I is for Asian . . . Rack Toys

In the words of he who keeps following me ['very closely'!] "There seems to be some interest in these at the moment"! I'm not sure if these were sold to tourists in numbers; mostly sent to British Asians by their relatives, or collected by them on trips back to Asia to remind them of the mother country, but you see them occasionally at figure shows, car boot's or on feeBay; usually a half-dozen or so (I suspect they came as 10 or 12-figures in an assortment?), and I'm sure there are other poses to find.

We'll start with the girls as for many years I wondered if these were Thai or Indonesian, Burmese or from somewhere further afield (Malaysia?), but one of the deciders for my current thinking - India - was the pair on the left with their distinctive tea-baskets - as anyone who did geography in the 1970's will recognise! But Malaysia is very much in the frame still, especially the checked-sarong guy!

The gent's too seem to place us in India, as while you find tea-pickers in similar dress in Sri Lanka and Muslims in fezzes elsewhere, to find all the costumes in these sets in one place I think you'd need to be in India; the coloured plastic pair are Buddhist devotees, the guy on the left might be representing an educated Anglo-Indian, or someone from the ruling/political class?

The other two I don't know off-hand, but they seem to be more ceremonial or area-specific in their ethnicity/cultural-dress? The above two groups are all flats, around the 60mm area and with 'penny-bases'

Here we have two drummers; one with a matching penny-base but ribbon-twisted to give a level of dimensionality to him, while the other is again a full flat, but with a different base. Both have had drums added with a blob of glue.

This group are from the second bag (along with the 2nd drummer) and there are three more of the square bases and two tatty snake-charmers. I used to wonder if they were from a different set/maker, but I think they are all from the same source and are now kept in separate bags because they won't fit in one, but there aren't enough to move to the tub-stage!

Again, arguing for a different source you might associate the first figure on the left with Burma/Myanmar or Thailand/Siam, but the figure on the other end of the row looks like a sun-roasted, unshaved 'Sahdu', and the only place where you get all these together (with Cobra charmers!) is India . . . or Malaysia? The final figure is a villager with hoe.

The hoe is painted onto the base, while the 'Sadhu' has an axe glued to his shoulder.

It looks like he's killed the poor lizard, so not a Sadu at all! I don't know if he is planning on eating it or indulging in some ceremony with it? Sadhus are supposed to be vegetarian aren't they? Maybe he's a denizen of the jungles or forests of the great wildlife parks or the river-delta's of the North-East and not a Sadu? If the figures came from Malaya, he might be an Iban tracker from the jungles of Sarawak?

I need to do a bit of a mend on this chap, who should be carrying the pole with the two baskets suspended on the cotton-treads but suffered a breakage where the glue was originally placed, he too; has the ribbon-twist to suggest a greater level of 3D!

These two - who came in separate purchases (but one of them with some of the above), are slightly different, with heavier bases, one tapered upwards and the other downwards with a prominent rim. These are the figures which raise Malaysia to the heady heights of SCW's tag-list, although they tend to wear a lower black hat?

As they seem to be copy-versions of the chap in the second image from the top (fez, checked sarong, umbrella) there is a tendency to think they are from another source, but as they are the only ones to turn-up, both in the same pose, and given the two drummers and the similarity between several of the women I suspect they're from the same extended set, but keep them both in a separate, third bag, just to be safe!