B is for Blobs

As well as the '100-figure' carded sets (more on numbers when we get to the guards!) like the Wild West one we looked at last night, there were also '50-figure' sets, but with 49 figures!

It was brash of the Hong Kong pirates to place their products on such obvious display, given the poor quality of most of it, the reason I tend to refer to it as 'shite' even though I collect them - note to non-English speakers; the word rhymes with Kite or Bite, not Kitty...which would make them shi....you get the picture!

And no set required more brashness, even bravery, to put on a card in the full glare of a 1960's corner-shop's flickering bulb than these...

Starting life with Giant branding, even the Giant ones were pretty poor, and 'blobs' is a reasonable moniker in this case. Indeed, next to the Giant originals, there's not much in it, these have a different base-mark, but the detail is only slightly poorer and may well be put down to mould age?

The trouble with these is that they are constantly sold as Giant, yet the true Giant are as rare as their Aliens, while these are as common as muck on a farmer's boots, they were sold on sheets of fifty [49] and a hundred, for pocket-money prices, included in other sets and can be found in three main generations.

The other generations are in storage (which gives us the excuse to come back to them in  a few years!) so you'll have to take my word on the rest...There are two other base types, unmarked and marked in a circle. Nearly all examples are silver, but small numbers of metallic blue (and metallic purple?) turn up from time to time with roughly equal numbers of standard silver versions, these are probably from 50+50 cards like the Cowboys & Indians.

Occasionally, instead of being moulded in the purple plastic, they are just painted - definitely in metallic purple - and this is a brush-splash across either the trousers or upper body or the whole body. In both cases; this would have allowed for two sides....warfare!

On the subject of 'other sets', this one from 1969 has the astronauts, with a Dinky Honest John missile knock-off, a couple of pocket-money paratroopers, a micro-plane and the common (ex-dime store moulding) cannon, along with bunch of copies from Airfix HO-OO figures.

The tactical battlefield nuclear rocket is being ridden (piloted?) Major Kong style (Dr. Strangelove) by two helmeted loons, clearly determined to get forward observation taken seriously! Although, they're facing to the rear, so seem to have had second thoughts!