He is similar to one of the [Jo]Hilco figures, but probably only because
both are channeling the100-odd-mm Archer
'space' grenade-thrower (looks like a foam or Velcro lawn-dart!) pose. The picture on the right is from a series
I took in 2012 and destined for a future post, the guy on the left has (at time
of shooting) just had his weapon's tip glued back on . . . ohhh! Misses!
Because this is how I found them - for the
second time in recent years! The kneeling guy was OK and the shooter just
needed a little work on his . . . err . . . tool! But panic-central guy was in
a hell of a state! The two yellow arrows show previous mends, and getting the
left hand guy back together was exactly like working with chalk.
How they look now (March 30th), and they
won't move until I've bought a box of cotton-wool, at which point the
bubble-wrap will be replaced with a bed of the stuff, and a second layer will
be placed over them, thick enough to hold them firm when the lid pushes it down,
but not so wadded it breaks them again!
I shot these on Adrian's table at Sandown
Park's toy fair (back in 2012), you can see the kneeling guys tend to survive (with care) and
fifty-years from now he'll be the only pose in collectors' collections! But the
waist of the robot is a definite weak-point.
I thought I had a robot, as I remembered
gluing one (at the waist), but I think I must have mended some of JB's years
ago. In the meantime I shot this guy when I posted all the robots a while ago, and as
well as the comparison/group shots, I posed him separately (as I must have
subconsciously known I didn't have him?), so we have four poses and a broken
duplicate in the whole image.
I don't know how many there are altogether;
the early PW guidebook (B&W editions) have a similar figure with a base which they think
isn't from the set, while the full-colour edition has a very nice
pre-production test-shot never released (which looks to be in a non-chalky,
therefore, lasting polymer), along with a walking figure which takes the
set-count to five?
Also, despite the Hilco/Johillco comments at the start I wonder if they were only
ever Cherilea? Firstly; Cherilea are known for their early,
chalky, explosively-brittle shite and secondly while these are from Johillco hollow-cast moulds, later, Cherilea also issued them in hollow-cast
. . . looked at here, where a sixth pose is the crawling figure.
There are also two (Cherilea-only) monsters (a cata-slug and a running gecko-dragon
thing) neither of which have I ever seen in plastic? However, I think I have
seen the rocket and separate launch-ramp in plastic? Joplin adds a Buck Rogers Treen-type and a
vending-bot, along with a seventh 'human' (the plastics are always painted as
green 'Martians') spaceman holding a dumbbell aloft! Joplin believes the boxy-bot
and 7th humanoid never went to Cherilea.
But it's not clear when the mould went to Cherilea, and what packaging any Hill plastics might have appeared in,
but for Cherilea to issue them in
late space boxes already printed for the hollow-cast figures seems sensible?
Wilfred Cherrington is credited with
designing these, and it may be that - with or without permission (?) - he took
the mould as part of his severance from Hill,
which would make the plastic figures a Cherilea
thing.
Summing
up of the preceding text!
No comments:
Post a Comment