F is for Flats, unknown Flats

[Was being a tired (lazy) git last night and have edited the text and retaken the photo's!]

I've been meaning to show the first of tonight figures for a while, as they have been appearing on eBay a lot recently, and present a mystery or two. However in getting them out encountered the second lot, which seem to go together - after a fashion - so here they both are...

I'd always thought these were unusual (I've only ever seen the one pose?), similar to some early Marx or Thomas with the flat feet and solid construction, and they do pop up on eBay quite a lot, I've seen a bottle-green one (as I was bidding on the brown one) and there was a red-brown one on last week but in a junk lot at a 4.99 start price, which - not unsurprisingly - went unsold for the third or forth time.

Anyway, when I saw the metal one back in Jan. I thought, 'Oh Wow, they're taken from an old Hollow-cast mould', but with nothing in Joplin, bid 'blind' and waited with baited breath (that's a bit over-dramatic for a 99p lot in the post!) and was interested when it arrived to find in was a solid (probably why it's not in Joplin!).

Still believing it was the original, I was even more surprised to find it's quite a bit smaller, and must - in fact - be a home-cast (or commercial) copy of the plastic one! So...who, where, when? For either the metal or plastics! The plastic is a real UNA/VP/Kentoys colour?

The figure on the right is a mismould, taken out while still too hot, he has contracted forwards, but has still made a reasonably usable figure/pose variant. Metal figure is 70mm, the plastic 72mm.

[Peter Evans has identified these as being by Li-lo, which means the metal one is almost certainly a home-cast copy, if they keep turning up on eBay, I'll flag them as a dodgy set-up!]

Looking for the British 'Tommy' led me to the box 'Unknown Flats - Military', where the next biggest are these 65mm hollow-backed German 'Fritz' characters, I'm guessing they were from lucky-bags, or a shooting game? It's only a guess, anybody have any idea on these chaps from the wilder fringe of Toy Soldiers?

[20th Nov. 2015 - They were branded KM, came with a spring-loaded pull-back action pistol and six orange ball projectiles, blistered on a card, they are targets in a shooter game! The 'Combat Force Military Action Gun Set']

[2018 - now known to be Kwong Ming Plastics Pty.]