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.

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

H is for How They Come In - Brian, Two of Two

Which is really post number three of the lovely things Mr. Berke sent to the Blog for me to share. And we will start with the other mystery suprise, and again we need an ID on these new to hobby-collection-Blog figures!

Who are these lovely ladies? Approximately 54mm, and two being more realistic (on the left), two a little cartoony (right-hand pair), really loud colour, but from whence and whom have they come?
 
If they were found here, I would assume a kids comic/magazine, they all have something on them these days (forthcoming posts, but I don't watch them like I used to when Dr. Who Adventures was giving away figures regularly!), but they've come from America, and I don't know if they have the same type of kids magazine freebies . . . Interesting figures though, and totally new to me?
 
Basically we've got: Dancer Babe, Royal Babe (fairy-tales for the use of), Superbabe and Rock-Chick Babe!
 
Equally, loud colours for these MTC carded rack-toy party favours, and probably quite recent production as they are sub-copies of common sculpts doing the rounds and probably seen here before in more 'normal' greens and khakis, but I prefer these dudes!
 

In with the micro-smallies we looked at the other day, were a whole bunch of other kit figures and these are they, I won't say much as they are all going to need a major session at some point in the future, but I think the two astronauts (top right) are Revell (1:48th kit?), while the six dark greenies are old-school from the 1950's.

The sandy-coloured panzermann and girl might be Heller or Italeri, they both included interesting figures, suitable for dioramas in their kits? While the two white pilots (bottom right) might be Cylons or Earthmen from 1980's Sci-Fi kits?

I know, I should save them for Pirate day, but I feel donations should be fully covered, I used to do highlights but when everything is this good? And these are all interesting, the lower - black - figures (poor shot I'm afraid) are the Toy Major originals, and they look bigger that the various copies we seen so far (we may have seen one or two of these?), so a decent comparison article of the three or four sets will be a definite feature here one day, but they are all in storage at the moment, so it may be a while.
 
While the yellow line-up are the Imperial ones I've been after for ages now, reduced-size copies of the larger Hing Fat figures, these are from the two-adversary sets, we have seen here as shelfies before, possibly from Brian, and I've now tracked down the Police & Skeletons, Zombies & GI's (ex-Tim Mee GI's) and these Pirates fought red Ninjas which I may still be looking for?
 
The base mark.

Now . . . MPC armaturtoise! Clearly marked, and I will have to go back and check those blue & green ones I picked up at the last London show, as I carefully avoided calling them MPC, and just said probably premiums, as I wasn't sure, and they didn't seem to be marked, but I'll check, and a new colour anyway!

Speaking of colours, there are nice, common-enough copies of Airfix Indians, but in an unusual colour way, and like a lot of the rack-toy figures in the stash, overdue for a sorting, I have ID'd several sets and makers for them, but it's a question of tying colours and base types to downloaded and catalogue images of sets!

Marked Hong Kong, and another genre needing a better sort one day, these may be the ones issued by Payton, but I think they went with other colours, copies of MPC's figures and seem to be limited to 5 poses only?

This is what Brian sent all the micro-figures in, and it's a carry case for C-in-C micro-amour, which was fitting for all those diminutive figures, but my first example of packaging, or C-in-C anything, so cleaned and saved!

And to wrap-up, some proper rack-toy army men, not some people's cup of tea I know, but they will all get sorted one day, and a lot of them will get some kind of definitive attribution, so the more, the merrier!
 
Again, I can't thank Brian enough for all this, there are some real treasures here, as well as in the two previous lots, and I'm very grateful. I hope you've enjoyed them too, and if anyone ID's those heliotrope-pink figures in the first shot, they'll be doing better than the 'group experts' elsewhere!

5 comments:

John Mooney said...

The "pink ladies" remind me a bit of two sets of Mattel "Cuties" I bought at a motorway service station somewhere between Carlisle and London circa 1988.
I think there were five different sets of 10 in yellow boxes.
I only bought two "Lovey Doveys" and "Tiny Trendies". The other sets were too "cartonish". Each figure had a name based on a pun...so that a gymnast was Leah Tard and a ballet dancer was Tutu Much.
As an aside I stopped collecting between 2013 and earlier this year and my observation is that there are not as may Rack toys as there were.

Hugh Walter said...

Yes John, I think we have had a few on here, the 'rock chicks'?

A good place to track-down traditional rack toys is seaside kiosk type places, and the side streets of bigger cities still have independent/non-chain general stores/corner shops which often have a few? Party shops are either very good, or very bad, the one in Clapham has a whole section of them, the one in Farnborough has none at all, it depends on the mentality of the orderer/owner I think?

H

Spectrum Steve said...

Morning, Hugh.

The two white Sci-Fi Astronauts in the bottom right corner that you mentioned, are Airfix (Likely MPC in the US) and are the crew figures from the kit made by Airfix for the Gerry Anderson series 'Starcruiser' (I might possibly have some in my spares boxes come to think of it)

Spectrum Steve said...

Whoops!
I meant to ad the unmade series by Gerry Anderson asit never went into production.

Hugh Walter said...

I suspected as much Steve, from posts elsewhere the next day, or so, I am being watched ever-so-closely by those who are almost out of ideas! But thanks, if it wasn't that it would have been the Cylon Raider, also in that early 1980's tranche of MPC-AMT-Ertl-Airfix kits!

H