M is for Maysun, May Moon, Marty AND M-Toy!

A bit of a reveal tonight, one I've been sitting on since, well, about four or fives years ago, when Bill B gave us his catalogue, so credit to him first, but it meant a few puzzles were cleared up, not least that LP was LB for Lik Be, but that took another year or so to sink in, this was an easier fit as three of the brands were in the one ad! But that will be the next post, this is all about a trip to the circus!

 

 

If you recall my purchase of a circus card at 2022's Plastic Warrior show in Twickenham, there was already a move toward this post then, and had been for a while, I have cleaned it from the dusty thing we saw then, and added the feebleBay image on the right, which I suspect is a 1980's (?) Target set.

Check out the giraffe though! It's the Britains baby-giraffe, commonly copied by Hong Kong makers, but rearing up!

Two more from evilBay; another branded to M-Toy as mine is, the other - 'Crest' from Pioneer Products Inc - more of a curates egg, with the Maysun ringmaster, and some non-circus, wild or 'Zoo' animals, which may be from the M's, or may be bought-in from someone else?

 

While here, back in 1966, we have Wilton carrying two sets, a bog-standard range of the Crescent-for-Kellogg's piracies (black & white image), and a lion-tamer vignette with some more non-circus animals. I suspect these might be from the M's, particularly as they are of similar design/material to the other output, the larger animals in the Pioneer set are chalky and carry very different decoration.

 

I have yet to see the original clown with hoop in any of the M-Toy, Maysun or generic sets, so he seems to have missed the pirate boat at some point?

My newest lot came with this tent, there is nothing empirical to tie it to the figures and it may be from another set-line-range-maker altogether, but it has the feel of Hong Kong in the crudeness of the parts and the fit of the cloth-cover reminds one of all the Strawberry Shortcake stuff, or trolls, all a bit 1970's!

 I don't know when they started adding their own (?) designs, but it's obvious now these are all from the same stable, as various ones turn-up in other sets, with the Kellogg's copies. Being strict, there is still a question mark over a few, but plastic colours, marks (there are several different marks) and paint, tie-them together.

The ostrich rider is a conversion of the standard Kellogg's clown, just doing the splits to ride the ex-Timpo (?) bird! While the seal is very different to the more common, larger, grey one. There is no real sign of the wheel/tyre having ever been on my poodle (ex-Corgi sculpt?), but it could have been there, there's certainly one in the other M-Toys set above?

Figures; we saw the lion tamer and another male in this post - Three Ring Circus - along with a loose version of the carded lady (ex-Marx?), and becasue both performaing animals and new people keep turning-up, we may not have found them all yet, I certainly still need that rearing giraffe!

 

One of the harder to find items is this chap, he's not rare, I've several broken ones including two here from recent purchases/donations, but I managed to get a good one on feeBay a few months ago, and that was a comedy of errors.

 

I'd asked the seller to pack him carefully, which he did, but the useless, overpriced 'International Shipping Program' managed to lose him, 'deliver him' (to their own hub, not me or the sender), deliver him again, to the sender (but he still hadn't received him back either) then they flagged it up as 'at the hub, but missing electronic tracking data'? After two or three weeks of looking at that, unchanging message, daily, I requested a refund and apologised to the sender for costing him, he cheerfully replied that because the 'programme' had lost it, he'd had a full refund too! Four weeks later it was dropped-off without a signature being requested! Our civilisation is literally grinding to a halt!

So, anyway I have one now, and took a knife to one of the others, so he'd just look irate - "It's my turn!"

The Crescent-for-Kellogg's bits, the Elephant has always been sub-scale, and must be assumed to be a performing baby - very cruel, and it's a measure of our slow progression to humanity, as we have always preached but rarely practised, that we have all but finished with real, live animals in circuses and fairs now, not so in other parts of the world though, where bears in particular, and other animals are still chastised for laughs.

 

In the boxed set at the other end of the link, we saw the horse-acrobat with her little seperate base (as she is in one of the sets above), but here she's doing the ridey-thing! And I wouldn't want you thinking all this stuff is from the M's, I have, in the 'master collection', identified several generations of the seal, elephant and lion, while the elephant-riding monkey (also in the linked set) looks like it was bought-in from Blue Box.

As Blue Box, Holly and New Maries all had a level of cross-pollination on farm, zoo and Noah's Ark sets, with similar connections between some of them over Chinasaur-dinosaurs and 'Gygax' monsters, I wouldn't be surprised if one of them also knocked-out a few of these, especially the commoner ex-Crescent scuplts?

A few of the Crescent/Kellogg's figures I had here, not the best sample, but you can see the chap on the far right, bottom, is the one who seems to have escaped copying and therefore remains uniquely British! Probably as simple as that the pirates didn't trust themselves to pantograph and reproduce the fine moulding of a decent hoop?

 

The quite similar horse-rider from Charbens, I don't know which came first, but this was probably the original as it may have come from the earlier hollow-cast?

 

While Blue Box themselves had a stab at the 'Big Top' with these sets of Circus Chimps, although firstly there are more other apes/monkeys than actual chimpanzees, and only two are new for the sets - the piano-playing gorilla and the elephant-rider - the rest are from the standard zoo ranges, suitably enhanced with Wild West cacti and furniture from their dolls house line!

Image added a few weeks later, for the hell of it!