Swift's Space Travel Guide (Howard Kaneff/Swift, 1958)

Everyone knows that traveling into space is a piece of cake. But getting where you need to go? That's the tough part! Unless, of course, you've got this handy Space Travel Guide.

With a turn of the wheel, it tells you everything you need to know about the planets in our solar system: The astronomical sign, the maximum surface temperature, the distance from the Earth at its closest approach, and the period of revolution around the sun. Yep, computers are for punks!

The card also points out that "The Sun has a diameter of 864,000 miles. The average distance from Earth is about 93,000,000 miles. The average surface temperature has been computed to be about 10,000 (degrees) Fahrenheit. The light from the Sun reaches the Earth in 498.6 seconds or slightly more than eight minutes."

Neat!

The back of the card provides even more useful information, with a diagram illustrating the size of each planetary body relative to Earth as well as the mean diameter in miles.

And in case you're feeling a little peckish from your interstellar wanderings, there's a handy advertisement for Swift's Premium Flavor-Tite Dried Beef! As it says, "Out of this world recipes on the back of every package. Get into Space Orbit with.... Satellite Surprize, Interplanetary Delight, Supersonic Sandwiches or Space Snacks." And yes, they spell it "surprize" because that's how things are spelled in The Future!

All in all, this is a great little premium from a time when kids still considered science and space exploration cool. Yeah, it's educational -- but it's also the type of thing that a young Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or Tom Corbett would drop in his pack, along with his Space Phones and ray gun, before running out to play with his friends. Good stuff, right? Right.

Space Patrol Cosmic Smoke Gun (U.S. Plastics / 1950s / U.S. / 3 x 6; 3 x 4.5)

The TV series Space Patrol, which ran from 1950 to 1955, helped usher in the space craze of the 1950s. It's no surprise, then, that it also spawned a mountain of merchandise, including the wonderful Cosmic Smoke Guns.

This was the type of toy you can have fun with. It fires a puff of powder that does pretty much whatever kids in the 1950s needed it to do depending on what type of alien or evil overlord was attacking them. Of course, since the alien or evil overlord was probably being played by the kid next door, the most likely affect of the powder was temporary blindness and a face that looked like the third day of a cocaine bender. But all in good fun, right?

The Cosmic Smoke Gun was a mail-away cereal premium; send in a number of box tops and a couple quarters, wait six to eight weeks, and the toy magically ended up in your mailbox. It was available in two sizes: five and six inches. Each size also came in one of two colors: red and metallic green. However, the small green gun and the large red gun are both exceedingly rare; the reverse colors -- large and green, small and red -- pop up on eBay all the time. (A large red one did, however, recently appeared on eBay -- I wrote about it here.) However, even the common versions of the toy can still fetch good money since so many different people want to get them: Space Patrol collectors, ray gun collectors, powder-shooter collectors (seriously, they exist), and cereal premium collectors.

Leslie Singer, author of Zap!, has said that the red Cosmic Smoke Gun is his favorite ray gun, and it's easy to understand why. The toy's creatively designed, compact, and has great play value. Personally, I like the green one more -- I'm a sucker for metallic colors -- but regardless, I wholeheartedly agree that this toy is one of the greats.

I snagged my green one off eBay -- of course -- but the red one was an honest-to-goodness antique store find. That's rare in this day and age; and often, when a toy does show up in a store (or at a toy show or a flea market), it's way overpriced. Not so with this one, which sold for a couple bucks below what it usually gets online. I should also point out that I own my good buddy Donald Conner a tip of the hat -- he was the one who actually found this piece and then gave me the heads up so I could get it.

By the way, if you'd like to learn more about Space Patrol, check out the excellent Solar Guard Space Patrol Web Site.