P is for Pirates - Part I; American Makes

And so to Pirates, not Hong Kong pirates, but "Ooh-Arrrh" Pirates, although some of them are made in HK! I should have held this post until International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which if memory serves is late summer some time, but as I'd though of a good April First skit a week or two ago which I now can't remember, and as the blogging will be taking a back-seat from 10th April till mid-late October (I've got a date for my residential training course), and as they were in the queue to be 'done', they are published today as a sort of 'thank-you' for my hitting 11,500+ views last month. I shall now be content with between nine-and-a-half and ten-and-a-half thousand per month and stop chasing 'hits', as last month's 46 posts was hard work!!

We look first at the production of makes based in America...and both posts will deal with the larger sizes only, I have the original issues of Strelets*R and Orion/Dark Dream but Dave has them covered well on PSR (along with more recent sets I think?) and the Starlux small scale have been covered (or will be soon - I know I've done the images!!?), which really only leaves the larger ones to get their moment in the limelight.

These are the Marx 50mm set, made in their HK factories from polystyrene and hard to get in this condition, there is a pose missing, but short of going and looking at Kent Sprecher's Toy Soldier HQ I can't tell you which one!...It is there!

Marx also did a set of 54mm Pirates and the top shot shows two painted - probably from the USA, three unpainted - probably from Swansea and two remoulds (bottom left shot) from Mexico or HK? They were also given the 'Warriors or the World' (WoW) treatment, with polystyrene and individual names.

The other six (bottom right shot) are the quite common set of re-issued Ideal Pirates, they originally went with a toy boat I believe, hence the lack of bases?

These are the big boys, with 60mm ring-hand figures from MPC, the shot includes a couple of the accessories they did for the hands, with - below them - a couple of the baseless or mini-based Pirates from Tim-Mee, I don't know if these are US production or if they were made in the factory they had in Europe, as far as I know only the GI's were produced over here but who knows with these things?