F is for Follow-up - LB Spacetronauts!

I picked this set up in the November toy fair at Sandown Park, and it's interesting for a couple of reasons, one wouldn't necessarily get from online images, or, without the benefit of poring over it and comparing it to other examples.

 

Whole set.

 

Full extant of the graphics.

 

Card slid-out and opened-up.

 

Moon-shot landing module, and this is the first interesting aspect. Obviously it's missing its little antenna-dish, but I think I have a spare one, possibly in white, but there may be a chromed one kicking-around somewhere, so? And, if I only have a white one, you can get this media in paint-marker pens now, the Ad's keep appearing in my Faceplant feed!

 

However, you can see from the off-white at the hole, this seems to be the same lander which came as a cake decoration with the late NASA suited pair & flag, from Lik Be (LB), via Culpitts, which matched the robot aliens. Something that may not surprise the average viewer, as the figures look to be the larger LB figures?

 

But, as you can see here, they are actually the smaller ones, which were new to me with the little chromium-plated one we saw last time we had a catch-up of these old favourites. The original is on the left with a dodgy paint-job!

 

And, as a reminder that there's no fool like an old fool, a friend picked several of these out of a bowl I'd already ignored at a show (actually the September Sandown!), because I thought I had them all, but then I looked at these two remaining ones, and under the show lighting, they looked to have different paint, so I grabbed them both slightly chagrined I'd missed the other six, only to get them home and realise in the cold light of day, that the red, the gaiters and the silver on the rears, are all some other Muppet's home-painting! Hay-ho - a full strip awaits them!

 

But, by the time I realised my mistake, I'd already shot this comparison with an Athena spaceman from Greece, a UK knock-off of Premier's fellow (I don't know for sure, if the paint is home or factory, but they do turn up like this, occasionally) and one of the diminutive copies of Ajax/Archer, both of which may be Tudor Rose or Kleeware? All of which, I picked-up at the same show.

 

This all, above, led me to shoot a couple more comparisons the other day, and here, only from the stuff which has come-in over the last 24-months or so, we can see various treatments of the LB (for Lik Be!) and clone figures.

 

Of note here is that the hollow-based copy (forth from the left, is copying the earlier LB paint, which extended to the rears, and was dropped (probably as a cost-saving) on later LB issues, before all painting was dropped around the time the robots/Aliens were converted to chain-hangers.

 

While the yellow issue is a solid based version, despite hollow based monochrome examples also existing in yellow, and the small chrome chap (middle-right), is the same as the painted trio in the new set.

 

Coming with the lander, there is a strong possibility that it/they (set/figures) may be later, reduced-scale production from Lik Be, for a specific client/contract. But equally, one has to maintain the possibility that a pirate just bought-in some LB landers? Until I've compared with the known Culpitt stuff in storage, I'll sit on the fence!

 

The robot/Aliens, we actually had a very similar shot, not that long ago, but with 90%  of the LB & clones in storage, since before I shot the space-tanks, it's only the recent stuff I have to work on!

 

In both cases I've used the same sucker on the jumper and while previously seen here as a clearer HF, on this one, it looks a bit like it could be a poorly registered HE, so I've annotated both images to that effect! Personally, I think it is HF, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Every time I post Lik Be (LB) stuff (or even mention them in the text), one of two or three individuals will post an 'LP' article, usually within two or three days, as their stubborn refusal to accept it's an LB logo, apparently knows no bounds!

 

Their logic being backed up by the fact they think (with no empirical evidence) that it (the 'LP') is arrived at from;

The Lik Be Plastic And Metal Factory Limited,

 

. . . which totally ignores all the rules of English, and/or abbreviations, acronyms, initialism or shortened form/shorthand! By their own logic it should either be LPM, LP&M, LBP&M or LBP&ML, it's not any of those, because it's LB for Lik Be, but stupid is, as stupid does.

 

Just as it's not [technically] Spacex, but LB for Lines (Triang-Hornby and Raphael Lipkin), or LB for MPC, or LB for Ward, Sears, or LB for whoever, and Lik Be went on to produce many other versions/formats/packagings, with other Hong Kong numpties responsible for all the many copies, some also bought-in by Western branding's. Lines, Multiple, Culpitt, Clifford and co., just bought-in limited parts of the range from a catalogue, or, after a sales-rep's spiel, from Lik Be, from a Lik Be sales-rep'! well, Clifford might even be an LB branding, or partner?!!

