The crews of the Palomino and the Cygnus were minified in plastic by the Mega Corporation in 1979. The Palomino was, if you'll recall, the exploratory vessel maintaining surveillance over a black hole, when it discovered a long-lost spaceship; a spaceship "manned" by one human, Dr. Hans Reinhardt, and his army of robots.
Mego's first series of 3 3/4" figures for this Disney property included: V.I.N.CENT (robot that looked after Palomino's crew), Dr. Kate McRae ("beautiful Astrogeophysicist"), Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximillian Schell played this evil and eccentric Commander of the Cygnus), Maximillian (Huge monster robot henchman of Dr. Reinhart), Captain Dan Holland (command pilot of the Palomino), Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine played the troublesome reporter covering the Palomino expedition), Charles Pizer (Holland's young 1st Officer on the Palomino), and Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins played the chief scientist on the Palomino expedition).
Some of the rarest Black Hole figures turned up in the batch of second series figures; three of which were only released in Italy, and possibly Canada. Second series figures included: Robot Sentry (representative of the class of robots designed to guard and run the Cygnus), Humanoid (representative of the monstrous crew members of the Cygnus, created by Dr. Reinhardt, that were half-human, half-robot), S.T.A.R. (Dr. Reinhardt’s prototype for the Sentry robots. He was the number-one robot until Dr. Reinhardt created Maximillian.), and Old B.O.B. (an earlier model of V.I.N. CENT, an old-timer that eventually proves very helpful to the crew of the Palomino.). Old B.O.B., S.T.A.R., and the Humanoid were overseas releases only, and are the most difficult, and expensive figures to collect in this line.
Mego also produced six 12" figures for the series; these included: Dr. Reinhardt, Durant, Capt. Holland, Booth, Pizer, and Kate McRae. The likenesses achieved on the heads was actually pretty good.
Foreign releases include: a boxed, magnetic-joint Maximillian and V.I.N. CENT from an Italian manufacturer named GiGi; a Laser Scope Fighter, originally produced as a Buck Rogers toy, showed up in Italy. Two unreleased pieces were the Cygnus Bridge Playset, and the U.S. explorer spacecraft Palomino. These two toys may have shown up in Italy, but so far, we remain unable to confirm this.
