We had one of the Wild West sets and the
diver set with the shark which is now considered one of the rarer ones to find,
I haven't found it, but I do have this one which isn't rated so highly, but is
just as much fun!
Although both my posing (below) and the
catalogue art (bottom) show the second diver being caught by the octopus, he
can also be posed struggling in the sea-grass (which you may recognise as being
pirated in Hong Kong as a joined-pair) using a hole in his back which plugs on
to one of the spigots provided (arrowed) for both divers.
The sea-grass, in order to hold the diver/s
up, is made of a rigid polymer which is probably nylon or a propylene, it could
be a very dense ethylene or even a hybrid styrene, but I think these sets were
too early for the latter to have been commercially available. The base IS a
bog-standard polystyrene while the figures, Scuba-tanks and sea-creature are
PVC.
The fixing of the Scuba gear to their backs
is achived by popping them over a large stud on the backs, which has lead -
over time - to the little connecting 'runners' braking away under the stress as
you can see with the spear-gun bloke.
The Retail shop display door-hanger/prop-card has this
set featured twice, both seen here in the 'all sets' bit (right) and on the
main information panel (left), courtesy of John Begg, who's card I photographed
years ago!
Note that the pre-production octopus used
for the press-shot is an insipid, semi-transparent pale-blue, rather than the
production model's flat grey.
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