X is for X-400 Space Explorer

A family tragedy means no urge to write for a few days, this will have to do...

S is for Sorting-out

Having mentioned 50p bags somewhere in the comments section, I dug out this old article I prepared for posting just before my old Lap-top crashed last April. This is the contents of a small bag someone brought to the big toy fair at Birmingham's NEC. Needless to say they aren't 50p any more and I think this was about a fiver's worth. And thanks are due to either Trevor R. or Jack S. - I can't remember but they've both saved me useful stuff for years now.

This is the contents of the bag spread out in a vague order, like a spider-diagram, you start in the middle and work out adding in themes! Airfix ending up top right, Kinder top left etc...

Some of the better pieces, the two pink flats came soon after I covered some others in one of the 'unknown' posts I did about a year ago (I'll do some more soon), Quaker at the bottom, a Marx soft plastic African warrior and a couple of tiny racing cars for the Waddingtons Formula One board game I'm working on...I want to increase the number of lanes and run 6 teams of three cars each with a few rule tweaks! The problem has been finding 3 grey and 3 orange cars so I'll probably resort to painting some spares, but most teams have 3 original cars now, I'll post them sometime...

Three modern HK figures from some die-cast play set, unknown unless you know better (Majorette, Johnny Lightning, Tesco?!) [Arlin Tawser kindly confirms/identifies these as being from the Matchbox Safari Pack - Action System 5 (7 piece set, stock number 50711-5, copyrighted/issued 1996, made in China) and pointed out that there are a couple on eBay at the moment!], an HK copy of an Airfix Guardsman , Disney Dalmatian food premium and a common horse which keeps turning up so again probably came with a Matchbox 1-75 sized safari thing?

The Kinder in the bag, the Ancients are always damaged! Note: you can just see the RP of Res Plastics if you click on the image - behind/below the saddle of the brown horse.

Other purchases at that show included a nice Woolbro bagged Giant copy, the WWI tree moulding I've already covered, an old bubble-gum tank (HK copy of Manurba), Diver and mini-sub (HK copy of Manurba again!), two die-cast flat race horses from a board game and a superb space tank with mile-high carpet wheels! Kleeware ship and HK Olypian wrap it up.

M is for Mop-Tops - Culpitt 'Battle of the Bands'!

More Culpitt's - These are 45mm 'Beatles' era musicians, if you want a collection they turn up all the time on eBay, however, don't pay silly Buy-it-now prices, you can pick them up for pennies if you're patient!

The pale blue variant I mentioned in 'lazy post' last night, this is a 'full band' there was no left-handed guitarist, so they never tried to be the Beatles, although there are at least three lots of figures in 54/60 & 70mm that do represent that very band.

The various parts of the drum-kit with the brown boys, note; there is a slight colour variation with some a pinkish-brown, this doesn't show well in the photo, but there is a clear difference. The skins on the drums are paper stickers and were applied to one side only.

Two of the three green band with Culpitt's footballers, the footballers were never made in the brown, but there may well be yellow band around somewhere, but I've yet to come across any, nor indeed red ones? Yet the drum-kit only seems to come in red!

The figures are unmarked, and late production would have come from Hong Kong, however early production will be UK-sourced. The lack of a mark makes it hard to say for certain weather they were by Gemodels or Festival. Most think Gem, however the base designs, size/scales and sculpting are so similar between the two companies, I'm beginning to suspect that Festival was a trade-mark of Gem, but they may just have been sharing sculptor!

U is for Unknown

Can any one tell me what the following means, or what company used this marking on its products?

BTES.G.D.G

This is on the draw-bar of a weastern stage coach with copies of the Ajax/Beton/Tudor*Rose hollow horse?

B is for Battle Ground, by Marx, a Miniature Masterpiece!

Generally I am not much of a fan of the mass hysteria and rivet counting that surrounds the bigger companies on the toy/model soldier horizon, the reverence in which some people hold Airfix, Britains & Timpo here, Starlux in France or - in the States - Marx, is while not a mystery, none-the-less an example of the sheep-like mentality of human beings. To regard half (or more) of all known production as nothing but rubbish, ignoring the cultural significance of most of it, to lose track of so many companies they become forever-after known as 'unknown', is not only to lose a valid part of our heritage, but if in doing so we elevate certain companies to god like status, it is to help devalue our own intelligence.

