I got my collection out of storage, Brian B
sent me lots of pictures and Gisby searched frantically for an ID on some
figures, this post is the result!
Ages ago, like two years ago or more, Brian sent me an image of one of his displays which had this trio in the corner, and I asked him if he had a better shot or knew anything about them. He then sent the image I posted back at the beginning of July and I (being a lazy git) sat back and waited for Gisby to reveal all! Gisby, however; missed the hint and did a fantastic job of finding the Buck Rogers figures instead (for which link I've just looked and failed to find the follow-up! Then I remembered Gisby put the links in the comments)! I emailed him with the cry for help, and he was off!
'Racun' - Critter Commandos
He sort of drew a blank, but had checked Team Frog's 'Critter Commandos' (his
first thought), as he suspected it might be the work of sculptor Steve Lortz,
before he "checked Castle Creations and Lance & Laser, because he [Lortz] sculpted for them, but nope. I tried Archive and Stan Johannsen, because they make 'that type' of figure, even if a different style, but nope".
. . . and I sent some on to Gisby, while planning this post around the rest of them, but RTM was bearing-down on me and I had a four-van logistics exercise to arrange! At this point however the story failed to develop into a full, epic quest as someone on the forum had ID'd them and that was - rather . . . that!
It turns out they are by Dark Horse Miniatures who produced these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sets based on their (Dark Horse's) own comics, the sculptor being Ian Lungold, and the foursome who'd caused all the excitement are titled set 178 - After The Bomb Mutants. But they are still nice 'old school' figures so let's have a closer look . . .
The thing is - while a modern maker rightly
feels they are a bit poor, when I was a kid this was par for the course and
there were dozens and dozens of these things in Military Modelling around '78-'80, and the pre-GW editions of White Dwarf.
I used to buy things very much like this from Tangley Model Workshop in Guildford and if you put them lose in
your pocket half the detail seemed to have rubbed-off by the time you got them
home!
I'm guessing these were mid/late-1980's (at the
time of writing I haven't followed the links myself yet!), but in the '80's lot
of guys were sculpting this kind of thing in their bedrooms from Plasticine or candle-wax, casting them
in Lego-dams or cuttlefish moulds,
which is why I have the occasional unknown posts, I keep coming-across unknown
metal!
My favourite, 'she' looks like she may be a
she, which if they are dogs (mutant dogs) would make her a bitch, and if you
encounter a mutant dog with an eye-patch and a big gun; 'Bitch' is the least of
it, but the one word you wouldn't use! I think she's probably the leader of the
gang as well?
I don't know what to make of this chap,
there's some dog around the jowls, but the rest of him is more
turtle-meets-mantis! What looked like an unreadable marking on the base equates
to neither the maker or the sculptor, nor even the franchise; so just some
fettling-marks or something?
Thanks to Brian for indulging me, thanks to
Gisby for all his searching and thanks to Paul Lidberg and whoever put the name to the figures; I think they're great!
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