B is for Britains Mini Sets - 2 - № 1091 Frogman & Octopus

As kids we had two of these, some Friday afternoon or Saturday shopping-trip bribe if I remember correctly, rather than a Crimbo-stocking thing, but they might have been a consolation 'going-home' present from someone's birthday party - the past is another country, and that's how it was round here . . . I got a 6" Marx Indian and a handful of Minimodels 25mm Cowboys & Indians at other-people's parties!

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.