Pop Culture League: Olympic Medal Winner

Has it really been a week since the last installment of the Pop Culture League? Time flies when you’re commuting to a different state everyday. I have a backlog of blog ideas piling up, which I will assuredly get to this weekend. But first, a new challenge from Brian over at Cool & Collected: “If ______ was an Olympic sport, I’d have a gold medal around my neck.”

What is something I’m really, really good at doing? Overspending on colorful Godzilla figures, eating in the car, hanging adhesive vinyl labels on museum walls, identifying early-nineteenth century portrait miniatures…

Oh, I know! I rock at Vandal Hearts.

Collection Highlight: Archer Spacemen

I collect a lot of things. On most days, I find something new that peaks my interest, and pretty soon I’m digging through boxes at flea markets and combing eBay to find it. As the space in my apartment fills up, some collections end up being sold or passed along to make room. There are, however, certain collections that stay put.

A lot of companies have made plastic spacemen. Marx, Lido, Ajax, Premier, Tim-Mee, MPC, and others made colorful space explorers for grocery and dime-store shelves. In the 1950s, a company known as Archer made a series of distinctive plastic spacemen. These were done in varied colors, many with a metallic finish created by adding aluminum powder to the molds, and stood about 4″ tall. Archer made space men, space women, robots, and even space children. I’ve also seen some plastic space vehicles, which I would consider one of the holy grails of Archer space collecting. Another would be a sealed set of the “Space People.” The sets below are from a recent auction at Hake’s.

https://www.hakes.com/Auction/ItemDetail/96077/ARCHER-SPACE-PEOPLE-BOXED-SET-PAIR

Pop Culture League: Shelfie

For the first posting on a freshly-minted blog, I can think of nothing better than a challenge from Cool and Collected’s also freshly-minted Pop Culture League. I have been a collector of pop culture for most of my life. A few years ago, after purchasing a veritable landing party of Archer spacemen, I came across a posting on Cool and Collected entitled “Invasion of the vintage Spacemen!” Someone else who shared my weakness for plastic spacemen! I became a devoted reader, and soon, a short-lived member of the now-defunct League of Extraordinary Bloggers. Then grad school happened, and my blog faded into oblivion.