I say "Not a mystery", because while these companies often produced an awful product, or historically inaccurate examples (for how many more decades are the owners of Airfix going to peddle their Sd.Kfz 4323424whatevvverrr with 'those' mudguards?!), or ride roughshod over the wants, needs and goodwill of customers, there is an undeniable frisson of joy upon opening an Old School play set, so; proving my own hypocrisy; witness far too much blogspace devoted to this little gem of inaccurate crap from the land of 'Empire Made' badged to that master of exploitation; Marx...

A quite unassuming box and the worst of play-mats, a play-mat printed on something halfway between cereal box card and lavatory paper! Note the rather small beach on the Northern side of the river.

The contents include two Marx 'generic' tanks, and landing craft with Superfortress cupola! Some nice guns in hard plastic are included, although the ammo tray/bogie thing is very puzzling, the machine guns most closely resemble Vickers on .30cal mounts and the jeep design never left a factory in real life, not to mention the horse-and-musket era tents? Still - the dead trees and ruin are nice!

June 2015 - The 'bogies' are actually carriages for recoilless rifles, which must have been omitted by the packer? The trays then sit between the trail-legs of the gun - presumably it all works better on the 54mm originals?

The reason for the small beach on one side of the river...the Germans are rather outnumbered (by a factor of about 5 figures and 2 pieces of heavy gear to one), I guess they build a barricade out of the Merit-copy barrels and sacks, drape the barbed-wire over the whole pile and exit stage left while the Americans are still blowing all their boats up!

Three points of interest in this (apparently?) mint set; The only duplication in U.S. poses is the officer with life jacket, was he added (one jacket is a darker grey), or were there meant to be two as commanders for the two landing craft? There is no flagpole, the box art shows the flag flying from the lead tank, so did lazy old Marx just throw a flag in the box without a pole (other sets with flags get poles)? Finally; should there actually be 16 or 18 strands of wire?

All three questions are an academic exercise for the rivet counters, as I broke the seal on this set myself about ten years ago, and it's only been looked at a couple of times since!

To those of a humorless disposition...this post is meant to provoke thought, and I well know Airfix produced some of the finest figures ever...along with the junk! Starlux Empire Napoleonics are stunning and the Britains Swoppet Wars of the Roses Knights were a pinnacle in the toy soldier world, I'm not so sure Timpo or Marx can claim a pinnacle in anything?

P is for Paramount - Little Farmer Series

I covered the Paramount tractor when I did a post on tractors a while ago (about a year!), but here is most (?) of the rest of the series. The first time I got one of these I showed it to Paul Morehead at Plastic Warrior (link - as always - to the right!) and he said "Paramount" without hesitation. Now I have a rule that I don't accept anyones word for anything whether in print or in person, until I've seen a boxed/bagged example, or a marked example or a photograph of one or the other. Needless to say although I politely took his advice, it wasn't until I found the rake-harrow that I fully believed him!! [sorry Paul!]

Bagged examples with front and rear of the same card, I'd love to know what the 'Amphibious Ferry Boats' looked like and why you got more than one (boats is plural?) but only the one car...I suspect a typo and it should have been 'Boat' and 'Cars'.

A couple of tractors in close up, both the figure and the overall design of the vehicles puts them in the 28/30mm scale bracket, and while the front wheels use the Hong Kong wagon wheel 'pop-on' system, the rear wheels have an quite heavy eight-gauge mild steel bar to plug on to.

The implements I've tracked down so far. Rear row from the left includes a pair of gang-mowers, disc-harrow, rake-harrow and three furrow plough. In front of them are two trailers and a silage cutter, with a 'bit' in the foreground!

The red section of the rake-harrow (much pirated by our friends in Hong Kong, including Blue Box!) is well marked 'PARAMOUNT PR ENGLAND'. I don't know if animals were also made, or bought in?

Close up of the gang-mowers, the bit and the silage-cutter. The gangs have a pin for another set to cover the cutting gap left by the front two, whether this would have been a single or triple I can't say. The bit seems to be a road bogie for one of the towed items but - try as I might - I can't get it to fit any of my existing items, so at least one is missing? Bogie wheels are the same as the tractor fronts, so it's definitely part of this series.

