F is for Frangible French Fancies and Feebly Fragile Fellows

The reason I've so much in Picasa is because I shoot a lot of stuff without much thought, and then either don't know what to do with it, get a sort of writers-block, or just wait for something else to come along, this post is one of the latter, in that something else came along, but it was one of the former in that I didn't know how to deal with it!

It's a ridged vac-form; but polystyrene rather than celluloid and French; rather than Japanese. Or - at least - those present at the time of the photographing were pretty-much agreed it was 'probably' French, and that included a couple of the Dutch antique toy dealers, so they knew their onions!

For a while it looked like we might get a manufacturer's name, no-one could come-up with one (another reason they sat in Picasa for a while - I was waiting for the following show to see if anyone had anything further to add!), while the designs are a bit space-age for actual cars I think (but happily stand to be corrected; I'm no expert or follower of 1940's (?) cars).

There was only the two designs (on show - I'm sure the range was larger), the above racer and these long, sleek sports coupes, again; more space-age than actual I feel, the sort of thing you'd expect in a Dick Tracy or Mask cartoon! Although . . . the sports-car might be a known 'concept car' from the 1930/40's; with the blue-racer being a rendition of a real vehicle?

Wooden wheels attached to steel-wire axles; it's impossible to see how the axles are attached to the belly-pan due to the flush fairings, but presumably some kind of half-tube is glued over the little trench in the delicate tray, indeed - both body and tray/belly-pan are less than a millimetre thick.

Colours are understated but nice, and one wonders how they ever survived in this state, someone must have loved them enough to keep them un-played-with in a sturdy box, or maybe they were old shop-stock forgotten in a shed or garage?

The same sense of wonderment accompanied these, which were on Mercator Trading's stall at the last Sandown Park (the cars were on the same stand back in September) and may still be available from the website?

They are all different, also 'probably French' and full blow-moulds. They are all slightly different and seem to depict pre- or early-WWI French troops from before the move to Khaki, so could be well-over a hundred years old? I suspect only 'depicting' and probably from the inter-war or even immediate post-WWII periods, but still, how have they survived . . . and near-mint?

I know I shouldn't give the ammunition to my envious haters, but I'll have a guess at a mix of Alpine troops and Chasseurs? Rare as rocking-horse shit anyway! They were about five or six-inches tall (I didn't measure them), glued to 'plasticard' bases and unlike the string arrangements of similar Japanese-made figures they have plug-in arms like cheap dolls or the arms those Action Man clones used to have (except the officer who is a simpler, single-piece sculpt), again; they seem also to be polystyrene rather than the celluloid you'd expect of some Japanese equivalents.

27-07-2018 The Figures are now ID'd as Unis from the 1920s and copies of SFBJ metal sculpts - tags added