COPIES & CLONES

HG Toys

Harett-Gilmar of Long Beach, NY, are mostly known for the vast range of puzzles they produced. Next to this, they also made plastic toy animals and cheap plastic play sets. Amongst their space sets there's a number featuring copies of two familiar vehicles, the Spacex Pleasure Cruiser and its equivalent as made by LP and other manufacturers. A list on a box top refers to these craft as the "Alien Space Cruiser" and "Space Commando Ship" but fails to clarify which is which.
From what I've found online, HG space sets exist in a number of packaging variations featuring different box art, though with much the same content. The set included here is a typical example to give some idea; larger sets included more ships and figures as well as a small vacuformed piece of terrain and a fold-out cardboard 'diorama'. As to dating these toys, any set that contains the Commando figures is from after 1977 at least, which is when Matchbox marketed their Adventure 2000 range which these figures are copied from.

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