'76 is for Spirit Of!

Yeahp! It's those damn pesky insurgents again!

You will by now have noticed that one Brian Berke of New York has been mentioned quite a bit since he first contacted me back in April/May, and with very good reason, he has contributed hundreds of useful, interesting, relevant or rare images to the Blog (or for the Blog; there's plenty to come), and well as sending three donations, the last of which contained this set for which I owe him much gratitude.

Obviously in our eMail conversations things are mentioned as being likely to be in the next parcel, but with this it was a complete surprise, more so as I had raised it as a query in conversation about the smaller cake decorations (which I'm still after if anyone has a spare set) along the lines of 'if you see...' and he had replied with several good images and a 'Do you mean these?'. He then went into town (the above named megatropolis!) and checked what he described as the 'motherlode' without luck!

I thanked him, and got ready to write-up a post round the images, only for the whole set to turn-up a few weeks later! Really I can't thank Brian enough, and because he sends things to be shared, the best way to thank him is share it with you - the other readers.

Appearing in Plastic Warrior magazine not that long ago (issue 153 try here for back orders) courtesy of Chris Goddard it should be familiar to some, and won't need much blurb, just nice pictures of a lovely set.

Given the state of some 'New World' flags, and I'm thinking of Mexico, Brazil and Argentina here (with all that busy stuff going-on in the middles!) among others, the Americans chose a very clever design, which not only allows for the endless addition of stars, while the 13 stripes remain - boldly proclaiming their heritage, in three contrasting colours (yes - I know white isn't a 'colour'!).

The combined use of which (graphical elements and colours) can instantly render anything recognisably 'American' in a way the same colours can't do for say Britain or France, without the whole flag, or a proportional design of such, being included. Thus, even from 100-paces, the thin red lines on a white ground with a few stars on blue and a splurge of red, especially in 1976, would have screamed "We won the Revolution - buy us now"!

Proudly striding down the road, isn't the packaging nice - for Hong Kong? These figures have a lot in common with Lucky Toys and their civilian race-goers, mechanics and officials, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a connection, but there's no actual evidence for such. Note also the Britains scenic-piece copies.

A close-up of the three figures, the drums are particularly good I think - being a more realistic size than most? As well as the Timpo knock-off wagons mentioned in the aforementioned PW article, Award International also imported sets of Kung-Fu swoppets in similar boxes to this one; but with plainer outer-graphics, the equally nice interior card being of a martial-arts gymnasium.