A is for Army Men - RTM '17 - Part IV - Mostly Smaller Scale Crappytoys!

Or at least, this was going to be the small scale post but a number of larger ones crept in so it's not, also the numbering rather peters-out around the time we find out what happened to the 16 some of you may have noticed yourselves not noticing so far! In other words - it's the loose ends of what has been no more that 'What's in the Fritz-helmet/Modern Chinatroops' unknown's box'!

Seen before on the Blog, more than once I think and being carried by various brands at the moment as the default small scale, they are actually around 30mm and a second shade of silver-grey - distinct from the silver - surfaced in the 'Big Bag' from Peter Evans.

I re-shot the shelfie (right-hand picture) I got so fuzzy last time and we can see rust-brown still to enter the collection here at Small Scale World Towers while Brain Berke shot the left-hand bag when he was last in the UK, it showing an apparently darker green set of figures.

Here the same figures are being offered on Alibaba by an 'E-Toys', made-up brand if ever I read one, but clever and you wonder why no one else thought of it first, but maybe they have!

Number 16 has been in the collection for a while and may date back to the Hong Kong era, but he has the chalky look of more recent China production.

The broken figure seems to be Hong Kong, but without a base it's not clear, he also seems to be quite original? Next to him is a green, soft PVC, copy (?) of the believed to be Galoob for Realtoy (et al.) in denser plastic. I've put the question mark in brackets as he may be from the same factory/mould, just for a different contract, and some of Micro-Machines own figures - especially the early, unmarked, small scale 'combat' ones were in softer PVC anyway?

The other three are small-ish scale (all in this shot are around 40mm) copies (or homage) to the ring-hand MPC figures, I have no weapons or helmets for them so don't know if they had them but suspect they must have, if only by going by the little belts - which are removable! I'm guessing gum-ball machine capsule toys, but they may have had a header-carded bag, or blistered outing too?

Speaking of Realtoy and moving up a scale, if anyone tells you the figure lower left is Realtoy, tell him he's making it up as he goes along - again! The Realtoy one is bottom right and we looked at them here a while ago.

The upper image shows the unknown 50mm figure, a couple of the denser/harder PVC Realtoy (et al.)'s; they have also been marketed as Daron and Sky Marks, while I've been told they were Galoob, and certainly follow Galoob poses; along with the softer 'copy'.

In the lower image we see the various colours now found, the sailors being consistently painted the same, the others coming in desert-sand, olive-green, a 'Russian' SF/SWAT/Urban camo', a general camouflage and the woodland green 'copy', however there is a commoner reverse camouflage with sand as the dominant background and blobs of green and brown but I don't have one in this pose!

Similar figures (looking odd as they have no belt-order/webbing) are being offered by Smile Station on Alibaba and evilBay (upper shot) or at least they were a year or two ago, I can't find them now, but that's made-up brands for you, easy come; easy go!

Another set of similar figures were Blogged here.

While the various unknown carrier-deck ground-crew in the lower picture manage to look like both the unknowns; the five in black PVC are very similar to the green chap but a tad taller, while the lower three are in a soft silicone-rubber and look like the not-Realtoy figure!

However, I now know the lower chaps aren't carrier-crew, they were sold in a Realtoy-like, but unbranded/generic window-box 23710 Die Cast Metal Airport Play Set, two per card, so that may where the larger unknown figure originated, not the civil airport; but another generic window-box!

Found these on Alibaba, they look to be all new poses, of some merit and in a smaller scale; mabe45mm judging by the accompanying vehicles? And - note two new variations of the CAD-CAM-hulled AFV we looked at the other day.

Those Tamiya 1:48th copies (which Arlin Tawser ID'd here a while ago) came-in again, in a larger sample with the 'Big Bag', still unknown, but by adding one 'missing' figure gave a photo-opportunity of 6 poses x 4 figures x 2 armies for a 48 total which I suspect will prove to be the/a full-set/set-count? Miss-moulding has reduced a couple of the B.A.R-gunners to mere riflemen!

Finally, we looked at Skylark yesterday with a nice set of figure sculpts in a larger scale but in the smaller scale they are offering these really poor copies of some pretty poor 1990's copies of copies of Airfix, which (the 1990's ones) were also issued with Majorette AFV's.