100 is for Real Little Dolls!

A follow-up to past posts, most notably this one from February '09, which looked at my two incomplete samples and a few oddities, tying them to the Euro-premiums, some of which some of them were pirated from!

From the archive are a couple of newspaper clippings, one is Dept. DL, which might be a clue to the Detroit Lakes Tribune being the carrier paublication? The other is a more generic PO Box number similar to those used with the comic-giveaway Ad's these 'dolls' also appeared in, but both came to me already trimmed

I played with the pictures and ended up with two usable images! I can't remember why I numbered them, there may be a missing list somewhere! But basically 1-10 are taken from the previously flagged European margarine-premium 'dancers' set, 11-20 seem to be taken from other sources too, 21-29 are more unique to the 'comic' set and 30 is the Santa I'm still missing!

Mentioned in the past, they came with a PVC/vinyl sticker set from which you were to fashion hats, skirts, shirts, collars, capes and bows - for the deer! Like a lot of old vinyl, they are sticky and shrinking now.

Now; I do have this set somewhere, but I'm not sure if these are my scans or someone else's off of that Wibbly Wobbly Way? If they are yours and you want me to remove them, let me know, it's not a problem, I'm just losing track of all the imagery on the dongles!

The missing Santa in the upper shot, and the Berserker doing some scaleing in the lower shot, all the figure images are courtesy of Brian Berke who sent them some time ago, well, about two years ago, it's a long queue now!

The same artwork being used in a rare branded Ad' for Palmer Jones, you can see why some people conflate these with the Giant-branded stuff - there's very little connection beween most comic-stuff and Giant, the exception being the 'board games' by Lucky Products and Helen of Toy, where some components are the same as those used by Giant of New York, World Toy House and others.

There is more on the sets in a brief entry on the A-Z blog here, while I looked at a few of Betterware's versions in this Blog's second ever post!

100 is for Monsters . . . Not . . . quite!

With any luck I'll have this up before midnight and we're back where we started, with SCS Direct, this time it's the Horror set, now listed as Horror Set I on the back of the Fantasy box, but still Monsters on the toob.

Having the same contents and carrier as the one which confused me back in 20218 on Shaun's site, but not the same as the ones Peter Evans sent me the same year, missing here are all the zombies bar the one eating an arm! Although between the two I don't think I'm missing any now, but there must have been a Zombie mix at some point?

So a briefer visit than this morning's as we are reprising a previous post - with the packaging as the 'new information' - and Shaun's already there! This time you're getting around seven-boxes equivalent of Airfix for the money, but the contents are a lot shakeir than this morning's with little consistency and another short-count!

I've highlighted the more obvious anomalies in red, the only real pain is the spider; only two and neither of them in light grey, one gets the feeling there should be four? The gravestone also gets an odd mix, while with the Mummy and the man-bat, it's just overload!

It was the 'Mothma' (for Godzilla to play with!) and everything on the bottom row we didn't see last time, although - obviously - apart from the spider, I now have all of them in both colours. Comments last time apply equally here but the moth is not very good, I mean they are all a bit cartoony-harmless, but the moth is too cuddly by half!

From the backs/undersides, really I'm a bit pissed-off with the spider situation and will have words on my Amazon feedback! There's more too it! So, that's Halloween; coming-in over-budget but on time!

H is for How They Come In - Brian

As the current closedown was spreading it's shadows and I decided to self-isolate (more than a week earlier than the PM considered it necessary!), I received a parcel from New York (the virus doesn't survive on absorbent surfaces - so please stop fucking-up the Metro dispenser by pulling one from underneath, you minority of ignoramuses!) and had managed to thank Brian just before I withdrew from society!

But still time to thank him publicly, for a nice sample of stuff from 'across the pond' and to mention that my thoughts are very-much with him and those close to him as New York faces the worst of the fall-out from Trump's arrogant grandstanding, ignorant dithering and crass, childlike stupidity.

More Homies (post already done), top-ups for two of the '100 thing' comic-ad' sets and firemen - large and small - for the forthcoming page, a nice sample of Hong Kong copies of Airfix 1:32nd scale paratroop piracies in 25mm, and in a purplish-blue polymer, which is new to me, along with a charming carded set from Pyro . . . of all people!

A set which is pretty self-explanatory if you know Pyro made a series of early ship kits and vessels some (most?) of which were box-scale, several of which (along with offerings from Aurora and Monogram) scaled-out at around 1:90, 1:96 or 1:100, explaining also the diminutive size, and generic sculpting of these chaps!

