L is for Lucky Luke

This is an unusual set, branded to Novalinea (Comansi), it contains what I think is a complete set of the Lucky Luke bubble-gum and ice cream premiums made by (and still marked;) Tito.

Obviously with these premiums there was always a search for other ways to market them once the promotion they were originally commissioned for has come to an end, and you often find them turning up elsewhere - as with the Tatra Warriors of the World. But to get the whole set, nicely laid-out is a treat.

A close-up of Luke and his near neighbours, I have most of these loose in storage, so we will return to look at them in grater detail another time. Indeed, I may have all of them, as I think I've got the vulture in another place with the rest of the known or suspected Spanish/Portuguese premiums?

Around the same time as I took these into the collection I also picked-up this copy of the smallest but eldest Dalton brother - Joe, he's a very poor-quality copy, but without any obvious mark, not even an HK so he remains a real question mark.

The copy Dalton's feet compared to the feet of the Indian female - I had trouble getting the mark to show, purely down to the plastic colour, but you can see how poor the copy is, unmarked, without the two little holes all the originals have, but with tons of flash.

Because this is the only copy from the whole set I've found in 30-odd years of seriously collecting, especially small scale (and as a stand-alone piece he is 'small scale'), I wonder if he was the only one copied - because of his size (maybe the vulture as well?) - as a gum-ball gift, he's certainly small-enough for a capsule machine of that era - the Kinder-egg sized stuff is more modern. But that's all just musing or pure conjecture?