C is for Colección de Indios y Cow Boys Humorísticos

This is a weird one? Firstly, it was intended to be the fourth post in the sequence when we looked at the Lik Be / Gordy sets of Wild West kids and knock-off cake decorations, back in June (although I don't think these have any connection with LB, beyond the humerous and Wild West subject matter), and secondly, because I don't seem to have shown my trio on the blog, when they only came in recently, and were intended for this post, whenever I got round to posting it?

 

I've checked the recent show report posts, I've checked the donation stuff from Chris and Peter, and can't find them, so I suspect they may have been a private purchase, which got sorted into the collection, in the normal rhythm of things, and while I would have intended to shoot them, I must have sorted them into the 4x5½ bags I use, and sent them off to storage without shooting them?

 

Anyway, I found them last night, looking for something else, over at the storage site, and brought them back here, thinking maybe I'd posted it all, but 'just in case', and sure enough, no sign of them on the Blog, and the specific post, still in Picasa! So shots taken and we'll look at them and the Jecsan catalogue first, then a bunch of Internet scrapings found over the years.

 

Jecsan catalogue scan, the full set of figures goes to six foot and three mounted each for the two lots of protagonists, with one horse pose each; bareback for the Indians, and saddled for the Westerners. The card for the separate Tipi seems to be designed to make a lithographed 'paper flat' totem pole?

 

The toymen of Hong Kong took two of the foot Indians and one of the mounted cowboys for some revenue generation, probably at the request of a Western buyer, that's how it worked there, but gave the mounted cowboy the Indian horse - presumably because that's what the sample they were given, to pirate, contained?

 

A decent rear-shot

The hat of my cowboy is lacking the mark seen further down the page, he being marked on his back, instead, suggesting at least two lots/tranches of these, with either changes to the tool, or separate tools, a quandary not made easier by them all sticking to the same paint-scheme . . . multiple cavities maybe?

 

Paint, and markings have some similarities with Blue Box production of the era, think either set of Knights or the Jean-cloned Wild West, so these (or 'some' of these) may have come from one of the Tai Sang factories, but we'll probably never know?

 

Looking at these 'Comic Coyboy' cale decorations, from Carrousel, but not owning them, I can only suspect that A) they may be hard polystyrene, against the soft Polyethylene of all the others seen here, and B) might be smaller sub-piracies - a second/third lot/set.

 

The painting is simpler, and indeed, it appears one mounted cowboy/horse combo' is undecorated, but big may/mights here? They also look similar in general execution, to the HK copies of Ajax base-ballers, American footballers and other cake decorations in the same vein?

 

 

There seems to have been one of the many copies of the Britains Herald totem pole also associated with them, but paint differences and plastic colour might point to them just being 'chucked in' to online auction images?

 

A pair of Indians, presumably a similar card has the cowboy and horse in a different blister? The "Cowboy [singular] and Indians [plural] in that heliotrope/carmine-red 'ink stamp' effect font, is found on other Wild West rack toys, and may be another clue to producer, or more likely wholesale agent? But again we're unlikely to ever know!

 

Another pair.

 

The different mark of the possible second lot, I mentioned above. A separate tool or later change to the existing tool? Sadly the pictures in this auction lot (final five images), didn't include a decent rear-shot - as they hardly ever do!

 

The only paint variation with the commoner set, is this cowboy with a red shirt, suggesting a larger set, although a horse is absent, but it makes for a more balanced 2:2 fight in the icing around a chocolate-finger 'log' fort!

 

They aren't really compatible with the Lik Be sets, being more obviously caricature adults, than the cubby-cheeked kids of the LB set, but are cartoony enough to compliment a display of them, should someone want a display of infant-oriented cake decorations! And there's the Lucky Luke figures from Comansi and similar figures from Exin (which may have been sourced from Comansi too), to consider in this genre.

F is for Farm Friends - Odds & Sods

I haven't photographed my LB (or other) farm 'funimals' yet, and with the bulk of them in storage that'll be a project for another day, but I have found a few bits around and about, which we're looking at here, with one or two shots I have taken while sorting or whatever.

 

Pretty sure these are all Lik Be, as I said in a previous post, there are more than one sourse of these cartoon animals, and different sets (like the band, and the circus sets - smaller animals riding/climbing on larger animals while wearing hats!) within makers, and many similar smaller sources, so it's not an exact science.