Indeed, the walking chap - once painted - would pass for scratch-built and I wonder how many I may have seen, on deck or dockside in the museums at Greenwich or Kensington? Captain, First Mate and four swabs . . . Brilliant! And mint as a minty-thing that's been grown in a pot of mint to be served with lamb . . . or julep!

Needless to say . . . like a rat up a drainpipe, like a moth to a lamp, like a fuckwit to a populist's rally, she was in the box in seconds, for keeps! Just how she likes it - about a quarter of the size that would be comfortable!

F is for Feeble Flats in Fancy Foot-locker . . . Not!

There's a tendency to think these were all from the same outfit, believed to be Cossman & Levine Co. (later Uncle Milton), but it's clear there are two or three sets of tools (USA and Hong Kong) and several issues/issuers.

Packed in this Footlocker! Said the advertising, with a smaller 'pasteboard' toy storage box underneath, variations of the wording exist, but the snake-oil seller's intention is clear, you think you're getting a footlocker (large kit-trunk at the end of your bed in basic training) and what turns-up is a small cardboard box!

Made of Durable Plastic. Each with its Own Base . . . said the advertising, the snake oil seller couldn't stop with the foot-locker, he further disguises the fact that that the figures are anatomically cartoonish flats with stirring-artwork and waffle about bases!

However, that was then and many a disappointed child received their 'footlocker' full of polymer shite with agast in the early 1950's, by the 1970's ) when they were still being advertised in Marvel and DC), we know from the grapevine that it was a shit rip-off ad, but come the 1990's and as adult collectors we were desperate to find some!

My sample above - branded to Lucky Products Inc., of Long Island, contains a conglomeration of several sets, which fit in the one box, but mostly don't belong in it!

We'll start with the 'senior service' (although how that happened - when the navy always comes after an army - is anyone's guess?), they get a battleship and a PT Boat, or four of each to be accurate!

They are both Hong Kong copies of the - probably (and hereafter;) Nosco - originals and the PT boats are all so poor I don't know what they looked like, but there are good shots on the Internet of the US-made originals. The battleship is more of a frigate with added turrets!

The Infantry; Again all HK copies it's impossible to tell which the 'rifleman' is and which is the 'infantryman' but they are both in the bottom-right corner with darker variants. The kneeling firer is probably the 'marksmen', while the 'sharpshooter' is the prone firer, the other two are obvious, a full set should have . . .

4 Battleships

4 Bazookamen

4 Bombers

4 Cruisers (PT Boats)

4 Infantryman

4 Jeeps

4 Marksmen

4 Riflemen

4 Sailors

4 Tanks

4 Trucks

8 Cannon

8 Jet Planes

8 Machinegunners

8 Officers

8 Wacs (Women's Army Corps, US Army, WWII)

8 Waves (Women Accepted [for] Voluntary Emergency Service, USN, WWII)

8 Sharpshooters

To which was sometimes added other items instead of the mythical footlocker, but it lead to a reduction in the contents; 'Fighting Force' of Broadway, New York sent out 50 items with a 51st cardboard gun which fired (rubber-band mechanism?) while Homer House Products issued something in their 21 Piece Task-Force, which looked a bit like the Pyro space-gun and fired plastic BB's.

As these latter sets had no footlocker, and the more ephemeral pices have long since bitten the dust, it's hard to know if you're looking at them, but I suspect they are here in the post somewhere!

Artillery; three clear variations here, with the larger Nosco having a heavier appearance/calibre and a higher firing-elevation, a Hong Kong version in the darker olive-drab and a less-detailed clone with smaller base and more tapered barrel.

Two tanks in my armoury, again a heavier Nosco and the poorer Hong Kong-manufactured pretender, looking a bit like an M22 Locust air-portable it probably wants to be a M24 Chaffee!

Transport is provided by a generic 6x6 'deuce and a half' which has clearly been made from a half-track's cab and some milk-crates, no winch, no bumper (fender) and no un-ditching roller! Looks more like an einheits / ersatz Mercedes!

The Jeep! Best bit of any set, Nosco on the left of both pairs with the fine-edged base and HK on the right; a particularly crude copy.

The officer, there seem to be various versions of this sculpt, even the Nosco (centre pair) come in thick and/or thin legged/bodied, while the HK clones have two clear versions, with a reversed chamber on the bases, and the right-hand ones having a little mould-release, pin-hole

Junior service ("With good reason . . . crab air . . . fussa-russa . . . "), a sort of generic 1950's jet, more pointy from HK; a bit Sabre-like (but not really a Sabre) from the US maker. The HK ones also have much smaller tail-plains and fin . . . they would paint-up as nice additions to a Trigan Empire air-fleet!

