Only the two poses, and I can only try to
get across the feel of them as being like gritty rubber, the sort of stuff Auburn or Sun were using to make their early toys, but not so hard, possibly
only because they are younger/newer?
It's almost as if they have been made from
1980's exterior door & window sealant or shoe mending compound!
Although only the two poses, they keep
turning-up! And while the figures are - in the main - well formed (one of the
archers is a bit short-shot at the tips of things), the bases seem to tell a
different story! I suspect a hand-operated injection machine? The gate marks
are at the head-end, so lack of 'puff' or dropping-off puff seems to have been
the problem here!
These are interesting, sold to me as German
sweet-premiums (wundertüten), they are only etched on one side, the reverses
being blank. I wondered if they might be cake decorations when I first saw them
as they seemed to have icing-spikes, but in fact they are just the poorly-gated
runner-ends.
Looking at the way the 'base' line runs out
to the cactus on the prone figure, suggests the sort of thing glued into
snow-shakers, but they are a bit big for that at 60-odd millimeters, so I
wonder if maybe they are factory blanks from some similar touristy thing,
perhaps deep-framed pictures or 'box dioramas' - a slap of paint, some lichen/flock,
a bit of sand-paper as a base and a formulaic gouache-painted backdrop?
If they are wundertüten, they must be quite
early, as they are nowhere near the quality of the later Jean/Manurba/Heinerle stuff, nor even up to the detail of the
margarine-premiums of that age?
While I have lots of margarine giveaway
types in the 'known' boxes, there are the two gold ones here who are orphans,
the one on the right being a poor copy of the Siku original, the one on the left a more original Mexican type.
The red chap holding his saddle was a
recent purchase and seen here then, the rest have some info. attached; the pair
shooting each other are from a board game; The Fastest Gun by Denys Fisher, missing are yellow and green 'good guys' and a bunch of black 'bad guys'!
Pretty-sure the white, running Indian is Nosco or Crackerjack (or Nosco for
Crackerjack!) but I need to check and
get him labelled correctly. The Tipi is a flat scenic accessory for
fully-round Polish figures from PZG (the
design continues round the back as the outside of the shelter), while the other
five are purportedly from Italy, I'd like them to be Portuguese Osul, but I fear the bases are wrong, and
they may be from a board-game?
These are all polystyrene, bar the orange
chap who's ethylene, the two game-pieces who are polypropylene and the PZG
which is a recycled polymer mix with some of the properties of each of the
other three types!
So that's me' unknown Wild West flats, if
you can anything to any of the figures in today's four posts it'll be much
appreciated, but the search goes on, in any event!
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