21/12/12 - It turned-up in a mixed lot a month or so ago, it is the plug-in rear bogie for a 2nd trailer design! All I have to do now is track down the trailer, as the one that turned-up had someone else's name on it..Doh!

01/01/15 - Also; The Paramount would seem to be a copy of a TN Thomas/Thomas Toys original, differences now blogged Here with the Oxydol premium.Some of the above equipments are actually Thomas as well, but I will blog both families another day.

These are well made little toys, and given Paramount's history of rip-offs of Britains Herald Wild West a bit of a mystery (like so much early British plastic). Made of what I consider 'standard' soft polyethylene of the Airfix ready made type, colours are 'toy' rather than realistic, and if anyone has further items to swap I have tractors to reciprocate!

H is for Heller (and others)

Covered some smaller versions of these a while ago, Here and dug out the original photo I took a couple of years ago.

Picture shows painted versions (could the painted ones be Cromoplasto as in 'painted plastic'?) in 60mm hard plastic, an unpainted original in green (Xiloplasto/Landi ?) soft ethylene and a complete Heller Paint-your-own set in a dense nylon'ish plastic. Formaplast has also been mentioned in relation to these. Thanks also to Ron Chiasson.

Although Heller are (were!) French and a couple of the figures look like Saint-Cyr cadets, the rest do have an Italian feel to them, anyone got any ideas? I'm pretty sure they are all modern (ish) ceremonial figures rather than Napoleonic era officers but what do I know!! Indeed - more info on these would be gratefully received and posted here with acknowledgements.

For instance there are 14 poses here, last time I hinted at a possible 20. Anybody know the true total?
So - Following a protracted session of comments, and what came to light last time, we have a potential list of manufacturers-to-figures as follows;
25mm - Hong Kong (?) - ethylene (Yellow and ...) [No. of poses unknown]
30mm - Formaplast (?) - ethylene (White, Green, Orange) [3 poses (?)] *
60mm - Cromoplasto - harder styrene/ethylene alloy (factory painted)
60mm - Xiloplasto/Landi (?)- unpainted (various colours - 50's style!) [50 Poses] **
60mm - Heller - grey nylon type plastic [14/20 poses (?)]
* Previous article Unknown Military
** Green one above

while R.O.Plast Partenopea had nothing to do with them!

Added 01:09:2010

The left hand one is a 15th pose, and some are in 'alternate' paint schemes, they seem to be factory painted again?

Added 02:09:2011

The long lost Heller box which started this post has finally turned-up, so a couple more pictures to add to the mix.

Both sides of the Heller painting guide sheet included in the box, and being the 10 unpainted figures above.

The covers of the box, again hinting at only one or two more poses (the photographs) while listing around 50, (printed list) some of which sound like Atlantic or Co-Ma figures ...'paratroops'... which would bring R.O. Plast back in the frame!

C is for Cavendish Miniatures

Back's still hurting from the ladder incident the other day and now I have a cold so like most men, I'm monging about the house uselessly doing nothing, convincing myself it's worse than it is! So more larger scale stuff from the archive tonight...

Tony Kite's Cavendish Miniatures is one of those funny little companies that comes, contributes lots of figures in various materials to the hobby, and goes leaving lots of questions?

I'm not going to answer them here, just look one of it's products, the Beefeater or Yeoman Warder. Strange that apart from a few cartoony tourist keepsake key-rings and the semi-lunatic Charbens moulding (check his face sometime!) this is the only decent Beefeater made in plastic.

Top Row, left to right, Cavendish with separate metal axe; separate plastic axe (both; Yeoman Gaoler) ; the Chief Warder's 'Tower' staff, in real life the tower model is silver; the halberd or pike (known as a partisan), and finally; the later moulding with integrated pike. Note the similarity of painting style between the left-hand and right-hand figures, the metal accessories must have been a late addition, I'd always assumed they came before the plastic staffs?

The moulding was exploited by Hong Kong copyists and the two to the right on the bottom row are examples of the second version Cavendish in hard plastic, over to the left is one pantographed up to 60mm.

Cavendish carried these HK copies themselves after they'd stopped producing the ethylene originals, sold singly and in sets of various sizes, a large window box contained this figure, a Lifeguard, Horse-guard, Policeman and Guardsman with a copy of the Britains sentry box.

