Rockets, Robots, Spacemen, Space Toys

A gallery:

Space Toys:  Artifacts and toys of exploration have been around for centuries.  Space toys certainly fit into this category.  Perhaps the oldest toy in the world is the doll; it’s form dates back at least 40,000 years to the prehistoric Venus figures.  Toy boats, complete with tiny sailors, were around in Ancient Egypt, and later in Greece, Roman, and elsewhere.  The Travels of Marco Polo, and then Columbus, inspired even more travel related and nautical artifacts; even Shakespeare caught the fever with The Tempest [O Brave New World that has such people in it!]. and Jonathan Swift parodied both toys and travel with Gulliver’s Travels and his scathing essay “A Modest Proposal.” By the time of the Conquest of Mexico, books on travel, some fake, and toys reflecting the love of the ocean and the Age of exploration were popular all over Europe and in the New World that was slowly being populated. 

 

Ancient Inuit culture involved small boats filled with tiny figures that were a talisman for safe voyages.  The Whaling industry inspired literature for adults and children that spawned children’s books and toys, including Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Rachel Field’s Hitty. Other souvenirs besides toys emerged, including Sailor’s Valentines, small items embellished with shells, macramé objects, ships in bottles, and scrimshaw. 

 

Pirates created a whole new nautical culture and mythology, and they, too inspired toys. Of course, they, and other ancient sailors have always navigated by the stars, sun, and moon.  They also followed the flights of birds and the patterns of swimming fish.  For more on the exploits of ancient sailors, I recommend my all time favorite, Thor Heyerdahl’s The Ra Expedition and Kon Tiki.

 

Space is indeed the final frontier, and Space toys are the cultural artifacts of that exploration; people collect alien action figures just as little girls collect dolls in international costume.  Think the intergalactic beauty pageant of Lost in Space.

 



Space Toys and Robots; Center, a Star Wars Purse



Space Toys, a Partial Collection, Right Foreground, G.I. Joe Space Capsule

Center, Star Wars Pumpkin Carving Set



My PowerPoint Online



More Space Toys, Note the Chewbacca T-Shirt