 

One of the 'LP'-stubborn brigade has even used one of my clearer LB images (with the heavy corner where the bottom of the B's lower loop is), without permission, to try and maintain it's an 'LP'! But stupid is, as stupid does, and it's LB.

 

The new boxed-set with the more recent carded LB and other acquisitions (the hollow-based yellows are in the Space Patrol set).

 

You can copy all the feebleBay, Worthpoint, Scalemates, SAS, Vectis or wherever, whoever's images you like, but if you're not holding the stuff, looking at the stuff and comparing it in the palm of your hand, you're pontificating half-blind. . . Sigh!

News, Views Etc . . . Blogging

You wait ages for one and then two come along together! As well as a bit of a post-fest here, I've been posting elsewhere two;

 

♫♫♪♫ Cap-Tin Scar-Lurt! Hees In-Di-Struc-Tabul♪♫♪♪

I've added quite a bit to the following posts on the Airfix Blog

 

ACW Artillery

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/2010/06/1962-american-civil-war-artillery-s14.html

 

Cowboys

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/search/label/Cowboys

 

Guards Band

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/search/label/Guards%20Band

 

Guards Colour Party

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/search/label/Guards%20Colour%20Party

 

 

 

I've also added three posts to the But is it Giant Blog, which, with the first being published on the 15th, was, I think, before the recent flurry of Giant-related posts elsewhere, always better to be found leading than following!

 

But is it Giant

 

And there's more to go on both Blogs in - hopefully - the near future!

C is for Carlsberg Don't Make Toy Soldiers . . .

. . . but if they did, they wouldn't look anything like these;

 

EKO - probably the worst Japanese Infantry in the World!

UFO is for UAP - Imperial / CEM / PMS / Titan - Sammy Steel Series, Micro Adventure, My Adventure Journey, Space Adventure, Space Explorer

So, the last trio, except as Sammy Steel it extends to nearly a dozen sets, and two or three of them were issued as generics in France by the looks of it, but for the purposes of this post we're looking at the non-Sammy Steel sets issued in the UK and Germany, which are a trio.

 

For the Imperial US/Australian Sammy Steel story (which seems to include Titan Toys here, but I've not seen them in packaging), this is the start page for a four-page explanation;

https://mikestoybox.net/2014/07/12/sammy-steel-series-1-mighty-max-knock-off/#jp-carousel-6429

 

So, my two are in the middle, both PMS (which - at the time - might have meant a 99p Stores exclusive?), with the card back to the left and a generic from feebleBay on the right, although decent shots of the rocky one have escaped this post, it may be in storage?

 

We get two identical flying saucers, but only on the outside, as even then, they are different colours, while the inner liner is very-different between them both. To go with them is a rocky 'meteorite' based on what is supposed to be a volcano sculpt!

I didn't really notice that the German one is another card, and while I did shoot it in its entirety for the group shot at the end of the first post in this sequence, I don't have a decent single card shot! This was imported by a CEM?

I haven't opened this PMS set, but you can see the 'rest of the world' generics have all the contents of the Sammy Steel sets, but in new colours and without the Sammy character figures, although, I'm pretty sure I have him, the sabre-toothed smilodon (on the Blog somewhere?) and a couple of the other pieces not found in this trio, so they will all turn-up eventually!

 

Note the plug-in dish/ariel and fold out ramp, scudding about loose in the blister!

I did open the PMS version of this one after I'd got the CEM one to keep whole! The lizard man looks better in green than the Sammy Steel orange, in my opinion, although the fliver/flyer/hover-bike is probably better in the original grey? And these are all - sort of - 20/25mm compatible.

So, six true UFO 'saucers' and three more esoteric designs . . . I hope these posts have helped some with the ID'ing of these which have confused for some time, and as I say, these posts are a bit half-cocked, and we will return to them when I get everything in one place, and find the few missing bits (I may have the meteorite/cave), maybe do it as a single page, with all the sets/links together in one place?

And this is only what I've found, there's probably more; more packagings, more importers, more brand-marks, and while I don't often address money here, I was going to have a long paragraph or two ranting about the money being asked/paid for the US/Aussie sets, only to find someone has one of these PMS cards up on evilBay right now for 50-smackers? WTF? These are recent, cheapo rack-toys, you should hope to get, or pay no-more than 15-quid for, and - intrinsically - they are a fiver's worth of tat!

