G is for Gladiators

It's a while since I sent a couple of images of these to PSR for one of their critique type revues within the vintage section, and I always like to give things a while there for the PSR fans to find, but there is always a need for more of these on the Internet, not least because people insist on calling them Kellogg's, and when corrected can get quite nasty!

Various shots some of which have been seen before, but they give a good idea of the colour range these came in. After they had been issued by Quaker they appeared in Tom Smith's budget range Christmas-crackers for a year or two, and when you find them now, you tend to either find a large lot in primary colours or a small lot with some of the wackier colours, I suspect that the former are Quaker-sourced and the latter; Tom Smith.

The range of colours is similar to both late production Hilco and Cherilea, so I wonder if one of them was responsible for producing these, however the metallic green is pretty unique (although common elsewhere; particularly hard plastic space-stuff and Roche au Fees circus premiums) and Quaker did buy a mass of Marx moulds when Swansea went tits-up, so maybe they had their own production facility? It would give hope to the mould being around still, as a lot of that Marx stuff has turned-up elsewhere over the years?

Close-up of the three mounted poses, the first one is clearly only good for a Spartacus war-game, being very much a 'Gladiator' on a horse, while the third one is as stupid as the Marx/Giant pose with a full 'Empire' legionary shield, but the one in the middle is very useful for early Republican, late Empire/Arthurian or other Mediterranean/Balkan/Levantine armies over a wide spread of time?

But with a sharp knife and some judicious paint-work they can all prove useful, and although in the hollow Hong Kong style - the horse is well detailed and can paint-up well, he also has that busy look of a small pre-medieval war-pony!

As far as I know (from my samples - mint in bag) the Baravelli range are Giant copies on 'Mexican Small' horses, not the Quaker figures?

Similar shot of the five foot poses, four of these are very useful but the fifth (middle figure) is difficult to place outside of a gladiatorial setting, being bare-chested, with a leather strap arrangement and a trident. The trident is nearly always miss-moulded, I think I have two good ones in a dozen or so figure-sample?

I gave a set of these to Paul over at Paul's Bods and live in hope that he will 'ruin' them with a touch of his magic painting! I couldn't bring myself to do it, but I think they'll paint-up well? I did have some in my childhood painted 'ancient' army, but have long since taken paint-stripper to them and returned them to 'minty'!

The original advert as it appeared in kids comics at the time, see; no Kellogg's!, this is lifted from Cluck, but there is a cleaner version linked-to from the PSR article on someone's Flickr album.