News, Views Etc . . . Unknowns . . . Now Known!

So we've had readers ID a couple of items recently and as they may have been missed over the holiday season (traffic was right down!), or because the post concerned was some time ago, and also because I didn't put them in the Tag List at the time; I thought I'd shove them in a 'News, Views', to highlight them again.

Dan recognised these unknowns from Brian B as having been sold by Target, mid December and then remembered they were on Thor Trains 'Army Men' site, providing both links. When I was putting everything on the dongle I found a folder with the [now] familiar title of 'Double Dippin' Fun' and realised Shaun had posted them a while ago as well!

Between Thor's site and the Fantasy blog there's good imagery for both the figures and accessories along with the packaging . . .for two brand marks, links;

Thor's Figure page - http://www.thortrains.net/armymen/medfigs1.html

Thor's Accessories page - http://www.thortrains.net/armymen/medfigs2.html

Shaun's Fantasy Blog post - http://fantasytoysoldiers.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Target

And Shaun's right, they are a bit foppish! But I think that's par for the course with medieval toy civilians, think Merten's Ladies in Waiting, Starlux's Courtiers (above) or even Exin's diminutive castle figures, their mounted Prince is such a  fopping-fop he's more foppish than a fopping fopper and no self-respecting Princess would go anywhere near him!

No offence to fops anywhere, any-when, but I want my Medieval Princes man'ed-up and killing stuff; not waving at butterflies with a pomade!

The other day Mike Cozart ID'd these from a 2012 post and his comment tells the whole story so I'll reproduce it verbatim. . .

"... MOST of the 1/87th (HO Scale) unpainted metal Victorian figures are by LYTLER & LYTLER Scale Architects - they made metal and plastic American Victorian architectural kits for HO scale model railroads - their figure line was called RAGTIMERS . There were sets with names like LADIES & GENTS , LARIMER STREET MERCHANTS, FOURTH OF JULY, BORN WINNERS & BORN LOSERS, THE DIGNITY OF LABOR , SUNDAY ON THE LAKE.

These were manufactured between 1979 and 1993. They were highly detailed and on par with the quality of Preiser's sculpting. Each set included about 8 figures and often a few accessories, except SUNDAY ON THE LAKE which included the boat, oars, a man and a lady. For a short time there was a company that sold many of these figures individually in painted editions."

Elements of a couple of the sets isolated from the above image, to the left of the boat is a possible 'Shoeshine' vignette, while the photographer must go with some of the standing figures - those in their best Sunday finery?

Mike's use of 'most' is not unfounded either, getting this post together I noticed that the figure 'A' above is both smaller, and seems to be a near-copy of the Matchbox hunter from the dog-carrier in the 1-75 range, while 'B' is looking like a figure from the Airfix rail-gang ('maintenance of way' in the 'States) set, also smaller and both figures lack the mounting spikes of the Lytler figures, although some of them have had theirs removed as well, so that's no proof of anything and they'll need a closer look.

The trouble with obtaining a start-painted, lose-in-a-bag set like this - often from a bereavement sale - is that it's rarely 'clean', cirtainly can't be 'taken as clean' and there seem to be a couple more which might be home-casts from Airfix (or the Meccano-Hornby 'lozenge-based' set), one even looks Preiser-like (The not very American-looking policeman with 'feltmutze'), but until I can find more on the Lytler originals I can't 'set' them-up or sort out the detritus - I'm hoping my old Walther's catalogues will help when they come out of storage, where I think the figures may be now as well? They weren't in the unknown civilians when I did those metal posts last Spring . . . must do rest of the Napoleonics!

Finally; 'Spectrum' ID'd the above, again - in his own words;

"As no-one has yet identified the bowman as yet, it is a figure of 'Hawkeye' the Marvel comics character. This figure is from the Phidal company's line of 'Busy Books' which you can see on their website. He is from 'Avengers Assemble' and there are others including both Marvel and DC titles along with other licensed tie-ins. Actually they are often found in TK Maxx stores in the children's books next to the toy section. As well as a story book you get 12 figures and a playmat. Hope this is useful to you."

As I said at the time; "...very useful"! What’s annoying is that as a comment, I myself didn't take it on board, so when I was in TK Maxx this afternoon (5th Jan.) and saw the mass of kid's books in the January sale, I didn't look through them for those interactive book/play-sets! As I won't be near a TKM for a week or two . . . it's up to you - whoever you are - if you're passing one of their stores in the next few days . . . sent us a shot of the contents - if you find any - and they can go-up here!

A couple of them appeared elsewhere, and were equally unidentified, which was so surprising to me that I was surprised by the level of my surprise, indeed I was so surprised to be that surprised I nearly went to the floor and x all else! Joking apart (and the whole thing with the PSTSM is a joke), he thought to correct me on 60/70-year old Spanish PVC (from behind the frontier of a fascist dictatorship) while he himself can't ID current, 'high-street' PVC any better than the rest of us! It's too funny.

Because the ID's tend to lye forgotten in the comments I will try to make an effort to record them and re-hash/highlight them at a later date in posts like this one, in the future.

From the Top:

Target Inc. - Double Dippin Fun - Castle Accessories

Lytler & Lytler Scale Architects - American Victorian - Various

Phidal Co. - Busy Books - Hawkeye (Link to website)