UFO is for UAP - Hinstar / Avra / DAS / Dival / Eugene / Simba - Galaxy War Striker, Star Warriors

Chapter two of this particular story, and my first encounter with it, I'd picked up a few loose micro-mech's a few years before I got my dog-faced trio with their big, blue space-taxi! And one of the first to get a good write-up (as Hinstar) about 16-years ago, but I now can't find the site?

 

Marked on the underside as Hinstar without a date, each of the three machines (only one is strictly a saucer), comes with eight robots, which I assume are based on/cloned from commonly licensed 'Mechs', from Japanese or US Kid's TV output?

 

Imported into the UK by DAS, into Greece by Avra, and Germany and it's neighbours by Simba, they are all brand-marked Eugene, and I have a screen-cap which seems to indicate a Dival also imported them to somewhere, but Google won't search for Dival, defaulting to 'Devil' without the option to search for the asked phrase/task instead?

 

My original sample, shot in 2013, at the time they were in the Galoob boxes, as someone had authoritatively stated they were Micro-Machines, not an attribution I was ever happy with, they didn't have Galoob quality, they didn't have MM bases, they didn't have Action Fleet or Army Gear articulation, and they were both polyethylene and clear knock-offs?

 

But you can see they had three colourways, and more than eight sculpts (I still haven't tried to work out how many sculpts there are?!!), with metallics that vary from batch to batch and are best described as Brass/Gold, Copper/Bronze and Silver/Gunmetal/Aluminium. The one on his own at the bottom is mould-damaged, and quality on all is no better than rack-toy 'army men'.

My three, with the original 9 and others which have come in I should have enough to calculate the total number of poses, but simply haven't got round to it yet! Generally the colours of the robots tie-in with each ship, but there were larger space-station sets which may have got a larger mix of figures.

 

While one issue (Holland?) got human or humanoid figures in primary colours which I haven't tracked-down yet. Their vessels may all be different colours too, the pale blue 'arrow-head' is navy-blue plastic in the Dutch issue.

Two spaceships and a flying saucer, which has offset 'battleships guns' sticking out to be broken off! All these sets can be traced back to Polly Pocked, not the Mighty Max most websites suggest (for all three sets), as Max himself owes his existence to Polly, who predates him. Equally, Galoob, who had the most success with this stuff, were only exploiting an existing idea from Bluebird Toys.

A couple of interactive parts, with a moving radar dish and sliding 'elevator' capsule, mine all came together about 18-months ago, but then went straight to storage, so I can't remember offhand what details the other two had, the silver one may have had sliding seats, and the orange dome in the brown one may have done something?

 

The Greek Avra sets, they were issued as the above three designs as well, with an Avra sticker, but here have been given new ship designs (on the same Eugene cards, slipped into the Avra boxes) and you only get five robots per card/box.

UFO is for UAP - Uni-King Toys / Peter Kiri - Mysteries of the Universe UFO

So, I'm not so fussed about the absolute order of these, but these are the 'better' of the three lines (marginally), so I'm leading with them, even though the Uni King sets (which I call the 'Triple Flap Families') were dated 1996, against the 1993 of Imperial's Mighty Max knock-off - Sammy Steel!

 

March 2021 - Sci-Fi & Fantasy

These three posts are a bit of a mix of Internet stuff and my stuff, as the bulk of mine went to storage before I'd got all the shots I wanted, although some of them had already gone, or been separated at some point, the best are the Hinstar (next post) as all three loose sets came together at the end!

 

So, variously generic or, as the larger sets, credited to a Uni-King, and sometimes the UK importer Peter Kiri, these are a lot of fun, and you get little 'families' of aliens (hence my shorthand name for them!) with a few accessories, in a 'flying saucer' or UFO which unfolds in three sections and has a micro-mini UFO as the roof-piece, which can be flown off! By fingers!

We saw my first family, incomplete, way back at the start of the blog, the dog-faces, in the blue saucer, and a black saucer came loose from Chris Smith I think, not that long ago, but they are both in storage now, one with a couple of bits missing, the other sans contents.

 

But I did get the figures from the black one, although I'm not sure if I shot them, and these (Greenies) may be an evilBay image? The 'Greys' I did have to hand, but the accessories were only partial! Basically, you get two adults and two kids!

 

The green set, with its micro-UFO sitting atop the central column. This one also has three not-so-greys, moulded into their stasis-chambers, and - like the other three - a revolving floor, which allows for a second layer of detailing underneath, visible in sections as you push the missing segment of floor/gap around the central column.