Ah! Yes! The B46½! The most schizophrenic bomber in history, not sure if it's a B36 Peacemaker or a B52 Stratofortress, it exhibits features of both! It also has a hollow-body to keep material costs down.

Duff, duff, duff! After the disappointments of a footlocker being not a footlocker, and the whole set being less than accurate flats, little 'Buddy' (he always seems to be Buddy in the movies) had to contend with the fact that over a quarter of the contents were shit poses! In addition to the 8 officers we have all these, eight-each of the two women and four matelotes!

The simplicity of the poses helps to identify at least three variations again, the Nosco (left pairs) being well-fed, the two Hong Kong versions much slimmer. I think the WAVES are the ones with a Sunday church-hat, the WACS have the pill-box headdress?

The sailor looks like Beetle Bailey!

Brain Berke sent these shots from New York over Christmas (triggering the post's photo-session!)*, and aren't they lovely; if you collect plastics for the material (as I think I do?), you can't not be impressed by an aqua/jade/turquoise marbling, as of these!

There is a hint of this colour in the tail of one of my Bombers, while another has the signs of black marbling embedded in the wings, so these were probably run at around the same time as my green ones.

I'm also pleased to see that the Lucky/Nosco 6x6 truck has a much better front-end, although it has the same high-sides, so a cargo-specific wagon, not a troop-carrier, and now wearing a White's scout-car cab!

*Which is how everything-else in the queue (400+ articles) gets pushed-back one place!

L is for Larceny-lifted Lone Star Lookalike Lots

If you're going to cover the copies, you'd better look at the originals first! Trouble is, most of mine are in storage at the moment, but some have come-in which we'll look at below, but you can do no better than pop over to Dave Keen's site and check out the Lone Star page there.

There were actually two versions of the Lone Star figures, and the two sets of piracies below (so far discovered!). The first version are the chalky (and now very frangible) matt-painted milk-chocolate brown ones. They then issued them in a glossier plastic (with no chalk - for paint - additive), with the addition of bases for the horse.

Now, with no evidence whatsoever, I'm going to suggest they were issued as some kind of premiums in this second guise. The reason for which is that while seemingly rarer than the brown ones, when they turn-up, they turn up as a set of six. Recently the above complete pose-set of cowboys came in, years ago I found a complete set of Indians which are in storage - although they may have featured in One Inch Warrior magazine?

Anyway, it's a coincidence worth noting and I wonder if they were issued in their 6's as either a pack of Cowboys or a pack of Indians with cereal or biscuits or something...petrol? The Indian's horse was also fitted with a base (needing it more the the cowboys), the set was also in the same red plastic.

For the longest time I thought only the mounted figures had been copied, as Christmas cracker or vending prizes, but you can see two foot figures in the upper image (and there are a few more in storage), however the handful (8/10) of foot figures I poses are mostly in the same jade green as the blood-spattered figure above, with a couple of yellow ones, while I have dozens of the mounted figures, none in the same colour.

So it seems that the figures didn't last for long (possibly as a carded/bagged rack-toy set), but the horsemen were issued for years, where I can attest they came in cheap/budget crepe-paper Tom Smith crackers.

Originals on the left, cracker toys on the right, and the 100 Figure Set's examples in the middle, they are clearly copies-of-copies, with very poor sculpting and detail. Speaking of the 100 Figures Sets which we looked at here...

..some more colours have turned-up! Which helps explain how I ended-up with 48 of 50, it must have been a bit chaotic in the factory mid-batch change, trying to get 50 of each on the card with more than two colours kicking around in various tubs or stillages!

R is for Red Blobs

Guards on Parade - 100 Piece Set...only there aren't 100, there aren't even 100 pieces! 98 pieces - once de-sprued - make 112 pieces assembling into 96 figures, assuming you happen to  have the correct number of side and bass drummers on the card to receive the separate instruments! Presumably if extant; the 49/50 piece sets had similarly complicated maths?

Purchased in Bristol in 1969 by Mr James Opie, this set is clearly an Airfix piracy, except that while the musicians are owing everything to Haldane Place, the marching figures are something else...

They have been suitably 'changed' (I think 'converted' is too strong a word for it!) from the Airfix marching figure, and although the legs are the same, the bodies have been re-sculpted to represent shouldered arms on the left and right, and port-arms likewise.

