JOSIE’S SPACESHIP - from the 1972 TV series ‘Josie and the Pussycast in Outer Space’ produced by Joseph Hanna and Willam Barbera.

Josie and the Pussycats are a fictional rock band and part of the ‘Archie Comics’ world. The aniamted TV show ‘Josie and the Pussycats’ was similar ’Scooby Doo Where Are You!’, but with an emphasis more on action than mystery. The second season took the adventures to outer space with each episdoe showing Josie and her fellow space travellers disvcover a new planet with a power-crazedalien that they needed to overcome.

The spaceship was simple in design and functionality. All the characters were seated in the speherical command module and there was an exit/entrance hatch in the side. I don’t recall any langer gear ever being deployed and instead it either landed horizontally on its belly, or it landed vertically standing on the jets and fins - all very 1950s.

I did this box art as an Aurora model kit in the same vein as their other TV tie-ins such as the Flying Sub (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), Spindrift, (Land of the Giants) The Invaders UFO (from the Invaders) and The Voyager from the Fantastic Voyage cartoon series.

This imagines a kit approximnately 1 foot long, with the upper half of the comman model being detachable revealing a detailed cabin - a feature of most of those kits.

I believe the ship was designed by series Layout artist Jerry Eisenberg, under the supervson of Iawo Takamoto