Spiny-twisty things, there seems to have been plans for a third cover/hatch (hole next to left-hand feature), but for reasons of budget, or technical difficulty (or forgetfulness?) it never happened? The saucers and accessory-pieces are a 'styrene, or brittle'ish polypropylene, while the figures are PVC or one of its substitutes.

I'm missing a tripod, which should be red, but is white on the packaging artwork, in fact all the packaging artworks show pre-production stuff, and there are various subtle differences in design and contents. The missing elements mean we can return to this set another day, when I've got everything together and filled any gaps!

 

Each set is themed around a couple of tropes of the UFOlogists, here it's 'Greys' and the Easter Island Moais, the huge monolithic sculptures carved by the Rapa Nui with NO help from phuqing Aliens! And the little Moai is also missing, but I may have one somewhere in the stash, but I fear mine is Lego, Kinder or something similar?

18/12/2023 - Late Addition:

My original 3 of 4 'cute' aliens, I'm missing the other 'child'.

L is for Layouts and Little People!

There were quite a few figures in the huge box of mostly animals Jon Attwood sent recently, and we're looking at the smaller-scaled stuff in this post. Of interest as my intention is to get some model-railway stuff posted over Christmas, because it's a long time since we looked at any of it in any depth, and the last time we did, it was all that Preiser/Merten stuff, which won't feature this time round!

A late ('yellow' pull-off lid) box of Airfix Platform Figures was stuffed with small scale . . . err . . . stuff! And this is me sorting it into piles! Most of it is grist-to-the-mill stuff you wouldn't want me to go through pile by pile, but what can you spot - the image enlarges quite big, but a little pixel-fuzzy.

 

Some highlights from the previous though; the paratrooper is from a parachute-plane kit, but I can never remember which is which, as there are more than one with a figure, one is Airfix, another Monogram I think, which may be this one? Then a Blue Box German throwing  grenade over a damaged, but rather fine (Edwardian?) board-game piece, to his US oppo', while another of my favourite little Hong Kong cowboys charges into the fray!

 

Faller scenic sets, these are the really useful sets of 'bits', rather than specific kits, and I well remember those coin-operated railway dioramas at mainline and terminus stations in Germany having the contents of 973 stacked round the two cottages under construction, which would be made to look on fire with blackened timbers, cotton wool, hidden red and yellow grain-of-wheat bulbs &ect . . . so the fire equipment of Roco, Preiser, Herta, Praline and/or Wiking could be given something to do, for a feature in one corner of the layout!

 

A lovely sample, of samples, of metal railway figures, both bigger name and after-market, old and new'ish. Jon has also sent images, and I have also had both a photography and scanning sessions, so there will be intermittent posts on some of this in December, all going well.

 

We looked at these years ago, they were samples from a dodgy outfit in China/US/Germany, and Mike Niederman confirmed Tomolio's suspicions they were Presier copies, but fun nevertheless, as figure collectables, and seen here in what looks to be OO- and O-gauges. Upper shot is duplicate poses in the two sizes, lower shot are colour variations of the OO figures.

 

Hong Kong knock-offs of Merit/Randall scenery, with the white stuff attributed to Blue Box and through their Sunshine lable, Marx!

 

Jon also sent this for a very interesting advert on figures from a maker I only knew from their similar ad's in the military modelling press, where they were promoting 1:90 or 1:100th NATO recognition models of Cold War armour! All for the forthcoming posts on Railway figures!

Thanks again to Jon, for all this, which is already proving useful and will continue to do so for years to come. You know, everything which you physically have in the 'stash', is something you don't have to search for, at some point in the future, to feed blog articles or illustrate points!

M is for Mini Micro Men Mecha's & Monsters

As I mentioned the other day, Brian Berke has sent another lovely parcel to the Blog, and I will cover it fully after I've done Peter's parcels and the last show-report, as it has some very interesting stuff in it, but some of it was so interesting it was deserving of a seperate post, and this is that post!

 

When he emailed me to let me know the parcel was on its way, he added "There is a small box of possibly the smallest plastic figures ever, I would paint them if I could see that well!", and I replied that I could only think of some which came with either a space station or nuclear submarine kit, some of/one of which lots I have in storage, but badly painted (in red & black so probably from the space station kit), so I was looking forward to seeing what he sent, and what he sent was beyond my imagination!

 

There were actually two little boxes, one stuffed with figures I did recognise, the other having all sorts of kit figures from Tamiya's 1:35th downwards, to the diminutive little chaps seen here!

