The Outer Space Men:
Mel Birnkrant Interview
The Outer Space Men, the classic creation of Mel Birnkrant, are headed back into your collection as a new line sculpted and produced by Four Horsemen Studios. Here at IAT, we weren't familiar with the original line and wanted to learn more about it to help us appreciate the new versions. We were fascinated by what we learned, but we still had a few more questions. For those answers, we turned to the greatest resource there is on the Outer Space Men, Mel Birnkrant himself.
The Four Horsemen are nearing the end of their tenth year in business, and they're gearing up to make the next year one of their most productive years ever! Not only are they going to continue to handle the creative duties on Mattel's DC Universe Classics, Masters of the Universe Classics, the new Green Lantern Classics and more, but they’re also moving forward with their own popular FANtastic Exclusive project in the fall, 
Forty-two years ago the space race between the United States and Russia was in full swing, and a full wave of action figures known as “The Outer Space Men” was released that caught the imagination of a generation. Although the initial salvo of characters was well received, the characters that were to be part of the second wave, collectively referred to as “The World of Tomorrow”, never made it into production and currently only exist as elaborate prototypes / production samples in the homes of a couple of fortunate collectors.
I spend a disproportionate amount of my income on Mattel toys. As a result, many of my Rants are aimed at Mattel. I don’t like that. I want to spread it around, so to speak. Last night, Noisy gave me a revelation. I don’t have a lot to rant about on other companies because they’re not doing as good a job tempting me with their product as Mattel does. That, he said, is a rant unto itself...
Last month, the IAT staff sat down and beat out our Jan 15th Mattel questions. We bounced around a few ideas and, like we always do, we got off track. This time talking about Masters of the Universe Classics and the future of the line. Vault had done a little spreadsheet work and came up with a rough estimate of how many figures Mattel would be putting into the line if they fulfilled their 2016 goal including monthlies, quarterly bonuses, convention exclusives, and subscription exclusives. Then he made a list of all the previously released MOTU toys and added in some likely non-Filmation candidates that didn’t get a toy but could be done now. Vault was surprised to find that the numbers turned out to be about the same.