Prototype Rex Mars Target Game, by Marx

[ToyMemories]

Huh? Who Me?

Soon, young Luke...

[Robotopia]

Congrats on another great addition to your collection. Love the prototypes. I also like the colors of this better than the production model. I really like this space toy and maybe I will find one some day.

Here's a photo of the production model for comparison. I hope it's okay to add this. I thought it would be of interest to people not familiar with this toy.

Some differences are that some of the sculpts changed and the illustration looks airbrushed in the production version, whereas the prototype has no airbrushing and looks entirely painted with a paintbrush with brushstrokes being more visible.

[dratomic]

Thanks, Robotopia -- that's a great idea, and I appreciate your putting it together.

Unfortunately, I think the seller might not want people using his photos -- he actually goes out of his way to note his copyright and ownership. That's why I never included those pictures myself.

Perhaps a member who owns the toy might be able to take some pictures? Maybe get the same angles/sides I did so we can do a direct comparison of the details?

[Robotopia]

I found a different image without a copyright on it and changed the post. I didn't find anything in the Alphadrome database. It would be good if someone could take a nice closeup for a good side-by-side. There are some interesting differences between the prototype and the toy produced.

[dratomic]

Nice! They're better photos, anyway. :)

[Fineas J. Whoopie]

I just love the futuristic city scape art. It just does it for me. I think my love of that stuff goes back to my comic book days. I used to get off on artists like Gil Kane and Mike Grell and their great futuristic city scapes. Mmmmm good!

[ToyMemories]

Ok, I'm un-dug (for the moment, at least!)

Reports of my demise were... I suppose false! Haha, I've just been buried, overworked, and buried again

When Brian first contacted me about this piece (before I knew what he was asking about) I thought "geez, what treasure has the good Doctor found that I missed?" In the end, it turned out I knew about it when first listed, thought about it, then realized I had too much in the fire and sadly figured I'd let it go, not checking on it again until Brian emailed. Though I truly love Marx prototypes, when you collect such things you learn (and accept) pretty quickly that you can never have it all.

He's done a great job (as always) of describing it, and I certainly don't want to take away from his post, but he did ask, so...

First, when I found out he was the buyer, I was honestly happy about it... I can't think of anyone more deserving to own this classic little gem. It has a home now, with a perfect caretaker who loves it likely as much as I would. I'm glad he contacted me, as I really like this toy, and happen to have other material on it. I really enjoyed our conversations. Yes, I do have 32 billion pieces of paper and other artifacts, but sometimes you get one obscure document on an item, and other times you get lucky and have more pieces of the puzzle than usual. This is one of those cases. Forgive me for now, as I'll perhaps have to add dates and additional information at a later date (some of the pics I have to find the original full scans with the info) and I kind of know where some of the additional documents are, they're just, well, buried either behind 40 boxes of samples, or in cabinets behind other cabinets, behind... well you get the picture. All this stuff together would probably make a great book someday (hint-hint, Doc!) But here's a start, at least! Once again, though, I do have to say "congratulations Brian... great work, and nice buy!"

First, for the rifle from the set, we have an original drawing on vellum from 1953, and then an original blueprint (I think it was the blueprint that I sent to a previous Botstock). Actually, one is for the left side and one is for the right side:

[ToyMemories]

Then we have the targets! Cooler targets could not be found, I'm sure you'll agree!

The first picture shows original blueprint images of each target (each was on a separate blueprint).

The second picture shows the blueprint image of the fish-man target along with a cavity from the original mold for this figure (the mold cavities for these, and many other Marx injection molds are made from beryllium copper; expensive to make, but very durable and resistant to damaging oxidation)

The third picture shows a cavity from the original mold for the ultra-cool spaceman with dagger target, along with a test-shot of that target (strangely this is the only target I've found test-shots for. So far.)

The fourth picture shows an original mold cavity from the robot target mold. (For Botstock 5 in 2008, I made up 50 prints of the robot's drawing for swag)

The molds for the targets were made by Ferriot Bros. (the best of the best at the time, for sculpting and mold-making). I have the mold information sheets for these, and hope to add some of that info (maybe tomorrow night) as they are accessible.

