COMIC BOOK WAR GAMES"BLAST OFF" A SPACE GAME BY FIVE STAR
TOYS, AND LATER BY HELEN OF TOY, CO.
Because GIANT supplied most of the 3D figures for Helen of Toy Comic Game Sets, it seems possible that the Spacemen of Blast Off could have been the Spacemen figures made by GIANT. We have shown some of those GIANT Spacemen below just in case, however, they are shown with the disclaimer that for all we know, the Blast Off Spacemen could have been entirely different figures. This web site has not yet learned much about Blast Off in general. Please get in touch if you can help with any details about the Game, and/or provide images or actual examples of the Game or its Pieces. The Ad above from Five Star Toys, features the Blast Off Game. It is not known which early comic book the Ad came from but it is likely pre-1963 because there is no Zip Code required on the Order Form (Zip Codes were not used until 1963.) The Ad suggests that there may have been some type of 312 sq. inch Playmat onto which players somehow "launched" their "X7-DART and XL-DART Space Ships." Does that mean this was some form of Dart Game? The "40 Multi-Stage Rocket Ships" supposedly included their own "Removeable Astronaut" so a dart Game seems unlikely. Perhaps the ships were somehow launched (hurled?) across the room onto a Playmat which seems to have had images of Planets on it, and maybe that's how one "Landed" by "Gravi-Power" on the Planets? It all remains very mysterious until we find an example of the Blast Off Game or find someone who remembers it well enough to tell us what the heck all that great Ad text actually means. One interesting note is that Blast Off appears in the Ad above from a company called Five Star Toys of Commack, NY. Blast Off later appeared in Comic Ads by Helen of Toy, Co. - also of Commack, NY. Was Five Star Toys an early ancestor of the Helen of Toy, Co.? Or was it a separate company in the same neighborhood with the same products? Not sure about this yet.
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