About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

U is for Uni-King! And other Unknown Unknowns....

Right back at the start of the blog I did a few 'U is for Unknown...' posts, one of which was on Space Figures/Robots (overdue for another one actually!),  some have since been ID'd and the other day another of the mysteries was solved by this Little Weirdos blog post as being cheapie-toy generics from Uni-King. I'm missing a figure and a space-ship...and two other sets!

Annoyingly I've ID'd a couple of the 'still unknowns', including the 12 small-scale figures in the bottom left corner of the first image, but lost the info. in the files somewhere, it was a play-set of some kind? Can anyone help with these figures as Wouter Wayland over at Benno's Forum is equally keen to get an ID on them? A full set seems to have all 12 figures in both colour schemes and they are a reasonable 1:72nd scale.

They seem to be Star Wars knock-offs, with a clear 'Darth' and several recognisable elements of Imperial and Rebel pilot's uniforms and a bit id storm-trooper thrown in for good measure!

[Now ID'd as Tombola (although Plastic Warrior 82 showed large-scale versions by Party Pig?)]


The three 30mm white/orange/yellow astronauts in the same image also were ID'd, err...but aren't! They were on evilBay about two years ago, a big set with a space-station; gantries, control towers, connecting tube-corridors, cranes and the like, again a generic? Argos or Target or something...maybe Mattel? Can anyone help with that? I know I've got it somewhere but that's no use if I can't find it! Note the visor sticker on one figure.

[Now ID's as MB (Milton Bradley) Star Bird figures]

From the same original image - these are now well documented, possibly manufactured by Jean [Höefler] or Manurba (Manfred Urban), but just as likely - an Italian or Austrian maker, they were issued by Jumbo in a Thunderbirds themed board game but not before they'd been issued in Linde coffee, apparently - a decade or so earlier. I believe they have also appeared in the German equivalent of Lucky Bags?

But basically they were issued all over the place! Based on Plasticraft originals, once you start searching for them you find them in every colour and type of plastic, all over the world, like a lot of those early 1950's mouldings.

Jumbo set now known to have been manufactured by DS Plastics also of Holland.

6 comments:

Paul´s Bods said...

I actually came across the White/blue figs a while back...wrote down the Name..then the desk got cleared and..yep, the paper (which was covered in other scribbles) went. They are out there on the web..that´s for sure..I´ll look again.

Unknown said...

Hi!

In the original photo of the March 15, 2009:


The 2 metallic gray/blue 1/72 figures under the green saucer ARE indeed from the Italian CoMa producer (here is a thread on the small scale Spacemen/Selenites of CoMa from the '50: http://danefield.com/alpha/forums/topic/15587-coma-spacemen-martians-italy/ )

The central silver figure in the upper right corner is form Italian Docificio Lombardo, but sold in the USA too by Astral Bubblegum (here is the thread link: http://danefield.com/alpha/forums/topic/16054-italian-spacemen-for-dolcificio-lombrado/ )

The semi-central red 1/72 figure is, FWIK, still an open question: they spring up sometime on evilBay and probabily they are from Italy and from the same years of the CoMa productions, but it seems that nobody has been able to identify them for sure till now ( http://danefield.com/alpha/forums/topic/17098-italian-spacemen-id/ )...

Cheers
Ervino

Hugh Walter said...

Paul - Keep looking! Isn't it frustrating? I've got somewhere (I may have blogged them?) three HK-looking copies of Britains Deetail Germans in about 25/28mm, with plug-feet and no bases. I know I'm not missing the bases because I saw them attached to some tank/boat/DUKW type cheapie toy years ago, but didn't write it down and didn't know about right-clicks and screen caps and stuff!

Ervino - You are a Star Sir! I was looking at that silver figure yesterday and wondering if he was Texas with a missing plug, now I know!

With the red figure (thanks for confirming the silver's as well!) it's a pain really, I've got a few of these now - Coma and non-Coma), some added to those in the original post (and in storage) and a couple here, they look alike, but the bases are different, some seem to come with some of the smaller copies of the Captain Video aliens? I'm wondering if they might be early capsule toys....did they have dispensing machines in Italy then? I know they had them in the Iberian peninsular. I photographed a bunch in nice pastel colours a while back which I'll try to blog.

Cheers both...

H

Hugh Walter said...

Ervino...followed the links: I used to have that site bookmarked but I kept losing my bookmarks when the old laptop crashed! The big fella is the one some UK guys call Texas, I'll have to make a note and tag him in the original post. And coffee/washing-powder/cigarettes for the others?

Cheers

H

Unknown said...

Hi Hugh!

I have too some figures of the "series" of the red spacemen, but I bought them recently on EB. I'm italian but, even if I'm from about the presumed "age" of them (I'm 55) and still have some CoMa stuff form my childhood (and I still collect spacemen toy soldiers, BTW ;-), I really don't remember to have seen any figure of the red type as a child. We had dispensing capsule toys machine here in Italy in the '60, but I don't remeber them selling the "red spacemen" series figures.

It is really a Mistery... :-D

Cheers
Ervino

BTW: it is "Dolcificio Lombardo", I forgot the "f"... :-)

Hugh Walter said...

The 'L', you forgot the ell, but I've sorted it! :-)

And thanks again, original post up-dated

H