About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Sunday, March 12, 2023

F is for Follow-up to the Follow-up and Interim Non Follow-up! Kain Etc . . .

It's funny, when I posted the Greek carded rack toy set recently (no link, I've re-tagged them all and will put is at the end) I managed to find the original trio, but not the identifier, likewise when I posted the single red one with the Kain mark, I also linked it to the unmarked trio, but forgot it when I posted the carded set.
 
So, this additional group really is as described in the title! So, if you scroll to the bottom of this article and click on the link, you'll get what was a single Kain tag and is now four articles including this one, the other three below this.

This new sample actually came from Cyprus, but the free part which only underlines the Greek connection to these, and among some duplicates are both new poses and new colours against that which has gone before. Here we see the shooters, with a Marx pose, several Crescent poses and what I think might be a French chap, standing firing.
 
Abe' Lincoln and his long-lost identical twin, horsewippin' a bank-robber, all courtesy of Crescent, the green one has the Kain mark, semi-removed; see note below. Numbering has also changed relative to my earlier guesswork, but I've adjusted the original list, another reason to read all four in sequence!
 
Two foot Indians, where the numbering guesswork fell-down as they have high numbers, both are marked, one clearly, the other with the sign of attempted removal. Of course, they are the second and third found, as I had found one previously! One ex-Crescent, the other also French-looking in origin?
 
And the numbers reveal that actually the foot cowboys occupy the low spot where I'd pencilled-in the foot Indians (with a question mark, I always try to cover my arse), while some of the new numbers go way-up, hinting at 30+ figures, but mostly cowboys, so far?
 
And so to the Kain/non-Kain thing. Obviously the 'finger mark' I mentioned on the previous find was actually a strike-through, seen here on the blue one, while the tan/fawn one has a full mark; unfortunately hard to make out, as it was a short shot already, before the last owner clipped two ears off the base!
 
So unpainted Kain premiums, and [then?] a generic rack-toy issue/s, sometimes painted. The Kain mark not always removed properly, but what Kain was or is, I don't know; there is apparently a chain of Kain cafés (in the Athens area?); might they have issued premiums in the past, maybe as kids treats/shut-me-ups?
 
While the numbering may break-down with further finds, as it may be that a few foot Indians and maybe one or two mounted figures were on each tool, with up to four or five tools? Plus the wagon set. In which case, I'll re-do the list with 'known' individuals in numerical order!

3 comments:

Jan Ferris said...

I like those pastel colors. I have often wondered why manufacturers chose the colors they did for there products.

Hugh Walter said...

Yeah! It sets them apart a bit Jan.

H

Jan Ferris said...

As a child I wouldn't have considered anything but a "army" green toy soldier the real thing.