M is for Magnetic Personalities

At May's Toy Soldier show I picked-up an odd lot, or more accurately (probably!); 'collection' of mixed items with one thing in common, they are all fitted with a magnet, or some rubberised, magnetic-strip material.

I could Blog them as six 'Q is for Question Time's, but as they came together I thought I'd Blog them together and there's too much stuff in the queue for me to be unnecessarily creating another five posts!

These are they, at a rather awkward angle, but I was fighting a dying camera and a sharply angled evening sun casting shadows on everything! A couple of 60mm figures for scale, you can see the grey motorcyclist is around the 35/40mm mark with the two civilians at the back toward a standard 54mm.

Just mentioned; their magnets are set into slight recesses in the base and their style is 'stylised'! Or, semi-flat (demi-ronde) . . . really; just a bit basic! Hard polystyrene, slightly French-looking, slightly Hong Kong-looking and painted to match the sculpting - simply!

I believe, or suspect . . . or even 'assume' (they all amount to the same thing as you'll see going down the page) that some of them were from a magnetic street scene, traffic, driving game, or a board-game of some kind (rather like a scale-up of the old Merit small-scale one; Remote Control Driving Test), to which the owner/s added other suitable things, these two being possibly from the original . . . whatever it was?

But it's all speculation and any ID's will be appreciated.

This chap is - I think - a lot older, his arms - rather threadbare now - were once a furry pipe-cleaner, whether it was dyed to match his jacket or not is a long faded fact, if true! Also, it's hard to tell if the magnetic washer has been added or was a factory-fit, for use with another, similar toy or novelty to the one which probably produced the above figures.

The glue-line suggests addition, the matching paint suggests factory? But it is rather 'painted to match' - the motorcycle itself being unpainted polystyrene, so I favor the former, thinking his original 'novelty' was bendable arms, not magnetic toy?

He has the appearance of a premium/corporate gift item for a 'Formeta', but again, he could have been added to a small Formeta sample sheet, of the type given out at trade fairs. Again styrene, but unpainted, and while resembling the 30-odd millimetre Dinky road-worker (as copied by Blue Box and others) it is actually a subtly-different and - again - quite French looking sculpt?

Presumably, even if it IS a Formeta gift/premium, the figure and wheelbarrow would have been bought-in from somewhere? The barrow is similar to, but not the same as; Starlux, so another French link . . . sort-of!

I had a bit of a search for the Formeta, but could only find several other Formetas, all of which were in metal fabrication, several of which used similar logotype, but not quite the same (two are inset above), some of which seemed to have been linked or merged, others not, at least one had gone bust leaving dead-links and they were geographically spread over the Low-Countries, Canada, France and the US, so nothing to really help there, especially as the guy with a barrow is not exactly screaming 'formed metals' at us, but rather . . . road-works or building site!

This guy, like the first two seems to have a 'meant' magnet and while he's as poorer-a-sculpt as them he's a different scale and material, being a softer polypropylene or nylon type plastic, and while he also looks newer - though not as new as the next guy!

So I guess, a different magnetic game/novelty or plaything of some kind and gathered together with the others? And while you can't say he looks as French as some of the above, that's definitely De Gaulle's nose!

This guy looks more like he's from a board game as a counter/playing piece and has had the magnet added later, it's not even centred, but it also looks so modern; sloppy workmanship might have resulted in a lopsided gluing in the factory, so again not much informative to take from it.

The glossy styrene (or even Bakelite type phenolic - it's a very odd plastic) looks modern though, so I'm hoping someone might recognise him?

To split the previous lots from the last image below, I'm posting these as they seemed to be part of the same group. The little 'start of motorway' sign is marked Majorette and probably has nothing to do with any of the other pieces, being from their similar range to Matchbox's 1-75 smallies.

But the two larger ones, are both - obviously - French (which is nice because the group's looking French overall), and I hope at least one of them might have a direct link with at least one of the figures above? The 'Nice' may be from O-gauge railways, but the 'Give way to the left' crossroads sign is just the sort of thing you might find in a magnetic driving game!

These two seem to be German. The uniforms are West German police, pre-unification as far as I can tell. They are also magnetic, but have moving arms, presumably so they can do the various traffic-control signals, while standing in/on a - missing - dais or sentry-post type thing?

They also look to be earlier than most of the above; 1950's? Particularly the hat on the left-hand figure of the two on the right, which harks back to the inter-war years, although the grey motorcyclist may well be of a similar age? Also, they weren’t part of the 'group' and I thank Adrian Little for letting me photograph them.

So there you go, a very mixed bag, which apart from the last lot, seem to represent a French collection or collection of French (or both) magnetic civilians, with three motorcycles from different sources, a premium/desk-toy which may not be either and a couple of road signs to match, or not! Can anybody add anything?