Space Pets were a line of

pneumatic Pneumatics (from Greek ‘wind, breath’) is a branch of engineering that makes use of gas or pressurized air. Pneumatic systems used in Industrial sector, industry are commonly powered by compressed air or compressed inert gases. A central ...

-powered toys designed, manufactured and marketed by TOMY (Takara) for the American market in the early 1980s.

Design

The basic principle was to use a small air tank to capture, compress and controllably release air power and convert it into mechanical motion. Each Space Pet shipped with a "Tomy

air pump An air pump is a pump for pushing air. Examples include a bicycle pump, pumps that are used to aerate an aquarium or a pond via an airstone; a gas compressor used to power a pneumatic tool, air horn or pipe organ; a bellows used to encourage ...

" that was used to recharge the air tank. The air pump resembled a bicycle pump, although smaller. The flagship model was the "High Hopping Hoomdorm", which was something of a mechanical

grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshopp ...

that would hop furiously (and somewhat erratically) across the room. Other models included the "Stretch Legged Stoomdorm" which propelled itself in an

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

-like fashion, the "Fleet Footed Floomdorm" which sort of shuffled along on

pie A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts ( pecan pie), brown sugar ( sugar pie), swe ...

-shaped feet and the "Lurch Along Loomdorm" which raises up by means of scissor action, then fell forward and retracted its feet. There were four models in total. The entire Space Pets line was closely related to TOMY Air Powered Vehicle line. Variations of Space Pets were sold under other names outside of the US. For example, the "High Hopping Hoomdorm" was packaged and sold as the "Sky Hopper" in the United Kingdom. Likewise, "Lunar Legs" was an alias for the "Stretch Legged Stoomdorm". Hoomdorms, in particular, were manufactured in two places:

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

for distribution in Australia, and Japan for the United States.

External links

* https://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/8410/hoomdorm.html&date=2009-10-25+10:10:13 * http://www.jeffbots.com/stoomdorm.html *http://www.collectiondx.com/toy_review/1981/stretch_legged_stoomdorm 1980s toys Physical activity and dexterity toys {{Toy-stub