F is for Football - 3 - O is for Other!

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.