From Mr. Opie's standard pencil-annotation
on the back of the header-card we know they were bought for a Shilling in
Northhampton, in May 1966. You may have recognised them as being the same
sculpts as Giant's mini's, or at
least those credited to Giant, I've
seen no actual evidence of them being Giant,
and the Giant astronauts are quite different,
the Aliens may only be gum-ball prizes? But for the rest of the post I'll refer
to them as Giant for ease.
These came out a few years after we know Giant to have been flourishing, so
whether Giant or gum-ball, the little
injection-moulded ones were probably the donors for these hollow, blow-moulded giants!
Feb. 2022 - I now have lots of Giant marked ones, albeit only in World Toy House packaging!
The three - seemingly - commoner poses (see
last picture), the middle one is missing his eyes; small lenticular pictures
which are commonly known as 'googly-eyes'. They do go missing, and while you
can replace them with modern blister-types (with a free-moving black polymer
'seed') from craft shops (if any craft shops are left! Try The Works), people do attempt to sell them on evilBay as "Original" or "Mint" with modern blister googly-eyes,
they should have these lenticulars.
Mine are by two or even three
makers/sources, the middle one (gun-slinger) being the most obvious with a
larger Hong Kong running from ear-flap to ear-flap, the one on the right (detector/sensor)
matches the carded set, and the unmarked/barely-marked one on the left (com's
unit) may be, but it's unclear.
You can see how my tatty one has shorter,
higher-held arms, re-tooled knee-joints, shorter ray-gun barrels &etc. He's
also a flat-grey plastic as opposed to the clearly silver shade of the carded
set and the other loose pair.
Despite owning the set for a couple of
years, photographing it on a traders stand prior to owning it, and downloading
the original feebleBay images a few years ago, I only noticed (or registered?)
the little cut-outs for the alien-atmosphere tanks (they may be pure methane,
or LPG . . . Lovely Pure Gravy!) after shooting for this post, while putting
them away; they help prevent the card warping too much.
A feeBay shot from four years ago. I've
been following/studying (?) these for years, and always the same three poses
(those on the card) show up, but in this shot there is clearly a fourth pose,
the guy waving his Pyrotomic Disintegrator Rifle in his right hand, with his left hand on his hip, it isn't a Giant pose per se?
Whether all the Giant poses were up-scaled, or whether there's another sources for
a third/fourth type I don't know, but having missed this lot in 2014, the
search goes on!
To which I should add that the missing Giant poses are holding rifle across
chest to left, ditto; to the right and ditto; slightly raised.
We will have mine up here (or over on the But Is It Giant Blog) eventually,
but I haven't found their box in the pile yet.
Now on the Giant Blog under this tag - https://butisitgiant.blogspot.com/search/label/Aliens
3 years later in 2021, they 'discovered' there were four poses over at Alphadrome, if only they paid attention to this blog, instead of just occasionally stealing images!
4 comments:
What little darlings!
They're the best Jan, there's no doubting it!
H
I have a set of these men from outer space. They came with the card and plastic bag but not sealed. I used to have some when I was a child in the `60`s and bought these to replace them as I always liked them . Mine are the one with the radio to his ear, the one holding the round thing in his right hand and the one with his hand on his hip holding his rifle up. No gunslinger for me !
Cheers Paul . . . no it isn't common that fourth one, so possibly the knock-off set, getting less orders?
H
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