Gem, Gem Models-for-Culpitt and Culpitt's 'Netball' (basketball) players; GeModels on the left and the Hong Kong copies on the right, both
pairs came with the illustrated poles, which are a Hong Kong piece, not the Ge-Model original, suggesting that Culpitt had commissioned the replacements
and was sending them out to Baker's and Cook-shops, while they still had some Ge Model's stock left. Is that all the Gem spellings?!
Although usually sold from those
compartmentalised Perspex or styrene towers, wall-hanging dispensers or small
drawer cabinets, you do find various cake-decorations pre-packed in little bags
- this is a crinkly, cellulose 'stamp-collectors' type with Gem originals in.
The Gem's
are manufactured in a soft polyethylene plastic while the Asian clones are made
in a hard polystyrene polymer, and note; it has a silver Gem pole, in both cases the HK-copy figures are smaller and less
well-formed, but then these are not Mr. Musgrave's best work either!
You may by now have realised I've brought
all the cake decorations together! I'm actually still sorting them all, but I
was pleased to shoot this as I've been grabbing the pugilists whenever I've see
them, for years now, each time thinking, "Have I got that colour?" or "Have I got one with white shorts?" (Durh!) or whatever, and
never quite getting/ending-up with a pink-monkey!
I finally got a Caucasian the other day at
Sandown, so this is - if not definitive - the best I can currently muster!
Strangely he's the only one with painted gloves, but back then (1950/60's) most
gloves were still heavy brown leather and as this was obviously a 'two colour'
paint-job, making the gloves another colour would have entailed a third colour
. . . As the late G. Bush once memorably stated - it's the economy . . . !
There are differences in the sculpting
which might point to a two-cavity mould-tool?
Other side; plain base; box . . . -ers
ticked!
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