Unidentified Found Objects: The Immortal Arcade Prize Spaceships

I have already said plenty on this blog about "generic" toys, and the common theme has been how durable they are. On reflection, it is really a paradox. Some such toys appear and quickly fade away, while others go on literally for generations, With this post, I have finally reached an example I have literally spent most of my life tracking. This is a line of spaceships usually found as arcade prizes, capsule toys, and other rewards for kids, which has been added to and subtracted from but seemingly never allowed to die out. I have found examples in arcades, pizza joints and on the ground, in elementary school, in middle school, in college and beyond. Here are shots of what I consider the "core" group:

The first of the lot that I acquired is one on the far left of the top photo above, and different enough that I think it originated separately. I believe I picked up this one sometime in the late 1980s, though I have no specific recollection of getting it. It may have been a reward in school, or I might have gotten it in an arcade. It's most noteworthy for having a fairly definite scale, thanks to a visible seat, though that didn't stop me from assuming it was larger if the adventure involved a relatively large crew (typically a Galaxy Laser Team astronaut and a couple Rogun Robots). It is also fairly crude, to the point that most of the bottom is without detail. Here's a photo of it with some latter-day copies.

For the rest of the group, I began acquiring them in the early to mid 1990s, and I have no doubt they were around well before that. Their common origin is proven by a mark or logo that says "Rigo", presumably the name of a company which I personally have had no luck finding further information on. Here are closeups of three I picked up around 1994.

After acquiring these, I quickly gave them designations. I thought of the purple one simply as a cruiser, and assumed a similar role for the saucer. I thought of the triangular one as a bomber, which it really resembles more than a spacecraft, but made it serve as an exploration ship. From much later research, the saucer and bomber were based on another odd little line called Diener Space Raiders, which will get their own installment sooner or later. The group got mixed in with Star Wars Micro Machines, and I didn't give them a lot of further thought. Then, while I was finishing my undergrad degree in 2005, I ran across more in the prize bins of a pizza place, all made from a quite flexible transparent rubber material, and quickly won enough tickets to get the ones I knew I didn't have. Here's another view of the ones I acquired then.

I already introduced two of these three in my review of Message From Space, which I now know they were copied from directly enough to qualify as knockoffs. I immediately thought of them as a fighter, a troop transport, and either a bomber or another cruiser-scale ship. At the time, I suspected the middle ship was based on the drop ship from Aliens, while the horseshoe-shaped ship bore a fair resemblance to the Reliant from Wrath of Kahn. (Curiously, it also resembles a Lenticular Reentry Vehicle concept fielded in the 1960s.) Unfortunately, I did not consider picking up duplicates of the ones I had before, and can no longer remember for sure which ones were available. Here's more views of the horseshoe ship.

Fast forward further, and the ships were still with me. I made one more addition when I found the triangular bomber lying on the ground. However, I chose to carry it with me instead of stowing it with my collections, and soon found it broken. Then, around 2013, I started giving some thought to the possibilities of a "retro" science fiction project, and in the process learned a lot more about the toys I had lying around. Soon, I made a double score: I bought a reissue of Galaxy Laser Team, and I found that the prize ships could be bought in 144-count bags online from Rhode Island Novelty Co. The latter was, of course, the source of every ship I have not otherwise marked as vintage.

I have to say that finally having a set of ships that weren't won piecemeal was underwhelming. To begin with, the cruiser and the bomber were simply gone, while the ships that filled out the lot were ones I recognized as copies of other ships (including some more I will be getting to later). I also found the plastic different and in some ways inferior, though not in ways that easily show in photos. But this was more than made up for by having a large sample of consistent age and origin. I have spent plenty of time since then experimenting with ways to display the ships, and I still have ideas for working a few into  fiction. And the punchline is, anyone at all interested can still buy your own bag!

Having come this far, I can see this is all a bit meandering, and it still may feel like I'm leaving it incomplete. But it's the story of a phenomenon that has literally spanned decades, and I will certainly be telling more later. For now, I will post this as a series of snapshots, the same as any memory.

Another short link list, here's a page for Space Raiders at 2 Warps to Neptune, and a video on these and other "generic" ships from Space Trucks/ Steve Nyland.