It's nice to put a question to bed, even
when it was more of a mystery than a full question-mark, but in this case it probably
should have been flagged-up as more of a full question-mark to begin with!
We looked at the - technically - Air Force,
cold-war figures from Deluxe Reading/Topper
Toys just over two years ago here, at which time I mused that
the orange ones might be Politoys
output in Italy (who apparently handled the sculpts), but it turns out . . .
. . . they were Thomas Toys! I'm not getting it out of the bag until I find a
second one, but I can assure you it's the same figures, with a Jeep which is
also not the well-known Thomas-Taffy-Poplar
design, but neither do I believe it's Deluxe
Reading? If nothing else it's a better sculpt than the hiddeosity which accompanies
the Deluxe Reading GI's!
There are no visible marks on the Jeep (which
is way over-scale at about 1:24th) to help ID the supplier, or to suggest it
might have been a late design of Thomas
themselves - which nevertheless remains a possibility?
The suspicion is that Deluxe Reading here in the UK ran the tool in orange polymer as the
contract manufacturer for the figures, while - possibly - a third party
provided the Jeep, the whole being a typical beach toy; sandcastles; for the
use of, as marketed by Thomas?
The card looks old, but the figures - as Deluxe - soldiered-on into the 1970's long
after Alden Industries took over Thomas's US operation (if they [the
figures] were even available when Thomas
were around?), meaning either that Thomas
UK carried on for a while (I don't have the relevant Plastic Warrior guide in front of me!) or Poplar (who did a lot of this sea-side
stuff) continued to use the brand-mark?
Note that the TNT mark reads;
NTT
While I've had the Deluxe Reading's out, it struck me that the Blue Box 'Secret Missiles
Base' figures are also copies of or based on the Deluxe' figures, but being (above) more like the navy guys from the smaller scale range,
although this set on Moonbase Central had closer copies of the Air Force
ones, also with the flesh painted-in.
The Singapore mark would tie them into one
of at least two Blue Box factories in
the island nation, but a lot of the Redbox
farm and zoo sets tend to carry a Singapore mark, so using the Tai Sang parent for attribution might be
safer . . . now we know they all shared the same chairman for over fifty years
despite the best efforts of the PSTSM to say otherwise by inventing a
whole port/facility!
Hello Hugh. Interesting lovely set. I remember being bought from a seaside kiosk a large scale jeep with two of these orange figures circa 1980 on a family holiday in Hemsby while staying in a chalet in the dunes (Chalet = wooden prefab, I think the last of these has been lost to the sea this winter) My jeep was different as it was opened bottomed, know it came in a header bag but can't remember what the card looked like. I think your example would predate the one I had. Jeep is long gone as was one of the figures that disappeared after I had some friends over to play a little while after. But I still have the figure talking on the field phone pointing, one of only three figures I still have from my childhood. The other two being very battered stained paint style Deetail British Infantry.
ReplyDeleteChris - cheers for that . . . and to be honest; the card looks older for having been damp and the staples rusting, late 1970's it what I was looking at, and I suspect Poplar took the IP of Thomas and is probably behind mine and yours?
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of the figures, I can - as you can see - probably spare several? I'll get them off to you! I'm drowning in jiffy-bags at the moment I have them all in a large orange-crate!
H