B is for Bluebird Toys - An Overview

So - Bluebird Toys (UK) Ltd Huh? They came, they made, they went! And contributed more to the small scale world in their short time than much bigger, longer lived companies...or did they really?

The 1997 Argos catalogue page annoncing the launch/availability of Havok.

Bluebird were formed in 1980 by Torquil Norman who was an old Model Toys man ( Berwick-Timpo owned), and one has to assume he had ideas about how to do things differently in a new decade with new mores. He started well with a 'Big Yellow Teapot' pre-school toy and other 'activity' toys for tots, and the company got off to a flying start.

Zero Hour catalogue pages from 1990 & 1992

However, all was not rosy in the garden and the company seems to have grown too fast, cash flow tightened and within ten years it was struggling. The answer was Polly Pocket, which quickly became very successful and refilled the companies coffers, she was then joined by Mighty Max, who sadly only lasted about 4 years. However Polly wasn't necessarily a Bluebird invention, she was licenced from a company called Origin Products Limited, possibly a wholly owned subsidiary?. Google gives about three 'Origins', one making trouser-presses in the Far East, a group of engineers in London and a dead homepage, so no clarity there!

Manta Force and Viper Squad pages from the 1990 catalogue.

A look at the acknowledgements 'small print' on the back of a late catalogue shows that - in fact - all the products being issued by Bluebird have dues to another source. The Manta Force, for instance was in the Tomy stable.

The fact that Hasbro have bought Mattel (a long time partner and eventual purchaser of Bluebird) while Takara and Tomy have married doesn't help with the research, this was all happening at the start of the 'modern' period of toy production where Tomy will re-use Starriors as RATS and use the cockpits on some Zoids while issuing separate licences to Hasbro and Kenner! It's all about quick profit, quick turnaround, making moulds pay and shovelling the residue to clearance houses for repackaging in Spain, Mexico or the souks of Istanbul.

If you go to the London Toy Fair regularly you'll know that companies come and go so fast, seem to grow and then disappear, or turn out to be no more than a brand or trade mark with a separate stand, it's hard to know who's what, and they're not that interested in the customer either. "The Customers Always Right" has become the customer will buy what we present to them or what we present to the kids until they pester the customer to see things our way!

So we find that Kenner/Parker, Fredrick Warne, BBC Enterprises, Tomy, DC Comics, Disney, Lewis Galoob and others were all getting a slice of the Bluebird pie.

Clockwise from top right; Polly pocket Catalogue page; 40mm Prince Charmings (?); and a Batman card.

In the end - which came at the end of 1997 - Mattel won a bidding war and bought their old trading partner and moved production to the US, swallowing Galoob as well...just before Hasbro swallowed the lot!

Mr Norman? Well, 'Sir' Norman went off to spend a lot of money on a theatre, which might help the more cynical among us (Me Sir! Me!) understand who was behind Origin Products? Note; Mattel are still crediting an Origin on the PP website...

Z is for Zero Hour by Bluebird Toy (Code Zero in the US)

So let's look at the most useful series for small scale enthusiasts, the Zero Hour range of futuristic/post apocalyptic rubber men! Good guys, bad guys and big tanks, what more could you want. And some of the figures/accessories are really quite useful for fantasy/sci-fi war gaming.

A shot of various figures from various sets, unlike the Havok range below (tied-in to Argos), these had a wider release and were available in Toy-R-Us, where I passed on the chance of a complete set as they were hideously expensive!

The Green row are a colour variation only available in the Supreme Headquarters Super Monorail Set (Groundhog Marine commandos), the figures more usually in shades of brown as Army Wolf Pack.

Group shot of the Bad Brigade set with a tatty old UAV Tour Bus also available in the big monorail play set. Most sets not only cost a lot, but contained an inordinate number of seated figures!

The big tank!

Some other stuff, you get the picture, lots of play value, not much imagination needed, everything has a back story, real 'modern' toys. The two grey figures are as yet unidentified, being from neither the figure sets nor the big play-set.

These were issued/carried in the US by Mattel where they were known as Code Zero, so assume re-packaging? These seem to have been Bluebird originals, and I don't know if the ranges differed, however V. Rudick's One Inch Army book is short four figure sets and a number of accessories so I guess Mattel didn't market the full range across the pond?

