S is for Spot-On

It's been a while since these starred in 1" Warrior, and then they were in black & white, so I thought I'd chuck some up here in colour. Not much to say, they were issued to accompany the 1:42 scale die-cast cars from Triang under the Spot-On label. Sold typically as three figures (and the odd accessory) to a card, with a larger boxed (?) roadwork's set.

They are classic early British, sometimes chalky, basic factory paint-jobbed, 30mm softish polyethylene (ICI Alcathene?) figures, mostly of civilian subjects, and dressed to be contemporary - 1958/1969'ish. They were replaced by hard styrene-plastic Tommy Spot figures in the 70's which I'll look at another day when I cover Minimodels and the Havent factory's output.

Top; Soldiers and a Sailor, there was an Officer in Sam Brown to keep the two squadies in order as they perused the shelves of Woolworth's in their lunchtime, but sailor-boy seems to have been a one-off.

Bottom-left; Two paint versions of the 'Postie', as the blue is an less-common colour he may have come with the Sailor and the Traffic Policeman (below), but not necessarily.

Bottom-right; Three variations of 'Old man in jacket with soft hat and walking-stick' he was sometimes issued with two naughty boys to take for a walk/be annoyed by?! Sometimes there were two old men and one boy to the card.

Top; The professionals: University Professor, Priest and Doctor, all - only ever seen in black.

Bottom-left; The three naughty boys, one throwing a stone, one scarpering in a guilty fashion and the middle one is supposed to be sticking his tongue out! It was two of these that Granddad above had to keep amused in the absence of the parents!

Bottom-right; The two smaller children dancing to a street musicians ditty.

In common with all figure collecting, women are a bit thin on the ground, but in Spot-On's defense they had more than most as a percentage of the total, top we see three versions of...farmhand/milkmaid? With the nurse; below left and 'Girlfriend' and 'Woman with dog' to the right.

It should be noted that all these 'Titles' are my own invention, as far as I know they were never given titles or names with the exception of the road-menders (below) who appear as drawings on the back of a Spot-On catalogue with code numbers. Missing from the fairer sex are a lady shopping with handbag and a WPC, that I know of?

Top shows the building trades, left-to-right; 'Chippie', 'Brickie', site foreman's 'Boy' and the Decorator.

Below are three mixed figures; Bus conductor, 'Boyfriend' and Traffic Policeman.

Motor mechanics from two sets, there's a missing pose from the upper set, and these come in various colours but more commonly white.

The figures I collectively call the street traders...

Top; Fruit & Veg. Barrow-boy (actually a middle-aged man!), there should be some sort of leg arrangement or props, that fit into the dent under the apples, but as a small part it was always going to go missing! Anyone got an image or link to a complete one?

Bottom-left; The 'Street Band, and an advertising 'Sandwich-board' wearer, there should be an accordion player and beggar to go with the band, while the hording carrier probably goes with other figures, the paper seller and another?

Bottom-right; The Flower-seller, again missing little bits, which would seem to be 6 bunches of flowers/plant pots to plug into the holes in the display steps.

[I have a spare set of wheels for the barrow, if anyone has a spare prop]

Two sets of three Road Menders, with the codes for the larger 'Road Construction Set', missing is L221/2 a man hefting a moulded-on spade. The inset carded set (which has lost its spade and compressor-drill through the lose cover-film) shows how sometimes the sets are more than one colour, while my two samples were clearly both all-one-colour sets. With 8 poses and various accessories (plank, spade, drill, brazier) the contents of the three figure sets does vary.

The sitting guy is shown as reading a newspaper in the catalogue images; however I've never seen one and the others are different enough from the original artwork to suggest he is the numbered figure from the larger boxed set.

Also note that the packaging is almost the same as the Almark 20mm WWII sets, both plastic British and metal Germans. Indeed the Germans also came as tear-off cards, part of a larger hanger while the WD series just had the sticky vacuumed cover-film. I wouldn't say any of these were Stadden designs, but it's a further link between Almark and Lines

The other busy bodies...

Top-left; Baker's delivery boy, Coalman and Bin-man.

Top-right; Paper-seller from the street traders card.

Bottom-left; Laundry-man and Removals man.

Bottom-right; Short, fat Butcher who's clearly been spending some time divvying-up his produce with Batman & Robin (see Dalek article above!), Milk man with two paint treatments and a deliveryman who I like to think has a large box of chocolates, but as he won't ever take the lid off; I just live in hope!