A is for Army Men - RTM '17 - Part I - Older or Bigger Crappytoys!

This is one of four posts for which I've run out of Rack Toy Month to squeeze them into, so we'll go-over into September slightly!

Trying to sort them into any sort of order was impossible, so the titles, particularly of the first two posts are for the sake of having a title rather than any reflection on the contents of the post

Likewise; the numbering of the figures has NO significance whatsoever and imparts nothing other than that I needed to keep track of them as I photographed them, edited them and pushed them around the - eventually - four posts.

While the text will reveal some things are separately numbered when they turned-out not needing to be, while a 28 was added when in preparing the above shot and the correction shots I found a set which had missed being photographed in the main session!

This post will take us up to number 12 in the above shot, although 14 is here, we'll be looking at them again in part 3.

So 'New Type' 'Chinatroops'!

Number 1 are the dancing loons of today's post, and as will be seen below, as I was sorting them out and putting them away it became obvious 3 and 13 were the same lot, some are quite good but overall a really poor set, taken from various others (the chap on the far right is loosely based on an old New Ray/Toy Major German!).

While 2 are pretty standard fair, but I'd like to know who made 4 as they are quite good for this type of rack-toy shite - the helmets let them down but almost tie-them into the vintage and rare Kentoys Space Commandos! However a few head-swaps would give you a nice bunch of Rambo-style 'Vets'! I wondered if they might be clones of someone like Mars or TSSD, but they seem to be pretty unique?

So this is the full lot, I've crossed 3 and 13 off on the subsequent images. Conspiracy theorists may have something to say about the coincidence of 1 and 3 going with 13 but I can assure you it was only coincidence!

Two of the common current types (6 and 7) rather dwarfed by the 5's who are around 60mm and quite blobby in the detail department! As with all these modern, generic Army Men, there's always one or two which will paint-up OK, but that's always tempered by the poses you wouldn't (ahem . . . shouldn't!) give house-room to! 

In this case it's the SF-looking, Vietnam-era chap in a beret although of course the ex-Matchbox poses will paint-up better than the rest by dint of having better donors! Which reminds me - some of these sets (in all four (?) posts) are missing their ex-Matchbox figures as they have previously been sorted into elsewhere!

We've seen the type 6 several times already here on the blog I think, these are both from Brian Berke and show the Bely take on them with dark green and red-brown versions, together with the little keep/watch-tower.

Meanwhile, JPW are shipping them in grey and green. Brian also sent these and we can see his Crescent 'berserker' giving us a scale guide, they're not bad for 54mm, but pretty bad for usefulness!

The 27 lot from Post II turned out to be early versions of those I'd numbered 7, they are definitely better finished, but going on all the other variables - base shape, release-pin marks, blemishes in the mouldings they are the same figures from the same tool.

If you look carefully at the guy waving a Browning Auto and M16, you can see how the one at the bottom is well moulded, the one at the top is starting to lose the tip of the rifle, while the two between have truncated pop-guns, that's mould-degradation; right there!

Also; that bottom row, which are the ones from tomorrow's 27 shot, are in a less chalky material which will have helped. Conspiracy theorists can go ape over the 7/27 coming so soon after a 1/3/13, but that's life! I can't remember which of the sets were attributed to Funtastic, but they are elsewhere on the Blog.

A Dio Toys 'Trade' Co. (on Alibaba so a good chance it's just a marketing vehicle) are offering a set which looks to be somewhere between 6 and 7, having the useful chap with beret from 6 and the skeletal standing firer from 7, but a slightly different grenade thrower from either of them!

The Top Toys (both types) were here - on the Blog -  a couple of years ago, these Army Force 'Toob' figures being much nicer that the bagged Army Troop set, the Jumbo Trading I saw on feebleBay the other day but will have been carried by others, the New Ray though, I'm not so sure about.

I've seen them credited to New Ray but mine (in storage) are better finished and factory-painted, although I have a catalogue somewhere which I think has unpainted figures in the tub/bucket play-sets, so a bit of a question-mark.

For safeties-sake (or accuracies' sake) I'd think of them as 'probably' copies of New Ray (as 10 are), and I think 11, 12 and 26 in the top picture are all of a likeness, just different colours/materials and all three; too-small sample's to arbitrarily put together . . . yet!

Current sales image from an outfit called Ever Glory shows what appear to be I suspect may be PVC figures, size wasn't given but they have pulled poses from several of the previous sets and there are a couple which look to be more unique, although only cut'n'shut's or moved limbs.

Thanks

Peter Evans must be thanked for maybe half the above figures and in numbers, many more, and Brain Berke's contributions have been helping keep the Blog afloat for well-over a year now, equally some of the above will have come from Brian Carrick or Gareth Morgan so many thanks to all four, for their help or contributions (all of it volunteered) to this and the next three posts.