K is for Knights and Castle . . . . 's

We've visited these small-scale knights from or after Supreme before several times now, with both Brian and my carded fort sets and probably briefly in a larger round up, and I'm pretty sure I kept mentioning that I had a set is storage which I'd bought in Guildford back in the late 1990's/early 2000's, and it has now turned-up, which was lucky as I had a couple of images from Mr. Berke in need of a post!

Blackrock Castle

Blackrock Again

SP is for Supreme . . . Post!

More (N is for Noooooooooooooooooooooo!)

What I had forgotten was that it actually contained two model forts! Perfect scale-downs of Supreme's larger fort (a moot point because it comes in at least four sizes and can be found marked as Simba or Tempo, with Toy Major [Supreme] knights in the larger scales - the figures issued here (UK) in counter displays as Strawberry Group/Tiger), in two colourways and with a bunch on equally scaled-down figures.

The artwork shows 16 foot figures which is a swizz as you only get half that amount, but they are clearly visible to the buyer so no doubt it conforms to advertising standards! You also get four mounted figures on the 'Supreme' horses rather than the 'Jean' horses, some of which came with the larger-scale King Arthur sets.

However you will note that the figures included have what I always refer to as 'penny bases', that is; perfectly-circular flat-disc bases; rather than the ovoid bases shown in the artwork and commonly attributed to Supreme?

These - in fact! Thank you Brian! Also available in black, and bright-shiny gold and note that these are probably slightly larger (23/25mm) compared to the boxed-set's 18/20mm and are the figures used for the artwork/publicity shots. Indeed both Blackrock Castle's have these version in the artwork, and the smaller, penny-based figures in the packs.

This illustrates the point I was making the other week in a the Tobar/Schylling Toy Fair reports; all these companies (Shylling, Hawkin-Tobar, HGL, Simba, SP Toys, Strawberry Group, Tempo, Tiger, Toy Major and others - the boxed set are shipped by Stevens International - plus generic issues) were getting their 'product' from the Supreme Industrial Co., who also contributed generic issues.

There is a complication in that 2nd and 3rd generation copies exist of the later Supreme types (with added ex-Esci poses), but generally if they are PVC or a flexible PVC-substitute they are probably Supreme, if they are polyethylene (especially that crumbly, tinny, recycled type) they probably aren't Supreme! The forts are a modern styrene-hybrid or polypropylene.

Note also that the smallest (in the boxed set) seem to be limited to four foot poses, while the others run to six.

I'm not going to dig-out the ones we've seen previously, but these have come-in since I last sorted and put-away, with Peter Evans and Brain B to thank for . . . err . . . most of them, I think!

At the back are four 54mm, marked Toy Major, actually Strawberry Group/Tiger retailed, really Supreme manufactured, then a single Supreme 2nd Type chunky one in black, two of Brain's little ones along with an identically marked Ninja bowman and then a pair of the Greco-Roman odd-poses from the 3rd [relatively current] Type (Esci poses +), which are probably copies, and have clearly been sorted-out of a medieval set as anachronistic, coming together, very clean and without any knights!