 Even within the oeuvre of LB's offerings, where the A/B- coded numbering helps, it's complicated by unmarked examples and the fact that the winter-sports funimals, band, cake decorations, dinosaurs, cavemen, wild west and 'Gygax monsters' (six posts - coming soon . . . I hope!), are also within the list, quite randomly, although usually in blocks, with the unnumbered fishermen, spacemen, astronauts and robot/aliens and others, probably accounting for some of the gaps (also blocks) in the list!

 

Colour variations of the rabbits we saw in the other post.

 

One shot I did take, to show colour variations of the pig!

From Mike B's catalogue image, the trio of chicks is sometimes broken-up and sold individually, or as individuals, I should say, the other three are from a sub-set of more anthropomorphic animals with items of clothing or human accoutrements. The farm boy on the music box will be a hard polystyrene version, and came a little later than most of this stuff; in the mid-1980's

A better sample of the farm range, with both cows, both donkeys (one with loud, pink-paint detailing), separated chicks (two of each), the goat and an adult duck, who's huge! If I recall correctly, the seller had multiple sets, but had opened one for the sales shots, but it was before I was an active buyer on evilBay!

The set we looked at in the previous post, but I think this was the seller's image, although I take similar images, I rarely use the same colour of both surfaces, and try to hide gaps! But it worked, as I bought two of them, a few months apart!

This is from the 'box'-something guys in Germany, still available, but, after a few successful purchases from them, it all went a bit pear-shaped - after Brwreakshit-proper (Boris the clown's 'deal'), they cancelled an eBay sale, didn't reimburse me, and bombarded me with eMails, in German, trying to get me to make an off-eBay sale (against feeBay's rules) elsewhere, so I've never bought from them again, and they got my fifty-odd quid, but have lost more over the subsequent few years? Branded to both Wello and LB.

The 'farm kids', there are a rarer farmer and wife, who are more realistic, still cartoony, but slimmer or more proportionate, and so go better with the tractor driver, found in a larger set or sets - no pictures yet!

A tragedy! Some people shouldn't be on feebleBay! This was the sum-total of the sellers images? They look to be two further examples of the same sized card as the Wello-contracted set above, but this time all-Lik Be. And that says "Paint High Impact, not Taint - Ooh-missus!
 

 

I'm not going to look at the other vintage makers here, but this is the modern take from someone called NPRC (something-People's Republic [of] China?) on Amazon, clearly a made-up-name! Twelve animals with more than a hint of homage to the oldster funnimals, Lucky Luke and a bit of Hanna-Barbera!

F is for Farm Friends - Smaller Set

So this is the other set I have, it's a smaller set, and has the boy again, although the girl does exist, I think we've probably seen her here, in a donation or show-plunder post in the past, but of interest is the reverse sculpt cow, flat tree and Dutch barn.

 

The flat tree is in the style of, but not a copy of the Lego trees of the era, while the Dutch barn, with a stain/wash and dry-brush, would make an excellent war gaming scenic piece, albeit with a rather 1950's silo, but still, you could hide an anti-tank gun in the doorway, behind some straw, or a strategically-placed wood-pile!

 

The window-box and liner, I bought two by accident, so unboxed one set, after I realised I had two! As with the 'funimal' band and critters in the Animal Fun Fair set (previous but one post), these are glued in with Hong Kong's take on what was called Evo-Stik in the UK and over time it dries right-out and becomes brittle.

 

If, or when I'm replacing/restoring sets with remnants of this glue I use small spots of a modern clear contact adhesive like Bostik (yeah, they all drop the 'c'!) or UHU, which dries near invisible with the chocolate brown underneath.

 

One of the better B's, clearly a heavier whiteness on the right, and while it's a shit logo, I went into all that while we were still trying to promote the 'LP' red-herring, and wean people off 'ID' or 'IDL' which are both still being used on feebleBay! Now we know it's Lik Be, we know it's an LB!

F is for Farm Friends - Larger Set

The Farm Friends trope was a sort of under-branding carried by quite a few sets, some generics, or supplied and otherwise branded to other firms, but this set is fully marked to Lik Be (LB) and is the first of two we're looking at for now (I might dig out all my evilBay/Worthpoint shots later!), and having been in Picasa since '21, is well overdue.

