P is for Plastic Planet Playset

I can remember when I bough these, but not the exact date (it should be in the folders somewhere?), they were in a corner-shop/convenience store on the Bellfields estate at the bottom of Guildford between about '97/98 and 2001/3'ish! I was just really pleased to find small scale 'traditional' rack-toys in a shop, with figures AND space stuff!

Carded blister, clearly aimed as a knock-off for the Galoob Star Wars Action Fleet, Matchbox Mega-Rig or Playmates Star Trek stuff of that time. They are also channelling a bit of Games Workshop I think? Little/mini action-figures, with two points of articulation; hips and shoulders; they are around the 25mm mark.

I think they were a quid each and the shop had two 'assortments' so I bought one of each, opened one (below) and kept the other in the blister, the little flitter/flyer thing looks a bit like that Waltii Industries machine the Blog reported-on way back, clearly a  poplar configuration/design in the rim-worlds!

Play value is achieved by lots of little ball-&-socket jointed 'greebles' which have to be carefully packed-away to make the lid close, but otherwise can be moved about and swapped between locations - the influence of other toy lines can be seen, there's a bit of Tom Zoids in the twin-tailed thing - for instance.

If you leave it shut, glue it all rigid and paint it up, it would make an excellent space-station in 1:300 or 1:600, or an even bigger excellent space-station in 1:1200 if you happen to game in those scales.

I wish I'd bough a second set of the 'walker' version when I saw them, as I'd like to paint this up, but won't as it's the only one I have! Although before painting it I'd remove the cannons on the hip-joints, there just isn't room for walking-gear, self levelling gear AND the aiming, firing and ammo-gear in those leg-tops! And NOT an AT-ST at all, no, no, no!

No maker or obvious branding on the packaging or items.