These were among the coolest toys I ever had–Miller Company space aliens. Like the Miller dinosaurs, they were made of wax and terribly easy to break. But they were worth the trouble. If these couldn’t turn your imagination loose, well, I don’t know what would.
There was the scary giant spider-beetle from Neptune, the cricket-man from Saturn, the creature from Uranus with gigantic legs and puny body, the nice little blue Moon men, and even Sheb Wooley’s Flying Purple People Eater. Oh, and not forgetting the yellow two-headed guy from “Nebula” (where was that?): my father equipped him with a home-made parachute.
Oh, the stories and adventures we kids made up for these things! The little yellow guy from “Orion” (in actuality, there’s no such place) usually wound up being the villain because he had such a fierce-looking face. Doing his bidding was a very scary dragon-thing from Pluto–apparently armed with some kind of high-tech corn cob?–and, naturally, the spider-beetle. And it was usually the little Moon men, and the cricket-guy from Saturn, who had to save the day.
Alas, every one of my many specimens is long gone. It was just so hard to keep them in one piece. The big ones used to cost a quarter, the little ones a dime. I don’t dare ask what you’d have to pay for a spider-beetle these days.