P is for Polly Pocket (and Mighty Max) by Bluebird Toys

Mighty Max followed the success of Polly pocket and was clearly aimed at the male members of the household, in little (and bigger playsets) fold away pocket sized mini-sets, usually containing one MM figure and one or two 'interaction' pieces, a monster and a piece of equipment, they followed the model forged by PP.

I don't really collect these, and although they do turn up in job-lots, I don't keep the playsets, so can only show them by year, these are all marked 1992.

This is the 1994 marked batch, with a bigger accessory or two, the guy top left looks like one of the 'Small Soldier' characters, and with Bluebird working with Galoob at one point, it may be from another product range?

Upper photo shows the 1993 marked figures from MM, again with the 'Small Soldier' lookie-likey, below them is what little Polly Pocket has come in over the last 20 years and YES, it is too much! [Still no duck - you know who you are!]

Undated BBT (Bluebird Toys) figures

M is for Manta Force (and Viper Squad) by Bluebird Toys (and Tomy Toys)

The oddest range I have from Bluebird is the Manta Force, only two (or three? see note on yellow figure) poses, in a few colours, and three distinct ranges of vehicles/accessories, very good ones which I think originate with Tomy, the Karnoid stuff which is of a completely different and poorer quality and some stuff in the 1990 catalogue which may never have been made here or in Japan?

Manta figures, the Gold one only came in a couple of sets and consequently as I don't actively search these things out I only have a pair of (broken) legs!

The yellow guy on the bottom row with the Pharaoh headdress is not visible in any catalogue photographs, so may be a late issue, or some body else's from some other range all together? (Terrahawks?) He is in fact from the Silverlit Multimac toys (Thanks to Bill Bulloch over at the Moonbase Central).

One of the early accessories, the build quality of this is very good and both the material and colours are reminiscent of some Ultraman or Gundam stuff from Japan.

Another from the same initial release, this used the good old 1950's toy cannon mechanism to fire 6 rockets at once, very safe, blunt rockets mind, this was the nineties!

Both Viper figures.

H is for Havok by Bluebird Toys, Skirmish Battle Set

In 1997 Bluebird produced what could have been a real runner against Games Workshop, however they managed to tie the launch in to the UK 'Catalogue Shopping' chain Argos, which rather stunted the child at birth! The initial release was a starter box called 'Skirmish Battle Set' (Argos Cat.No. 307/0338), this was accompanied by two other releases; The 'Karn Banshee Attack Thopters (307/0338) and; 307/0008 a couple of 3 figure sets, however due to the vagaries of Argos stock-control the two sets were random, so army building with any sense of order was a nightmare!

Front and back of the box.

Figures included in the Skirmish set were at the back left; 3x 47th Line troopers of the Nexus and a 'Hundred [Form]' warrior (in front - green), front right; 3 'Darkest Suns' and behind them - in rust brown - a 'Form' warrior, from the Karn Empire.

The 'Form's' that each Form-warrior stays close to, large, simple robots with some parts in common and with the back-flags - a nod to the Samurai, something else that GW mine with much enthusiasm...there's nothing new under the sun, even the Darkest Sun!

The basic scenery, note the early computer graphics, there is no care in the design of these, no love, if you are going to print and die-cut a sheet of card, why not do it properly? The cost is in the card (and shipping) not the ink and has been since the 70's.

Army building allowed for a third 'side' the Pteravore, similar to GW's Tyranids, or H.R. Geiger's Alien, it's all recycled!

H is for Havok by Bluebird Toys, Figures & Figure Sets

This is how they came from Argos, two random packets, in this case Nexus Tribunes and Pteravore Razors.

Here we see most of the units fielded by the Nexus, less those shown in the previous post. Front L-R are three members of the Brotherhood and - baseless - a Doomguard. Middle row shows the three Kinsmen and three Nexus Troopers, sans bases. The rear row has the Tribunes on the left and Assault Troops on the right.

The Nexus were supposed to get two larger vehicles; a Mauler light-attack tank and a Hammer heavy-assault tank, I don't believe either ever made it to market? The Hammer sharing a code number (N-09) with the Storm-trooper set, it's a fair bet they weren't issued either!

The Karn present themselves, again from to back, Left to right; Klan Warriors, two un-based Kai-unes and three Karn Troopers with behind them; a set of Borkian Mercenaries and two Suma-kai, again without bases.