The fifth picture shows all of the fish-man target cavities so you can get a better idea of the set-up. Molten plastic is injected into the mold, goes through the center hole, then travels down the runner (channels) into each cavity. The target mold cavities are a little unusual for Marx, as there are multiple cavities in the same block of copper, where normally each cavity would be separate (and removable). This may have been done because the molds were on the smaller side (easier to access), and there was no intent to change out individual cavities.

[dratomic]

Thanks for posting all this, Mike! Just what I was hoping for. :)

Question:

The targets on my set are based on the original prototype sculpts, and you can very clearly see how they differ from the production pieces.

Your blueprints for the targets match the production versions.

So... Where do these blueprints fit into the process? Were they made after the prototype sculpts, to provide instructions to the guys making the mold masters? I know in the Star Wars toy world, the prototypes would come in from Kenner's preliminary design department, and then designers would work with engineers to come up with the drawings of the finished product, which would then be sent to sculpting. (That's not ALWAYS how it worked, but it happened a lot that way.)

Any thoughts?

[ToyMemories]

Thanks for posting all this, Mike! Just what I was hoping for. :)

Question:

The targets on my set are based on the original prototype sculpts, and you can very clearly see how they differ from the production pieces.

Your blueprints for the targets match the production versions.

So... Where do these blueprints fit into the process? Were they made after the prototype sculpts, to provide instructions to the guys making the mold masters? I know in the Star Wars toy world, the prototypes would come in from Kenner's preliminary design department, and then designers would work with engineers to come up with the drawings of the finished product, which would then be sent to sculpting. (That's not ALWAYS how it worked, but it happened a lot that way.)

Any thoughts?

You're very welcome, Doc! Hope I didn't overstep!

Well, the blueprints and design drawings could go a few different ways for Marx. In this case, they would have likely gotten the final sculpts back from Ferriot, then did the blueprints based on them as an internal reference. Or they might have used the first approved test-shots to draw from (we can likely verify this when I dig out either the full scans of the drawings or the drawings themselves and check the dates against the mold info sheets. The pics here were taken a while ago).

Some Marx drawings you can see previous designs were erased or modified (vellum was expensive) so sometimes you can see preliminary designs ghosting through. They also at times did work as you say above (more when the job was in-house, not sent out). Marx was pretty picky in having clean, final reference drawings, most times as close as you could get... in the case of Ideal, you get a lot more preliminary stuff and creativity and less shooting for perfection. As we get further back in time for Marx, less of the roughs and preliminary stuff survived and was regretfully likely trashed long ago.

[dratomic]

That's really interesting. They'd have the final sculpts, they'd have the molds in production (if not finished already), and THEN they'd make the blueprints. I guess this is to create a permanent, fileable record of the toy for future production use (if needed). Would you say that's more or less correct in this case?

I love learning about this stuff...

[dratomic]

Here are some comparison pics showing the production version of the toy alongside the prototype. Photos supplied by Electric Robot & Son. Comparison suggested by Tinman93 and Robotopia. Thanks, guys!

The characters are evenly distributed along the bar on the production version: The robot in the middle; aliens flanking it; spacemen flanking them all. The prototype is much more random.

You can see how much less detail went into the prototype (right). That said, it's still such a sharp piece of artwork.

It's worth noting how the weights were positioned differently. On the production piece, there's one at the top and then two at the bottom. The prototype has one at the top and one larger one at the bottom.

[dratomic]

And here are the two different sets of figures. The sculpts are all significantly different, and of course the production version uses nicer plastic.

[Electric Robot and Son]

Great comparison! Again congratulations on obtaining this one of a kind piece. Thanks Brian for gathering all of this information, Thanks Mike for showing your original blueprints and all of your research on this 60 year old space toy too.

[Tinman]

Great comparison shots guys; there are significant differences in the whole piece, which I think is cool!