C is for Carded Collection of Canned Cavalry

Slowly adding to the PRB ouvre, this being the third visit to them since the swivel-head contribution from John Roquas and the follow-up courtesy of Theo van der Weerden's memories; tying the combat infantry figures into bubble-gum.

We now have a clear logo - a sort of antenna-sporting alien with his (or her) own electron halo and a checkered-banner or pennant on what appears to be a lance?! The figures - on identical cards - being approximately 50/54 and 35/40mm (the riders are slightly bent and hard to measure with certainty), the horse being a single sculpt, the lot taken from German Manurba sculpts.

Quick note here; One Erwin Sell; he who makes it up as he goes along, has stated they are licensed from Manurba, where he got this nugget of corporate information from is anyone's guess, but as he makes it up as he goes along . . . the Manurba set are better, but heavier sculpts and the horses (four poses) have bases.

Licensed production - if new tools are generated - usually follows the design parameters of the licensor's product (Tim Mee for instance), and indeed - as far as toys go - usually only extend to re-branding of supplied or like-for-like product (all those Answer Robot/Magician games). These are quite different - still I look forward to his publishing the copies of the licence he must have to make such pronouncements - as fact.

Indeed, I would say the overall state of these is 'poorer', something you couldn't say of the swivel-heads seen here at SSW in 2017, against the blobbier, single piece Heinerle versions. It would appear that both the Italians and the Germans are the copyists here; PRB of the Manurba knights, Heinerle of the PRB swivel-heads?

Andreas Dittmann in his guide to Manurba published by Plastic Warrior magazine states that one of the companies which received Manurba product to sell-on was PRB, but these - in today's post - are not Manurba product!

The cards are the same size, but the artwork is miss-registered in the case of the 35mm set, or the guillotine-operator had his settings wrong!

As well as only using the one (base-less) horse pose in both scales, they seem to have only adopted three or four human poses and I've only seen three in 50mm and three in 35mm, the 50-mil's getting a copy of the jousting/lancing knight with separate lance not apparently re-produced in the 35mm line.

We did see these before on SSW, ten years ago (turns out I'd shown the little pirates before, so ITLAPD was their second showing on the Internet!) in an 'unknown' post, it's nice to be able to go back and add some pink-text ID'ing them, and even nicer if no one else has ID'd them in the meantime as I get to keep the credit and Breizhtt gets to call me an egotist; win-win for everyone!

The loose ones have more colours as far as horses go, and I must thank Adrian Little of Mercator Trading for finding me the carded set, between them they - both samples - are only offering the one horse pose and the three mounted-poses.

All of mine together -  I was trying to show the horse colours, but flash/reflection and a yellowish light-effect means I'm not happy with the shot and there's a couple more below. Suffice to say it's nice to have a name to put to the three old ones at long last!

This is a better illustration of the dark-chocolate brown against the black and three clearly different shades of white, being - from the left; very light-grey, cream and snow!

This chap has been languishing in Picasa since a photo-shoot I did of all the - then - extant medieval's in larger scales, around 2012 and if I don't show him now I may never! The horse is Hong Kong and only there because he fits it! Indeed - you can just see the HK-mark down it's inside front-leg.

But the figure is not so clear; he's midway between the two sets above, and was once a darker bronze-colour (I suspect), but an additive colourant seems to have leached-out, leaving him 'antiqued' with a pinkish, powdery bloom, yet slightly translucent at his thinner points.

He's much-of-a-muchness as far as rack-toy/bazaar/pocket-money shite is concerned, and not obviously one of the Manurba sculpts (although he could be a 'cut-&-shut'?), I suspect he is Hong Kong, but he could be late'ish production French, Spanish or Italian . . . anyone recognise him?