Most sets have 'detailing' stickers on weapons, shields or - in this case - wings, these seem to have been applied before final sale to end-user. The karn also have 'lost' units; Glaive Riders (share a code with the Banshee Thopters) and Heavy Weapons.

Final Army/Race was the Pteravore, and the only set I've found are the Razors. Two further sets had army/points cards included in the battle set; P-02 'Screamers' and P-03 'Hell Hounds', I suspect that they were never issued.

Inset photo shows the base types/designs I've yet to identify/allocate to a specific set, and any help given with be gratefully received/acknowledged.

I've managed to identify some bases from the two mint sets and the play-set, most of the rest are around 70% sure, the baseless ones are probably those in the inset, as to the green ones? The stickers were placed in the factory, so both the green ones and some black ones I have without bases might be for the 'Thopters' or something?

Note; Because some other sets share numbers, it may be that those figures with a vehicle code accompanied that vehicle (packaging-wise?) or were destined to?

A is for AT-AT and AT-ST from Galoob, Kenner, Hasbro

I'm not some Klingon learning died-in-the-wool sci-fi fanatic, but I do have a soft spot for the "Increasingly inaccurately named" (to quote Douglas Adams) Star Wars Trilogy, and like most aficionados; The second film (The Empire Strikes Back) with it's set piece arctic battle on the frozen ice-planet 'Hoth'.

The AT-AT is the main mode of transport for the ground troops, a sort of mechanical horse/APC, and here are the three main versions of the 'Action Fleet' AT-AT. On the left is the first issue, then a motorised version (which needs the flattest of surfaces to move an inch!) which was by Tiger Electronics - if memory serves. Finally the re-issue by Hasbro with it's daft snow 'weathering'.

One of the Micro-Machine play-sets by Galoob had this 'dead' AT-AT, I've cut a couple out and given them a bit of work. The one on the left is a work in progress, the one on the right is as good as finished. I had to pare-down the blobs of snow that were all over them, and with the earlier one went on to fill some of the seams on the roof, I wish I hadn't now, but like tanks today, there would be many variants, so; hey ho!

Galoob 'Walker' behind, with the Tombola 'prize-egg' premium in front. Sandwiched between the two is the Pizza-Hut premium.


In the final film (The Return of the Jedi) we met AT-ST's, smaller two-man reconnaissance 'Walkers', and it's likely a few of them would have been operating as a screening force on the flanks of the main snow troop attack. Indeed, I think George Lucas retro-fitted a AT-ST into the re-mastered version of the original Star Wars movie during the huge hype when the new films were announced and various boxed sets of the old films were issued on VHS, just as it became obsolete. Lucas may be a good film maker, but he's far better at getting the pounds out of peoples pockets

In front of the Action Fleet ST, is the standard Micro-Machine version, and the two Micro-Machine AT-AT's to the right. One of the things I hate about these series are the complete inconsistency of scale, adherence to scale or compatibility. It's visually OK to use the wider range of figures in the Micro-Machine range with the Action Fleet vehicles, but for a realistic AT-AT you would have to use the 6" Palitoy/Hasbro Action figure AT-AT for true accuracy, remember the Land Speeders flew among the legs of these things.

Or...You could get the far more accurate Wizards of the Coast AT-AT, but get a credit card first, you'll need it, And that range is for another day!

Z is for Zoo Brix by Airfix

I fell off a ladder the other day so - as our Antipodean friends would say - I'm a bit crock at the moment, I'm also taking photo's and researching a multiple post, so it's more archive tonight I'm afraid, these were among the first toys made by the then household goods producer; Airfix Products Ltd.

They rattle, they float, they build AND they've got a small animal inside! Bargain, I'll have a dozen gross for whatever guineas you're asking!

The box end tells us there were three assortments, and this box has assortment 'A', these are the same animals as were issued on header cards, but with flat bases, anyone wanting to see the others should subscribe to Plastic Warrior Magazine (link to right), as a little bird tells me they will be featured there in the near future.

With a British Paratrooper to gauge size here are the animals, I haven't got the full hang of the Collage feature in Picasa yet so it kept cutting off bits of the animals, so the Rhino and Kangaroo suffer slightly from camera shyness here!