So starting to wind-up the mini-season of
footballers with the odds and sods who have come-in over the last seven-or-so
years, it's not a priority of mine (sports or football) so it's a mixed bag
which only gives a flavour of what's out there, although three theme's are
obvious - premiums, cake decorations and board-game playing pieces!
And these probably fall into the former
category, semi-flats, seeming a set of three-a-side plus a referee, but that might
just be a coincidental happenstance from the make-up of the sample, which I
can't remember the origin of but it could have been that Swagman's Daughter
feeBay seller with the website, I got lots of interesting stuff from her?
60-mil-ish, I've managed to break the
ankles of the white one trying to straighten it! Without a ball they look like
they're busy inventing extreme tai-chi!
Now, if you are a completist, or an
eclectic collector, or a 'small-scale everything' type (that's "Plastic smalls" to the PSTSM!), or if you spend a lot of time on fleaBay
you will have encountered these, in ones & twos probably! They go way back
to the 1950's and have been issued under various names and artworks, and are
part of a magnetic board-game, interactive 'plaything'.
Originally called Super Soccer 'The Magnetic Football Game' by Balyna, an imprint of Toogood
& Jones of Whitstable, Kent; the figures are manipulated by magnetic
rods . . . actually - if you want to know more - just Google it, or keep an eye
on evilBay as it comes-up quite often, and there's no point my explaining - at
length - something I'm not showing you!
The important things to know are that there
are slight variations over time in colour of plastic or shirt-paint AND sculpt
quality, and the rare ones to find are the goalies, one in white strip with a
white base, the other green/green, at only one each per set, they have survived
in smaller numbers, although the whole game is only five-a-side.
I know I have a larger sample in storage,
but can't remember what colours I have, I think I've got white goalies, but I'm
not sure about the green, and I don't have a board/set as it's not my 'thing'
at all!
Incidentally; the same Toogood & Jones/Balyna are behind the odd small scale cricketer
I showed as unknown once, with the 'ball-receiving' base, he's one of nine fromthe non-magnetic Discbat Cricket Game.
While another title for the game was Soccerette.
The larger 'also-rans'! With both an Airfix (far left) and a Wilton (far right) for sizing, these
are; from the left - three poorly painted 'old school' Hong Kong
cake-decorations, in the style of the larger Wilton/Anniversary House set, but smaller at 50-to-55mm. A pair of
gold Total Oil premiums (recentlycovered by in full John Begg in Plastic Warrior magazine - Issue 168);
Terry Cooper on the left and Allan Ball.
To the right we see a pair of soft ethylene
cake-decorations from the 1970/80's, each of which has a ball. There are other
poses and the moulds seem to have gone through several hands over their
history, I've quite a lot in storage, so hopefully we'll return to them soonish
for a better look at pose, paint, plastic and base variations.
In the centre is a Corinthian 'big head'
and to miss-quote a famous footballer and manager; "Do I not like them!", they tend to often come in with large
mixed figure lots, I really dislike them and they normally go straight to
charity, but this one happened to be around for the photo-shoot. Actually
there's another one somewhere (only came-in the other day), green-strip with a
dark green base, but someone's chewed his arms off!
Ahh . . . more 'plastic smalls', the
small-scale 'also-rans' with an airfix figure on the far left and one of the Balyna (I have no idea if it's supposed
to be pronounced Bal-nee-yah, Ball-near, Bally-na or Bally-ner?) second-in from
the right as sizers.
The others are - from the left again; Waddington's 30mm Table Soccer player, rather
piller-like, they are among the earliest here and conform more to counters than
figures, although they have a printed-pitch playing system. Then we have four
Italian sourced figures, probably from a board game and donated to the Blog by
Dario.
Next are two British board game pieces (MB's 'Pro Soccer'?)**, one of which winged its way here via MoonbaseCentral (thanks guys!) and another pair from Italy (also thanks to Dario) which may be
from a board game, or something more akin to the Spanish 'sobre' concept?
The last one has a locating stud, so has
been posed on a borrowed Balyna base,
he may be from a pierced-board travel-game, or something more like the Balyna (a clone of . . . perhaps?).
There are loads of these smallies in storage, so we will look at them again one
day!
**I have images of an Australian version
with heavier figures (other team in white), it seems to be the common one (there are two on EvilBay today), and both the fact that it's called
soccer not football, and Milton Bradley are a US-based parent, means the ID's
not 100% fact, as they seem to have left production to local offices; but they
are certainly similar.
