F is for Figures

There are a few figural elements to the world of plastic novelty shite, and here are a few...at this size mostly capsule or gum-ball toys from vending machines, but some are also cracker toys, others the full, carded, rack-item.

Guardsman, cartoon caricature, space-warrior babe and a Marx Tinkerbell piracy from the Miniature Masterpieces range. The caricature is - I think - an Ed Roth/surfer-culture thing, we've seen the pirate here before, and there are a few others (storage!) so we'll come back to them.

Below them are the 25 (and a 30) mm copies of the Commonwealth dolls, along with a male musician  who is similar to one from the Van Brode sets,

The Angels/Putti flats are still current (although these are earlier [1970's] examples), turning-up in crackers every year, they are floppier and thinner these days.

Three from capsules, the RAF have already gone on the Airfix Blog with comparison shots. The para's we looked at a week or so ago and the various guardsmen march below.

There are several types of these small guardsman, and I need the rest out of storage before I do the comparisons on the Airfix Blog, but from left (yellow) to right (pink);

Common type, current in really cheap Christmas crackers, found in Lucky Bags in the 1990's, there are three sub-versions each less well defined than the previous and with ever thinner bases. Limited to a few colours and only the one pose: Band/Pipe/Drum Major.

From the upper image, and the largest 'small scale' guardsmen, Christmas cracker and capsule toys of the 1970's, no Band Major yet found, but standard-bearers and various instruments have, seem to be based on Britians figures from the Eyes Right series. Always in deliciously 'edible' colours!

The purple Airfix copy is the smallest of these copies (sub-piracy/copy-of-copy) has a diagonal 'Hong Kong' mark, and seems to be so uncommon as to only be a capsule toy.

The yellow chap and the rows behind him are smooth-based (no mark) and may have been carded rack-toys as well as having a capsule origin, or even the Baravelli issue which still escapes me? They might even be from two sources with the sharper-cornered ones in the middle row being Baravelli and the yellow and pink chap from capsules/gum-balls?

Behind them are pink'ish versions of the commonly (and common) red ones from the 50 & 100-figure carded sets we've looked at in some depth here and on the Airfix Blog's two Guards posts.