M is for Mystery Men Moseying on Mega Mammals

Barney Brown sent these in with a simple question...who made them?

Now...I'm pretty sure I have them unpainted somewhere (not all of them but at least one), and certainly saw a few when I used to work for a dealer, and - indeed - around the shows, and have always just assumed they were Tudor Rose (or one of the other usual suspects...Kleeware, Poplar, Thomas)...

...but the paint's not really right for any of them. Horse colours are early Timpo or even Britains, but neither would hav sullied their products with a liberal dollop of silver paint! The hand-pommel is a nice touch, and the fact that the paint is reversed on the two horses is quite a 'factory' (or out-painter) trick?

Scale-wise they are about 75/80mm? And again - that dark brown plastic was used by both the aforementioned major companies, but Speedwell also used it on their smaller cowboys and Indians and both Speedwell and Trojan were known to splash silver paint about a bit! And Trojan love a bit of pea-green paint?

They both used red for their figures, so did UNA on their 50/54mm Wild West (and more silver paint?), so the evidence, such as it is seems to be pointing to that same group of smaller, sometimes apparently interconnected companies responsible for quite a bit it seems!

Anybody got any ideas? They're not marked obviously in any way that Barney could tell, and without a mark, they are 'unknown' unless someone knows different! Has anyone got them in packaging?

At this size they would either have been sold loose off the shelf/out of the glass cabinet, or hung in seaside kiosks in header-carded bags.

[15-02-2016 - Tim Mee, German production - see comments, thanks Brian!]