If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you’ll know that I’m kind of obsessed with the cult toys from the 1980s known as the Astrosniks.
I recently added another oddity from this long-forgotten-if-ever-even-known-about-in-the-first-place property, a kid’s book called Junior’s Day in Space. This is just another testament to the fact that the creators of the Astrosniks, the German company, Bully, were really trying to make inroads into the American market.
The book is clearly made for little kids with a fairly simple story about Junior saving the day when he notices asteroids heading for his home planet of Snikerion. But I admire author Melinda Luke’s ability to tell a story with only 15 pages to work with and at most 75 – 100 words per page.
Melinda was a fairly prolific author of children’s books during the 1980s. She grew up in Ridgefield, Connecticut, got her degree at Ithaca College, and wrote a lot of tie-in books for popular properties at the time, including My Little Pony, Snorks, and Ewoks, the cartoon series. She also wrote non-licensed books for kids, like The Green Dog, Dinosaurs and Other Archosaurs, and Home Sweet Home, Little Kitten. She eventually retired and went into real estate, before sadly passing away in January 2025.
The illustrator for the book, Jean-Pierre Jacquet, is a self-taught artist who went to school at Sorbonne in Paris for literature, political science, and law. He wound up getting a law degree from Harvard and practiced for a couple of years, but hated every minute of it. So, he switched gears and got into the film industry, where he directed animated projects. His best-known work in America is three episodes of the Nickelodeon cartoon, Doug, but his largest body of work was directing six short films in a series of religious videos for kids called, The Beginner’s Bible, in 1995. You can definitely see his style in both the films and the Astrosniks books.
Currently, Jean-Pierre spends his time painting a variety of subjects, including landscapes, portraits, still life, and animals. You can check out some of his work at his website, jpjacquet.com.
Surprisingly enough, Junior’s Day in Space and the other Astrosnik book in the series, The Quasar Caper, are kind of expensive on the collector’s market, typically selling for about $10 before shipping. I imagine that for most normal kids in the 1980s, once the Sniks didn’t catch on, these books were probably thrown away, so they’re not a very common find at your local thrift store. I’d had my eye on these books for years now, but could never justify the price for something I knew would just sit on my shelf and be a conversation piece once every couple of years. But this one came up for $6 including shipping, which is less than the price of a fast food burger nowadays, so I figured that was about as good of a price as I was going to get.
When I ordered this book off eBay, I was expecting a read-along record book-sized paperback, sort of like a Little Golden Book. But the scans below are actually a little bit larger than the actual size! The book only measures 5″ x 5.5″, clearly meant to be a small book that little hands could hold and turn the pages.
I’ve scanned in the entire book below, so you can enjoy a little trip into the expanded world of the Astrosniks, a toy line you probably only barely remember from the Happy Meal promotions.