The full set, the Farmhouse is actually a money-box/bank, with the smaller pieces stuffed inside, along with a blow-moulded grain-silo which also has bits in. The artwork suggests the traffic-light sticker, placed here, on the roof, should be engine 'detailing' on the tractor!
 

The artwork listing is also not quite complient with the contents, a 'pony' is actually, clearly a donkey, no matter how cartoonish, a pink and white farm is also hinted at, and the farm-girl has been replaced with a farm boy! There's two dogs and an extra chicken, too.

 

The other dog - if we assume the referred-to one is the sheepdog - is this small black puppy, and the boy is pretty dwarfed by both of them! The boy and girl are in the style of, and may be by the same sculptor as the Native American Indian kids, seen before here at Small Scale World.

 

The smaller animals, the problem with researching these is that as well as at least three sets of knock-offs (nominally, at the moment; Betta Toys, Colonial and Holly), some of these are not marked or numbered in sequence with the A-codes, while the odd piece has a B-code, so I'm rather keeping my powder dry on that score, to which end we've seen the rooster on his log/stump a couple of times without me letting-on his LB connection!

 

The larger animals, all 'funimals', with the pig being one of the commoner finds, and the cow being among several versions, clones, and a reversed-sculpt, in several sizes. A cat as big as a sheepdog, why not?

 

The money-box farm-house, a sort of Dutch-American design, with a simple key to open/close the flap, also equipped with a carry handle, it's not bad for a bit of Hong Kong tat, and would have made a poorer kid happy, even under the tree at Christmas!

 

The tractor has a driver who is channelling the Fisher-Price 'Little People', who were themselves mirroring the earlier wooden infant toys, like our racing-car driver (seen here passim), the whole design, scale-reduced, is taken from Fisher-Price, a rare instance of plagiarism from LB, who usually designed their own stuff?

 

The grain silo; made of two blow-moulds which just sleeve together, the silo-body being decorated with relief sculpts of corn-cobs, a deer and something in a nest which may be a catdog or a dogcat, it's not clear, and it might be a pig!

 

The farm-fencing in hidden in the silo, and with only four pieces, not much cop! Having been sticking these in the 'unknown' fence section for years before I knew they were Lik Be, I have quite a few of them somewhere, and one day we may have a photo-session of a proper set-up with all the LB farm - there's another set of chickens and a pair of kittens on the yellow plastic, and more animals, including some realistic sculpts.

 

The much-missed and not-yet replaced Boysie-boy helped me investigate tractors!

And Godzilla monsters!

K is for SS Kresge, Kids, Kmart and Super K!

Nearly history now, but the Australian operations continue as an independent enterprise, several stores outside CONUS are still going and a limited presence on an old Floridian site is still doing business. But back in the day, they were big!

 

Claimed by a Chemtoy Corp of Circero, Illinois, the set also states the contents are made in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, and to anyone who's been following this stuff, clearly contains the products of the Lik Be Plastic & Metal Factory of the territory, but not carrying the LB logo on this occasion. It's then further branded to SSK, the short form logo of the earlier iteration of Kmart, - SS Kresge.

 

I said, in a post on other things (astronaut-spacemen I think) a while ago, that I had two farm sets to post, but don't seem to have got round to doing so yet, however, as one needs much editing before it goes first, of the pair, I thought I'd shift this out of Picasa as a warm-up!

 

How it arrived from the 'States!

 

 

After I had matched up glue marks and restored a bit of order!

 

A mix of three from the anthropomorphic animal band (bases marked with the LB hugging monster, as per the divers/fishermen/astronauts) and seven of what I call the cartoon 'Funimals', we also get five sections of the distinctive LB farm fencing, in two blisters, heat-welded and dated to 1971.

 

There is no relationship between the Key 1 code here and the British supermarket chain Keymarket, which, although having a similar logo, was not related to Kresge at all. The first supermarket locally was a Keymarket,, back in the late 1960's, it's now the - totally rebuilt - Sainsbury's site in Farnham, we would go there, very occasionally, to do a 'big shop', and it was a big deal!