The 1950s were a unique time in science fiction. Reflecting the very real Cold War paranoia of alien invasion, science fiction turned to Martian invasion by gigantic robots and aliens in spaceships of all designs. Being fed by the likes of the 1953 film of H.G. Wells' novel, War of the Worlds; 1956's film Forbidden Planet; and throughout the 1960s with the release of "Mars Attacks," a series of photographic cards based on a premise that evil aliens are attacking Earth, Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey and countless novels, short stories, television shows and comic books, this robotic fervor took on huge proportions, capturing the imaginations of children the world over. As often happens during such times, the toys available to kids reflected the mood and atmosphere of the time, and during the 1950s and 1960s the world experienced a definitive era in tin toys based on robots and spaceships.Today, these vintage tin toys are rare and hard to find, and when they can be found they can fetch prices in the hundreds of dollars for a single piece. And companies have found that reproducing these toys can be lucrative as well, such as Rocket USA, which has gorgeously reproduced many tin toys from that magical time.
But if you can't afford a museum full of tin robots and spaceships you can at least own
Robots and Spaceships, a wonderful book in the Taschen Icons series. Taschen is a German company that produces books on cultural icons from around the world featuring visual icons from the world of architecture, art, design, fashion, film and many other areas of life. Among these are books on Egyptian artifacts, images of roses, Japanese comic books, custom cars ... the range is eclectic and culturally relevant.
Bound in a small, softcover format,
Robots and Spaceships measures 5.5 by 7.5 inches and is prefaced with a trilingual (English, German and French) introduction, "A Passion for Robots" by Teruhisa Kitahara, a collector of these surviving tin toys. The book is filled with color photographs of tin robots and spaceships from the 1950s and 1960s in their many and varied forms and colors.
The book lays out (though not necessarily chronologically) the evolution of robot and spaceship toys from the early 1950s to the late 1960s and even into the 1970s. It is interesting even to simply flip through the pages. You see an almost kinescopic evolution of these toys over the period of two decades. Starting out with the very boxlike Robert Robot, followed very quickly by robots that resemble the TIE fighter pilots from the film
Star Wars, it chronicles toys like Nonstop Robot, which is now being reproduced in a modern form by Rocket USA. It then moves on to spaceships, space stations, cars, tanks, rockets, motorcycles, astronauts and even communication equipment, all based on the design mentality of the middle of the last century.
Lust for two-dimensional metal A first glance of the myriad robots on display in these pages may give the impression that the design of robots during this time was pretty much consistent, but a closer look will show that, while some of these toys looked similar, their features were often unique among the models.
Robot and Son featured a large smiling robot with a smaller robot swinging from its father's hand.
Space Explorer has an oxygen gauge on the chest and a smiling human face in the visor.
Thunder Robot features helicopter blades on its head and extended hands with weapons in the palms that shoot sparks (sparks being a common theme in many of the robots).
X-9 Robot features a blue robot driving a green transport cart with a gumball-like dome in front, which I presume pops the colorful balls around as in a child's push-toy. Meanwhile, many toys show robots doing mundane chores, such as Robot Bulldozer, which features a robot driving an ordinary yellow bulldozer.
Elephant Robot and
Space Dog are boxy, robotic depictions of bright red animals.
Capsule 5 is clearly modeled after John Glenn's Mercury capsule, showing an orange-suited astronaut in a clear visor. Capsule 6 is a four-legged walking moon explorer.
Apollo 11 is a fairly accurate model of the lunar lander piloted safely to and from the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
And yes, of course, Robby the Robot is included in this collection. There are several examples of tin toys modeled after the famous robot from
Forbidden Planet. One features Robby driving his robot car from the film. He is not the only media-licensed robot featured. Ultra Man is seen in this book in many incarnations, as is
Astro Man, an obvious attempt to capitalize on
2001: A Space Odyssey, an orange-suited astronaut with the distinctive ribbed design and unique helmet from that renowned film.
Interestingly, a different
Space Explorer (the names sometimes are not unique) is a handheld space communicator that transforms into a walking robot, a 1950s precursor to the Gobots and Transformers of the 1980s.
This book is an enormous resource for lovers of tin toys from this definitive era in science fiction and for lovers of toys in general. The all-too-brief captions feature (when possible) the names of the toys; the manufacturers, which include the legendary Marx company and many Japanese toy companies; the decade (though not the specific year) of manufacture; and the dimensions of the toy shown. It is soon clear that during this time most of these tin wonders were manufactured in Japan, packaged in English and sold worldwide. Some photographs include the packaging, which in itself is being avidly collected today and strongly evokes the era.
Replete with brilliant, colorful images of some of the most wonderful toys ever made, this book is an eye-opener and a mood lifter for people who love to think back to that time and perhaps remember toys of their own youth, or for those who simply wish to look at a time capsule from the 1950s and 1960s. With its wonderful depictions of robots at work, war and play, along with brave explorers of space and beyond, it would be a jewel in anyone's book collection—or toy collection.
I am an avid toy collector, but I own no vintage tin toy robots. I do have several reproductions of 1950s robots, however, and to me, not being able to own such a collection myself, this book is a close second to owning my own museum of tin toys. I stumbled across it in a toy store by accident, and am ecstatic that I did. No toy lover should be without it! — Sean
