Paper Spacemen From South Of Europe

[geoffreypeeters]

Portugal and Spain had a lot of things in common, and on the political front both countries were dictatorial states where Franco from the Spanish side and Salazar from the Portuguese side ruled their people in quite a nationalistic way. They were also (and especially in the 50's) both very poor countries, where the cheapest of toys was all that most of the population could afford.

 

From the nationalistic side of the coin are of course the toy soldiers (There were quite a lot of Germany made Elastolin products distributed here before and after the war - without speaking af course of the "soldadinhos de Porto": lead casted soldiers from different historical timeframes). The poorer part of the population had to do with paper cut-outs, to be glued on pieces of cardboard. Most of these "soldier sheets" I could find are actual military soldiers, tanks, airplanes etc. But the 2 sheets below form the exception: space men! In the group are quite a lot of blonde specimens... (hmmm, neither Spanish or Portuguese are very blond...) and uniforms that look more like a Gestapo themed Buck Rogers than anything else I have seen (wait, rubber horse riding boots to go to space ?) But hey, on the plus side, we do have helmets, oxygen tanks and rayguns!

 

The top one is from Portugal - the bottom one from Spain.

 

 

[Brian..]

Thanks, such an interesting item . Are they die-cut, or is is a painstaking job with the scissors? The endless variety of space toys still amazes me.

[geoffreypeeters]

Thanks, such an interesting item . Are they die-cut, or is is a painstaking job with the scissors? The endless variety of space toys still amazes me.

Scissors... and the paper in itself is super thin (like newspaper-paper, if you see what I mean) so these really had to be glued beforehand on a piece of cardboard if you wanted to have any stability at all.

[ervino]

 

Scissors... and the paper in itself is super thin (like newspaper-paper, if you see what I mean) so these really had to be glued beforehand on a piece of cardboard if you wanted to have any stability at all.

 

Hi All!

 

This is from Italy: "Fatevi la Stazione Spaziale" (Make Your Own Space Station), from nº 39 of the "Corriere dei Piccoli" magazine, dated 30 september 1962, figures plus instructions (in Italian, alas... ;-):

(Hi-Res image link: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Hef0g2Ke0Vw/UCFN5zOIpVI/AAAAAAAAlXs/N6dXbbWFZOw/s0/cdp19620930_39_270_stitch.jpg )