M is for McMystery Figures

Back in 2009 a member of the Treefrog toy soldier forum asked the assembled experts if they could identify his Mystery Figures, sadly, the experts were all off for the day (I'm joking!)...and it's taken me a while to track down the images I took in 2007 of an eBay lot I'd just bought.

If someone on that forum could direct the chap to this post, his query can be answered...to an extent!

They are made by a company called Highlander, not - as one might expect - from Scotland, but Boca Raton, Florida! How a swamp came to be associated with the crags of Caledonia is anyone's guess....I know, I know...I've got Google...it's the beach!

I'm guessing this was a short-lived venture, probably launched off the back of the 1968 movie 'The Green Berets', short-lived because A) they don't appear often on feeBay and B) the popularism of the Vietnam war would soon become the silence of the war that dare not speak its name, and selling any war toys, let alone specifically Vietnam War related became an uphill task! Probably issued in 1972 as US troop numbers in-theatre were already being reduced, the pull-out being completed in '73, these would have been a heavy-sell.

A 3-page commercial catalogue (Build Profits While Your Customers 'Build Battlefields' with Highlander) was published in 1978, and later sets were issued unpainted, unassembled and - judging by one recent feeBay listing - missing the MG! they do appear on feeBay regularly, usually with ridiculous BIN's. Look out for the A/T gun released without figures as code; HT-105 and the 2-man MG team as HT-106 (painted or unpainted).

I'm not sure how many Pak. 40 75mm Anti-Tank guns the US special forces employed in Vietnam, but my guess is none! However, toys is toys, and this is not a bad little model of one. Of far more interest are the approximately 40mm figures, some painted as African-Americans and all wearing the green beret.

I don't know how many poses there were in total, or whether there were ever any North Vietnamese 'enemy'? The cards apparently cost 25C back in the day and both the vehicles and figures are in a hard styrene plastic - another reason for their rarity?

I had an SPG as well, also carded but it had no figures included and I gave it to Paul for PW, but he seems to have misplaced it - one of the reasons I've held-off on blogging them was the hope of a photograph of it! It was - if I recall correctly - one of that 1950's family of M53, 54, 55 vehicles, but I can't remember which one and didn't think to photograph it at the time; I'd only had a digital camera for a few weeks (these start at photo number 148, from zero). Another reason for the delay, as I'd yet to suss-out the 'tulip = macro' rule and was hoping to get them out of storage and re-shoot them better...one day I might!

There is very little about these on the 'net', and a bit of research from someone in Florida might reap a list of products, or a better company history? There is a Highland Toys in Scotland....they make stuffed animals!