Looking at the figure on the left, you can see the port-arms sculpts both used the same scrap of metal or plastic for the change, so the butt is upside-down on that figure! The other port-arms chap (third from left) though, could paint-up well for Crimean - or later - war-gaming?

These will be looked at in greater detail on the Airfix blog pages for Robin Hood and Guards Band, so just a few shots to show how Maid Marion became Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and that the musicians don't loose that much in translation.

C is for Carded Cowboys (and Indians)

When you are sorting all the non-Giant from your pile of mixed small-scale Hong Kong shite, these are easy to separate...

Unmarked bases, mixture of Crescent and Britains Swoppet foot poses and the two mounted figures from Lone Star, these - of course - get separated-out further by unscrupulous dealers and sold on feeBay for silly BIN's as Lone Star! There are several copies of these LS mounted figures the others tending toward more or downright blobbyness.

They always appear in this colour-way, so other similar figures are from other sources, the only variation I've found is some batches have a slightly metallic green of a more herby shade ('errby' over the pond or 'air'bee' if you're a pretentious chef!), it's a very poor photograph I'm afraid, but I've just cropped it out of a much bigger show-plunder image, remembering I had them in a shot!

Hummm...ten figures by ten figures, switching from the invasive species to native fauna halfway down the card...they're not wrong; 50 Cowboys and 50 Indians...Hold on! There's a red cowboy - bottom left? I've been cheated! I'd take it back for a refund but they went bust in '79 when the Key Market was replaced by Waitrose.

I present to you the incredibly rare 51 Cowboys and 49 Indians set with the world famous printing-error!

W is for World Dolls/World Dancers Part 1

Right, sorry for the delay, but personal stuff has kept me away for the last few days. Having learned to do the second part first in order that they run in sequence I should have done this the same night as the Commonwealth/Van Brode post, but hey, better late than never. Tonight's post concerns the World Dancers/World dolls known to those in the States from the adverts in comics which ran from the 50's through to the late 70's/early 80's? To Europeans from the margarine give-aways, and to the citizens of the UK from, er...I don't know what!!

The first to make an appearance were the 'Tanzerinnen' or; Female Dancers. A set of ten different figures given away as premiums with K's, Schipka and Voss (not Fri-Homa as stated on the US Comics Website [link to right], nor is there any evidence that they were among the sets manufactured by Siku), these figures (above) are not from those sets which tend to have different bases and greater detail, but have been separated from the US comic set to give an idea of the European sets. A further word on origin; While Siku did produce a lot of the premium flats in Germany in the 1950/60's, there were many other companies in Germany, France and the Low Countries producing these, selling the product, selling/leasing the moulds and the designs and copying each other's work. Moulds (both originals and copies) ended up in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mexico and Brazil, Singapore and Macao/Macau. Not forgetting that the early plastic flat history includes the WHW winter/war relief sets, and running plastic through 'Nuremberg Flat' moulds!

They next turn up with the US comic 100 World Dolls set, with the addition of 20 new poses, missing from the above photograph are a clown and Santa Clause on a sleigh. The US issue additions are a less quality sculpt, being much chunkier. Over the years they were sold by a number of (apparently) different companies, which are all on the US comics website.

During their lifetime the figures have turned up elsewhere, and here we see a few, on the left are two factory-painted examples, the Chinaman had an umbrella glued into his hands, both figures have the remains of card/paper and glue on their bases, and probably came in little tourist gift-shop type vignettes (these two were found separately, several years apart). Then the two on the top row - centre and right are different colours, hard plastic and may have been premiums or Christmas Cracker novelties. Centre of the bottom row shows a figure who's release pin has become stuck mid-way through the moulding process, leaving a rod of plastic sticking out of his back. Finally a soft plastic Cracker gift. [And I covered some other copies of this set under 'B is for more Betterwear' in November '08]

  This is the real mystery, containing 7 of the ten dancers, and 13 of the twenty US dolls. You might think "Well the others are just lost in the mists of time?" but the group 'as found' contains exactly two of each of the figures present, making a total of 40, those two neat numbers add-up to more than a slight coincidence, so I think it's a complete 'sample'. The question is what? There are undocumented rumours that these may have been issued in UK breakfast cereal or biscuits, while the possibility remains that they could be the unsold (complete) contents of a shop-stock box as supplied to a bakers or cake-decorators? They are in a pinkish plastic. Indeed, the pink flesh colouring of this set and the subject matter of all the sets are the main links with the sets discussed in part 2 - Below.