The ones I recognised were the MPC/AMT/Ertl figures from the Battle of Hoth model kit, part of the Star Wars range! On the left we have the Hoth Base's Rebel defenders, with (top left) an X-Wing pilot (who can be 'Luke'), on the right the Imperial Snow Troops, although I'm not sure about the pointing rebel, he may be a turncoat Imperial trooper!

 

During it's 1980's meltdown Airfix carried some of these, and I have a few in that washed-out shiny-grey 'styrene they used, but I only have three Rebel poses I think, so this, nine-poses, was a real surprise, and in a neutral fawn, better for painting . . . if you have the eyesight! And there's probably a hundred in the box, so you could incorporate them in some wargame with maybe Galoob's mini space-craft/vehicles?

I thought these two might belong with the Mecha's below, but they might be from one of the Lost In Space kits, as why would they be taller than giant robots! But clearly measuring something much taller than themselves, and in typically 1960's 'space' fatigues!

These are those mentioned Mecha's, and probably from a more modern kit, but all this stuff goes back to the 1980's now, so maybe not THAT new, and again, from the size of the bot's, something much larger, like a huge space-ship or diorama kit? Possibly, of course, a more esoteric board-game?

These have to be a space-station kit? Or one of several Apollo kits, I've recently picked up the Revell 1:96th kit, and I think the Revell 1:48th kit's figures were elsewhere in Brian's parcel, so who did a 1:150 (approximately N-gauge) NASA type space kit? Aren't they charming? They may be from an International Space Station kit, if that's a hatch-cover he's waving about?

 

 

On the right is another of the AMT-Airfix (et al)'s kits, this one is actually 1:72, and obviously Jabba's Kowakian monkey-lizard; Salacious B. Crumb (the 'monster' of the title), from the Throne Room kit, we looked at some of them here.

 

The coffin lid is a complete mystery, looks like the same plastic as the mega-bots, but a totally different subject mater? Maybe some Aurora horror kit which has escaped my attention, or a detailing on one of those Ed Roth'esque custom-car/cartoonish vehicle kits?

The NASA type is around 9mm, and the Lost in Space chap is a good 15mm, with the Star Wars upright pilot & bino's guys around 14mm. A lovely bunch to find in a parcel, and many thanks to Brian for sending them all to the Blog.

 

Meanwhile, in the sands of the deserts of Egypt, especially the plain behind the great pyramids, the wind occasionally reveals these teeny-tiny sculptures, likely religious tokens, votive offerings or similar keepsakes, here a cast-gold antelope and a small lioness, probably carved in turquoise, the stone, although it could be glazed-clay 'faïence'?

 

The image was from the internet, and has been sitting in Picasa for years, waiting for exactly this post, it knew . . . It knew! And that's the gods of the Pharaohs for you, don't mess with them! 

 

While it said Egypt and Pyramids where I found it, the image has been associated with sites saying "Discovered at the archaeological site of Gonur Depe in Turkmenistan (associated with the Oxus civilization) or alternatively noted in similar Bronze Age contexts . . . Estimated to date from approximately 2400 to 1600 BCE", although similar stuff is found on the plain of the Great Pyramids, and Egyptian security or antiquities police will arrest you if they see you picking up artifacts from the sand and pocketing them!

W is for Wagon Train

Picked this up a couple of months ago, and it's definitely a 'grail' item, despite being pretty low on plastic, but it is there, and you must remember that until a decade ago I was a specialist small scale collector, where this was one of those 'must have one day' pieces.

An early example of the multiple branding we are more used to now as Morris & Stone (aka Morestone) under their Budgie trademark licence the Wagon train TV series from Revue Productions in the USA, utilising their little prairie wagon. I thought we'd looked at these in detail here, but in fact it's a pretty poor article from the early days of the blog, I'd now veer toward Nibblet for the sculpting, or even Les Higgins, but that almost strengthens the possible Aifix link?

 

There are four poses of figures, with the hand-up guy presumably meant to be the Seth Adams character (played by Ward Bond) and the other rider Flint McCullough (Robert Horton) with two generic wagoners? Wagoneers? Wagoniers? Spellcheck only likes the first offering!

Err . . . I don't think they're terribly rare! An old Vectis shot. And even as this large set, I've seen several over the years! Metal fatigue, though, is over twelve-years worse than the last time we looked at them; the white tilt one in my set is disintegrating, I'll try and replace it.