S is for Silly-Season Search for Sci-fi Solids

So, while the Tories spent the summer eating each other alive over Brweakshit, Donald Small-hands loaded so many tariffs on China's (sorry; Chai-Nah!)'s components their trade-surplus with the 'States actually went up (because the US buyers had to pay the extra for the bits they needed!) and the BBC stooped ever lower in its desire to lick the arses of Fox and Sky, but not as low as the daily Wail (get your feed from TJF!), we here at Small Scale World had much better ways of seeing the silly season slide by with its record temperatures;

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".

He then left a message on a vintage forum and got in touch with Paul Lidberg at Team Frog, who correctly ID'd them as being pretty poor sculpts! We all got a bit excited for a moment, thinking they might be quite uncommon, or a bit 'old school' and better images were called-for; which Mr. Berke duly provided . . .

. . . 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!