Nostalgia, Somewhere In the 1990s

During the 80s and 90s, I ended up losing most of those figures.  I suspect that a lot of them disappeared when my Mom and my cousin decided to clean my bedroom (which was admittedly a disastrous environment) while I was at school one day.  They decided that anything that was on the floor would just get thrown away.  And my organizational process was such that ‘on the floor’ was simply where I kept certain things.  I lost a lot of stuff that day. 

I had long since ceased writing (and poorly illustrating) their adventures.  But I didn’t want to be rid of the figures.  So I started keeping my eye out for them.  They didn’t seem to be in production any more, and were apparently now collector’s items.  And I couldn’t afford to pay collector’s prices for them. 

My discovery of the existence of the 5 inch figures came when I found one in the wild at a antique shop.  It was reasonably priced, but I had no money on me.  Dad, of course, promptly refused to buy it for me.  (To this day I have still never owned one.)

Eventually, I had mostly given up on reclaiming this very important part of my childhood.  (Deep sigh.)  But then…

Then Salem got it’s first Walmart.  And on my first ever trip to Walmart, while walking down the toy aisle, I saw these colorful buckets filled with small plastic figures.  Some had army men.  Others had farm animals or dinosaurs.  But the one that caught my eye was the Galaxy Laser Team.  Little plastic spacemen! 

(Actually, saying that these buckets were filled with little plastic spacemen is probably a misnomer.  Because the bucket also contained a large green plastic mountain which took up a lot of the bucket’s space.  And the spacemen were added in afterwards, so their were no figures contained with the hollow mountain.) 

Needless to say, I went home that day with a bucket of little plastic spacemen.  And when I got home and opened up the bucket to see what priceless treasure my money had bought me, I found not only my expected beloved space adventurers, but also… this guy. 

 

The inclusion of this guy confused me.  “Who the Hell is this interloper?” I wondered.  When they decided to reissue the Galaxy Laser Team did they create a new spaceperson for it?  Why?  Why just the one guy?  It didn’t make sense to me. 

I would later discover that the original version of the toys from the late 70s were created in a facility that produced them and bagged them up.  According to weight.  Randomly.  So buying a bag of 30 figures didn’t guarantee you getting a full set of all eight characters.  So either the bag Mom bought simply didn’t contain this ‘new’ guy, or he was in the other half of that curiously missing bagful from that original purchase. 

Either way, this guy remains my least favorite, simply because he wasn’t one of my original little plastic spacemen.  He always felt like a character introduced in the third season designed to boost ratings. 

Tim-Mee Toys had returned, and I couldn’t have been happier about it. 

Later on, they produced a set of Galaxy Laser Team figures that came in a cardboard box along with a much larger, much more detailed mountain play terrain.  I bought myself one of those, but sadly, the play mountain didn’t make the move from my Dad’s house to my brother’s basement when I did, and is now lost to me. 

Eventually, the toys slowly disappeared from shelves, and we were once again without the ability to buy new little plastic spacemen.  Unless, of course, you were willing to spend your hard earned money for them on eBay. 

Nostalgia Redux, 2010s

…and then in the early 2010s, Tim-Mee returned (again), this time with an assortment of 50 figures for around $15.00.  This time the figures came in two colors (per release – the initial set was black and grey, since then they’ve had red and blue, tan and olive green, and so on).  And in a specific distribution of three figures of each color.  No more randomization causing people to potentially miss out on a figure. 

And as I sit here typing this, the figures are currently still available.  As my collection of 90s era Galaxy Laser Team figures are all still currently in my brother’s basement, I had to order a pack off of Amazon to be able to have photos for this post. 

 

  

Little Plastic Spacemen As Objet d’Art

Searching for ‘Galaxy Laser Patrol’ online has occasionally brought up images of those little plastic spacemen that have been hand-painted by artisans far more talented than I.  Turning them from mass-produced monochrome toys into individual works of art. 

There’s a guy selling some of them on eBay right now for $60 (plus $16.10 shipping) each.  Which is way outside of my price range. 

Several years before I moved out of my brother’s basement and into my own apartment, my brother got heavily into boardgames.  Given how many boardgames on Kickstarter come with unpainted miniatures, he got into miniature painting.  And he’s damn good at it, too. 

So you’d think that it wouldn’t be a problem for me to get a hand-painted set of my own little plastic spacemen, right?  Heh.  Wrong. 

I pointed out some of the custom painted Galaxy Laser Team members to him on the internet.  Then started dropping hints.  And finally just asked.  Occasionally pleaded.  But, nope.  Too busy with his own minis.  

Then I pointed out what an incredible holiday gift a complete set of eight hand-painted figures would make.  (Seven if you leave out the Interloper.)  But Christmas after Christmas, birthday after birthday, I still have yet to receive one. 

Go Buy Yourself Some Little Plastic Spacemen Today!

Seriously, do it!  They’re great!  Fun for the whole family.  Boys love them.  Girls love them.  Nonbinary children love them.  Nostalgic adults love them.  Even plush walruses seem to love them.  What more of an endorsement could you possibly want?