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.

Monday, February 15, 2016

M is for Mystery Men Moseying on Mega Mammals

Barney Brown sent these in with a simple question...who made them?

Now...I'm pretty sure I have them unpainted somewhere (not all of them but at least one), and certainly saw a few when I used to work for a dealer, and - indeed - around the shows, and have always just assumed they were Tudor Rose (or one of the other usual suspects...Kleeware, Poplar, Thomas)...

...but the paint's not really right for any of them. Horse colours are early Timpo or even Britains, but neither would hav sullied their products with a liberal dollop of silver paint! The hand-pommel is a nice touch, and the fact that the paint is reversed on the two horses is quite a 'factory' (or out-painter) trick?

Scale-wise they are about 75/80mm? And again - that dark brown plastic was used by both the aforementioned major companies, but Speedwell also used it on their smaller cowboys and Indians and both Speedwell and Trojan were known to splash silver paint about a bit! And Trojan love a bit of pea-green paint?

They both used red for their figures, so did UNA on their 50/54mm Wild West (and more silver paint?), so the evidence, such as it is seems to be pointing to that same group of smaller, sometimes apparently interconnected companies responsible for quite a bit it seems!

Anybody got any ideas? They're not marked obviously in any way that Barney could tell, and without a mark, they are 'unknown' unless someone knows different! Has anyone got them in packaging?

At this size they would either have been sold loose off the shelf/out of the glass cabinet, or hung in seaside kiosks in header-carded bags.

[15-02-2016 - Tim Mee, German production - see comments, thanks Brian!]

2 comments:

Brian Carrick said...

I have several of them and thought they were UK made but they are Tim-Mee german production, see here http://www.angelfire.com/biz/toysoldierhq/Timmeew.html

Hugh Walter said...

Thanks Brian! Wood for the trees there I think! Did you like the way I nearly talked myself into thinking they were UNA/VP!! I did really!

H