One big surprise treat for me at WonderFest a couple of weeks ago was when I turned a corner in the second dealer’s room, maybe fifteen feet from William Stout, and found a display of almost every single Major Matt Mason toy from the 1960s, laid out on a cool Moonish backdrop.  I think the only thing missing was the alien, Scorpio, the Moon exploration suit and a few of the smaller accessory packs. There was lots of stuff here that I’d never seen in person before.

Major Matt Mason was Mattel’s Man In Space, released to cash in on the Space Craze from the success of the Mercury and Apollo missions by NASA, and the cool thing was that most of the toys were based on real NASA prototypes that had been published a couple of years earlier in Life Magazine.  The figures were six inches tall, and were wire-frame bendie figures, like Gumby, and unfortunately this made them very fragile.

But the accessories more than made up for it.  The Mooncrawler and Space Station are epic and iconic space toys, and it was great to get to see such a huge collection in one place. The only problem was that it was tucked in a corner behind a giant diorama of the Starship Enterprise’s Shuttle Bay, so I couldn’t get a decent shot of the whole thing.

But here’s a batch of photos showing off close-ups of the MMM delights at WonderFest.

An assortment of figures and vehicles, some of which I’d only seen in books before.

The Space Station. Man, I really wanted this when I was a kid. I never got one. My cousin did. He got everything. I wonder if I could 3D print one of these big enough for a GI Joe Joe?

Another angle with more stuff I only saw in catalogs and books.

This one I’d seen at Where The Toys Are in Canonsburg, PA a decade or so ago.

I’ve seen this at a friend’s house. This was a carrying case that talked, and it’s damned near impossible to repair without destroying it.

These were new to my eyes. Makes me wonder if the parents wised up and were removing pages from the Sears catalog.

Close up of that Space Station. This might sell me a 3D printer, seriously. It’s got me thinking.

A group shot of cool stuff.

Captain Lazer was Major Matt Mason’s giant alien friend. For some reason, he was twice as tall and made completely differently. It is widely assumed that Mattel just bought the rights to an existing toy from another country and crowbarred him into the MMM line. The body and light-up mechanism were later used for Battlestar Galactica figures.

Oh, there are times when I wish I had a space cannon. Not a toy. A real one.

The classic Lunar Crawler

“I’d like you to meet my leetle fren.”

We leave you with assorted paperwork and a vintage Christmas photo of the Space Station.