Midway through the fourth season of "For All Mankind," Icon Heroes has released a new set of collectible patches that are neither too big (with spoilers), nor too small (with screen-accurate details).
You could call them the "Goldilocks" of alternate space history swag.
Just as they have for each of the first three seasons, Icon Heroes has worked with the "For All Mankind" production staff to deliver replicas of the emblems worn and seen on the acclaimed drama that follows a time line where the quick pace of the 1960s space race never slowed down.
"Show your love for the hit Apple TV+ series 'For All Mankind' with this set of 13 embroidered patches!" reads the Icon Heroes' website. "Each patch features a different design from the latest season."
The patches in this latest set include the logo of the M7, the series' version of the Group of Seven but focused on the international settlement of Mars, and the insignia for Happy Valley, the Mars base established by the United States, Soviet Union, Japan, European Space Agency, India, North Korea and the Coalition of Communist Countries for Spaceflight (CCCS).
Also included are emblems for the Soviet space agency Roscosmos and Helios, the commercial spaceflight company that manages operations at Happy Valley.
Some of the patches are for facilities supporting the Mars base. The logo for Happy Valley's aluminum foundry "Hephaestus" features its namesake, the Greek god of metalworking. The patch for Eden, Happy Valley's greenhouses, depicts a plant over the surface of Mars. And a water drop-shape emblem represents the Ares Underground auger used to "extract and remove" Martian material.
Five of the patches symbolize either spacecraft or missions that have factored into the fourth season's Mars and asteroid-driven storyline.
The Phoenix, which started life as spaceship but became a permanent space station in Mars' orbit, is represented on a blue, gray and black patch with a yellow border. A badge for Titania, a second-generation space shuttle, may show what is a fusion engine experiment.
The insignia for the Mars transport ship Sojourner 2 includes the crew member names "Hatva" and "Friendman," which could be "easter eggs" — references to series crew members Erika Hatva, a writers' researcher, and visualization artist Jennifer Lauren Friedman.
Patches for both Ranger asteroid-capture missions are also included. Ranger 1, to XF Kronos, includes the names of co-pilots Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and Svetlana Zakharova (Masha Mashkova), as well as Grigory Kuznetsov (Lev Gorn), the first person to set foot on an asteroid. The Ranger 2 emblem omits names but does specify its target, asteroid 2003LC, also known as "Goldilocks."
The 13th patch was originally intended to be part of the third season release, but an incorrect depiction resulted in it being pulled. The Thomas Paine Space Telescope has a configuration similar to NASA's real-life James Webb orbiting observatory, as the "For All Mankind" emblem reflects with its familiar layout of gold mirrors. (The earlier never-release patch showed a Hubble Space Telescope-style spacecraft.)
The "For All Mankind" Season 4 patch set retails for $110 and is shipping now. Icon Heroes is also taking pre-orders for the re-release of their patch sets for the first three seasons and still has available their collectible pin-back button sets reproducing the emblem artwork from those earlier episodes.
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