T is for Two - Paint Your Own Catalogue Images

These are both 'seen elsewhere's, and it was pure coincidence that I happened to find, or isolate two different 'Pain Your Own' ad's from two different catalogues, which were both branded to classic British plastics manufacturers.

This was from the 1975 Crescent catalogue, and shows the cake-decoration vignette and an incomplete circus set as paint-your-own's or Paint & Play, but I suspect they never made it to the shops? Or if they did it can't have been in large numbers, as pure white or home-painted white versions of either are not something I have found.

There is a large number of the horses from the circus set in white who turn-up, but they are missing their holes (for the acrobat lady) and seem to have been supplied by Crescent for another job? I remember having a debate with the late Dave Scrivener on the subject and neither of us were convinced as to the possible reasons for them!

While the - usually - cake decoration Santa' is always factory-painted (or tatty!) when found, and most unpainted circus figures are in the multi-colours of the Kellogg's iteration, although a few white ones were issued in that promotion, but only in proportion to the red, orange, yellow and two blues?

Note also, the lower 'useful piece' count of the Santa set, compared to the nine-piece (? the weight-lifter and hula-hoop clown seem to have been omitted?) circus set, is bulked out with a couple of standard green 'monkey puzzle' trees.

These - new for 1993 - are from [a] Charbens (the original was bought out and renamed Charpack a decade earleir!) and WERE issued, as I've seen them on feebleBay, or at least I've seen the European Heritage ladies, I think the 'Soccer' footballers were in Plastic Warrior magazine; probably at or around the time of the ad'? As you can see from the hand, these were 3½ or 4" figures and I think they are polystyrene, against the polyethylene of the Crescent sets.

I would add that these Paint & Display sets aren't from a Charbens catalogue, but rather a retail catalogue or flyer (I've lost the reference now, it's around here somewhere, Rainbow or Lion?), so it could well be a Charpack thing (the trays the figures are presented in?), or even a Prindus (Prison Industries) effort, but they wouldn't have had the rights to the Charbens brand mark, however they could have licensed it?