Diener Space Raiders erasers are responsible for some of my earliest toy memories. I'm too young to have experienced getting them in McDonald's Happy Meals around 1979-1980, but I vividly remember getting my first one--a green BRAK alien--in one of the kids meals they used to sell at the cafes in K-Mart stores in the late '80s. I can still recall the bags/boxes the kids meals came in having some fun space artwork on them, too (wish I would have saved one). Am I the only one who remembers getting kids meals at K-Mart? I know for a while they were giving away dinosaur figures in them, too.
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| the gang's all here, ready to raid |
Anyway, even though my history with these rubbery weirdos goes way back, it wasn't until very recently that I finally completed a set. They aren't particularly hard to find, but I was just piecing together the last ones I needed whenever I noticed a good deal pop up. I'm happy to finally have the whole team assembled.
Here's the basics on the Space Raiders:
- The set consists of 4 alien/robot characters (BRAK, DARD, HORTA & ZAMA) and 4 space ships (ALTAIR 2, CETI 3, LYRA 4 & KRYGO 5)
- All figures are typically seen in 5 standard colors (blue, pink, green, yellow & orange), although I've seen other colors such as white/light gray and brown show up less frequently
- They are made of a very soft, almost squishy rubber, but it's actually pretty sturdy and most seem to have held up fine over the decades
- While Space Raiders are most often remembered for being offered in McDonald's Happy Meals in the late-'70s/early-'80s, they were released in a variety of ways over the years, including in carded 2-packs and individually at book fairs, school supply stores and as prizes at dentists offices. I remember buying some individually well into the 1990s
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| carded 2-pack example (front and back) |
- At least three of the Space Raiders character designs were inspired by characters from the 1970s Japanese TV show Ganbare!! Robocon
- In 1978, Diener also released a set of Space Raiders notebooks to go along with the figures (a fact I learned thanks to the 2 Warps to Neptune blog). The notebooks featured black-and-white artwork as well as bios for all the characters and space ships
- The Space Raiders are the more rubbery cousins of the Space Creatures, another classic Diener set that includes 8 different designs inspired by retro B movie monsters
Okay, now let's take a closer look at each of the Raiders. I've separated them based on how they were paired up in the carded 2-packs.
