Blue Astronaut Ornament

There is, and it is available here directly from Chive rather than through a reseller. My sister-in-law Corinne bought hers the same week she gave up arguing with a documentary, which she framed as a substitution rather than a defeat. She now has a small accurate object in the house and one fewer grievance. The trade was favorable.

It suits the format well, and not because anybody fights over it. Small figures get overlooked early and then turn out to be the thing left when the big boxes are gone, so whoever picks last walks away with the best object in the room. Corinne has engineered this outcome deliberately three years running. She picks last on purpose.

It makes a good gift for anyone who takes the subject seriously rather than decoratively. Corinne can name every crewed mission in order and will do so backwards from the most recent, on the grounds that forward chronology is sentimental. She has never been thanked for this at a dinner party. She has never stopped either.

Blown glass, hollow, hand-painted, with the visor, gloves and boots added after the body has cooled by a single painter working straight through. Faces are never split between two people here. Corinne asked whether the stars on the chest were identical, established that they were not, and said that was the correct answer. She had a reason ready.

It is 2 inches wide and 3.75 inches tall, so roughly the height of a thumb and smaller than most people picture. That size wants a spot near the top, where the tree narrows and a small figure stops competing with everything around it. Corinne hangs hers up there every year. She uses a chair, unwillingly.

Wrap the figure with the arms tucked in, support it so nothing presses on the visor, and keep it out of any box where heavier pieces can shift onto it. Corinne stores hers in the compartment a pair of headphones came in, which fits precisely and was clearly never intended for this. She considers that a bonus.

We do — the Space & Alien collection runs to robots, rockets, aliens and several things that decline to be classified, all in the same hand-painted glass. Corinne has worked through most of it and grades each piece on plausibility, which is a strange metric for an alien and she applies it anyway. The robots score well.

It arrives protected rather than presented: a fitted insert, a sturdy outer carton, and no decorative wrapping of any kind, so the person opening it will see shipping materials first. Corinne prefers this and says the reveal should be the object, not the packaging around it. She recycles the insert immediately. She keeps the carton.