When Mego first proposed the Planet of the Apes license, the R and D department created early mock-ups to visualize the concept. While this is common in the toy industry and occasionally you can see such mock ups in toy promotional materials, they rarely physically surface themselves. This is mostly because they were simply tossed out after production begins. Thanks to the foresight of a then junior Mego employee we can see the crude yet charming first attempts at the line, 35 years after creation.

This early cornelius has an outfit made of denim, the patterns on the leather patches have been hand painted. It's nowhere near screen accurate but it is really interesting to look at.

If the head looks at all familiar, it should because it's actually the head from the Addar model kit. This makes perfect sense as the Addar kits were the inspiration for the line according to this interview with Neal Kublan: "Well what got us started was the first things out were [the Addar] model kits and they were doing well. I remember seeing it in a hobby shop, infact our product development guy named Vinnie Baiera lived up the street from this place. I went in and the owner said "I can't keep these in stock"

The Cornelius body is merely a type one Action Jackson with it's hands crudely painted brown, to our knowledge these figures only appeared in print once, in Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine.

The only finished figure appears to be the Astronaut which lends creedance to the theory that his head sculpt from another project.