If you were going to draw a cartoon rocket ship from memory, I would guess you would, like me, draw it like this. But why? Wallace and Gromit's rocket ship is all red. Tintin's rocket was a similar color scheme but checkerboard. Real space shuttles/rockets did use red and white but noticeably not split into nose/body like I see in pages and pages of Google results. Where did this indelible image come from?
What makes this particular question more vexing than usual is that if you try to do a survey of science fiction posters and book covers from the 1940s through the 50s, that exact configuration (red nose, white body, red fins) essentially doesn't occur. You can get all-red body, all-silver, variagated orange, red-wing-silver-body, red-nose-white-body, and many more variations. The closest I found was from the 1949 story "Fortress on a Skyhook" here and even that is more like red-top-silver-middle-red-bottom.
I did also find the box art of this jumping rocket toy to nicely match, and while some places claim this is 1950s art, this auction house claims that it was sold by Yoneya as opposed to S.Y. Toys Co. Ltd. That dates the toy post-1964, when the company changed its trademark name.
On the other hand, when you get people in the present trying to depict what they thought 1950s rockets looked like, you get spot on, and some of those pages and pages of rockets you mention that fit the stereotype are marked "1950s rocket".
So we're looking for something that influenced not how we depict rockets in an organic way, but how we think people in the past depicted rockets.
I have a theory, based on something from the 1950s that is spot on and that happens to match popular perception of retrofuture ideas: Futureland in Disneyland.
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Disneyland had a messy launch on July 17, 1955, messy enough it was later dubbed "Black Sunday". Crowds were too large for capacity. Temperatures were high and many drinking fountains were not working (due to a plumber's strike) and part of the park had to close in the afternoon due to a gas link.
Out of the various "lands" that exist today, only five existed at that time: Frontierland, Adventureland, Fantasyland, Main Street, and Tomorrowland.
Tomorrowland was the last to be built and featured such exciting attractions as Kaiser's Hall of Aluminum Fame, where you could learn all about how terrific aluminum is, and Monsanto Hall of Chemistry, where you could experience wonderous propaganda about Monsanto informational exhibits about chemistry innovation being a revolution in everyday life.
Rocket to the Moon wasn't quite ready yet; it didn't open until the 22nd.
Welcome aboard Trans World Airlines’ Rocket to the Moon! In Tomorrowland’s world of 1986 you’ll zoom through space at speeds over 172 thousand miles an hour! Actually experience the “feel” of space travel—see Earth below and Heavens above as you pass space station Terra, coast around the Moon and return! An eight-hour flight in ten thrilling minutes—all without ever leaving the ground.
This was essentially a circular theater where the moon-goers would get to sit down and see themselves on their way to the moon, narrated by a "Captain Collins".
The exterior of the ship, called the Moonliner (with design by the legendary John Hench, who worked for Disney for 50 years) was based on Disney's informational TV shows that appeared on ABC, "Man in Space" and "Man and the Moon".
Take a glance at what a 1950s era TWA livery looked like; now take a look at the rocket.
Assuming you glanced at the two pictures, you'll see clearly the reasoning behind the design: this was a translation of the TWA design into rocket form.
The rocket persisted long after it was fashionable, and essentially became a retro-future item in Disneyland itself. The color scheme got changed in 1967 with a new sponsor, becoming the Douglas Moonliner pictured here. However, that was sufficiently long enough to leave a potential cultural impression, and even now the original Moonliner is fondly remembered, with a Moonliner design reviving the original TWA colors appearing at the Pizza Port, as sponsored by Coca-Cola: "Delivering Refreshment to a Thirsty Galaxy".
Hence, my theory: the Moonliner became famous as representing the 1950s idea of a rocket. It became what we thought the 1950s always thought of as a rocket. Except, really, it wasn't: it was a rocket as emblazoned with TWA advertising.
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Brunner, B. (2010). Moon: A Brief History. Yale University Press.
Findlay, J. M. (1993). Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940. University of California Press.
Mittermeier, S. (2020). A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks: Middle Class Kingdoms. Intellect Books Limited.
