F is for Four Fingers of Fictional Fun

A few Sci-Fi bits and bobs which were kicking around various corners of the Laptop, and which might as well be shoehorned into one post to clear the decks a bit!

Star Wars key-rings; We've seen a few before now, but I thought a comparison was in order, and we have - from the left - an LED torch, Lego 'maxi' Darth Vader, followed by three normal 'minifig' sized rings, then an Applause young Anakin/Vader, which I think is part of the avalanche of merchandise which accompanied the fourth/first movie.

I don't know how many there were in the Applause set, so the gap is for the missing Vader in an otherwise complete set of the capsule key-ring figures, cleared through The Works a few years ago, then to Pound-Plus, branded TPF Toys for shipping-in by STL.

ET's, a planetoid's worth of ET's! The three to the right are licensed LJN, and from a set of six (or eight?), while the chap on the left is marked J.A.R. Sales, and may be more of a knock-off than an official product, but both lines are dated 1982, so may both be legitimate?

I have no idea how many of the JAR ones there were and scale on them is 'big' as he fitted in a bikes shopping basket I seem to recall (never seen it, have no intention of seeing it!), so about 1:18^th or larger? I guess there was half-an-idea for them to be compatible with dolls, for playing-out the movie scenes?

Ignore the Greek, he's been joined by three of his compatriots recently and will be Blogged separately at some point. I managed to pick up both the Remco divers from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea last year, but they have been separated already, one here, one in storage - funny story; TJF managed to score a brownie-point with this one when I posted it elsewhere, but really, Journey to the Centre of the Earth / The Land that Time Forgot / 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea / 10,000 BC and a dozen other movies of the time were basically variations on a theme!

The metal-detector/mine-sweeper one is missing the base-stud, but as it's only used to lock them onto the floor of their retail carton, it's more a question of Do I remove the other one?

The chap to the right is supposed to be Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the head's all wrong, so I'll leave it to a jury, preferably a Bristolian one! He's a soft polyethylene and Argentinian.

Picked this up cheap a while back, as a sort of follow-up to the other day's Lunar Rover post; it's Dinky France selling-off the Zygon War Chariot crew figures as 'astronauts' in their spare-parts program! Daft in'it . . . got tub full's of orphaned seated figures and I go and get three more, but it's always about the packaging!

The funny thing is I know I have a metal Gort somewhere but can't find him, and there are more ET's in the post, so we will be returning to both those subjects in the not too far future!

F is for Follow-up - Q is for Question Time

I managed to get three Applause figures going reasonable, offov* that feebleBay the other day in order to do a proper comparison on the copies against the originals;

And this is what the whole caboodle looks like with 'Berserker' and the next closest pose; Han Solo. You can see that the 'Luke' pose is closest to the original Leia colouring, while the Leia-clone has gone-pink! If they aren't a cheepo rack-toy, I think they may be a two-player board game with a Sci-Fi subject-matter, although not necessarily Star Wars?

* It might not be in a dictionary, but if you know what I mean; it should be a word!

Q is for Question Time - Star Wars Siblings?

These are a puzzle, they are clearly knock-off's of Applause Star Wars, but they (man and woman) both seem to be based on the one pose . . . Princess Leia Organa née Skywalker in her . . . errr . . . not even sure when or if she ever actually wore the outfit in a movie; some corridor scene in III-now-VI?

The Applause original is inset for comparison, she's almost more whatshername from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century . . . Dareling, Darling, Darring?  The Applause base has been copied albeit smaller, and the guy is virtually the same but with sorter, sensible hair and a less-lumpy shirt!

I sent them to Brian over at Plaid Stallions and he fed them to his forum, but nothing came back? I wonder if they might be characters from a board game, with maybe a red and green (or other colours) undershirt versions out there somewhere. And whether a board game or not, are they another Applause product, as the PVC is very similar, and there's no rule against copying your own stuff.

The other obvious suspicion is some cheapo rack-toy as they are painted in the same vein as all those carded princes and princesses you find - we've seen one or two here over the years?

Other questions include; is the male supposed to be Luke Skywalker (or Han Solo) or are neither of them meant to have anything to do with that particular galaxy, far, far away, long, long ago? Or - if they are game-playing pieces -are there more of one sex; say, four guys versus one girl or vice-versa, or are they supposed to be paired (boy/girl) in like-colours?

Note how the man hasn't been trusted with a wristwatch! Someone must know these as the Applause set was only 1996, so they (the copies) can't be that old, do you recognise them?

F is for Follow-up - Supreme / SP Toys as Halsall

I said I'd probably get one, and I went back for it the other day. I only bought the one, as Brian hasn't replied to my reply to his comment - There are three left and I'm over there next Friday if you want me to get them, I can bring them to PW, Brian?

Better shot of the carded set and a close-up of the two more anachronistic poses in the set, both actually taken from the Greek set, not the over-sized medievals. In the Greek sets they get slide-on hoplon shields missing from this issue.

The full set, painting is restricted to all-over silver and a moss-green on one side of the shield, which in the interior for three of the figures; exterior for the fourth.

The item which seems to have attracted Brian, and which I also quite like, despite being almost as anachronistic as the Classical Greek 'officers'!

It's a larger, early, banded medieval cannon, shoe-horned into the cradle of a catapult or ballista! Not as fanciful as it appears perhaps, as when these 'new tech's' first hit the 'high street' you're actual Robber Baron is more likely to afford one than the local Robin Hood, William Tell or Theiry la Frond! Consequently if the 'good guys' capture one, they may well need to house it in one of their old siege-engine frames! Hey - it's about imagination - they're toys!

You can see that as a toy it has been issued as a catapult as well, with mounting brackets along the back frame, and some sort of trigger at the front. It also had a 'recoil' pad in the centre of the cross bar to take the shock of a catapult's arm, yet the moulding also has the cradle for the gun, so was obviously designed with both versions in mind.

The other nice touch for such a dual-use equipment (where's the UN inspectors when you need them, is this a Matrix Churchill piece?!!) is that it's modelled as being mostly wrought-iron in construction, not the heavy timbers of earlier medieval or 'Ancient' siege machines - a surprising effort of design for such a cheap rack-toy, no?

If anyone has a picture of it in its catapult variant, that would close the chapter on it?

A re-shoot of the previous post's comparison/line-up, but with both the new set's figures and the ones I mentioned last time but couldn't find on the Blog. I still can't - so they must be tagged under some minor importer (I Blogged them about 3 years ago I think?), but they are the same as the Halsall set, only more poses and a more liberal application of paint in red and blue as two groups of protagonists.

There are so many now they over-filled their tub, so have left the 'Mixed Medieval' box and been given their own smaller box!

SP is for Supreme . . . Post!

Actually; Supreme Products or Supreme Toys but using SP in the 1990's, like a lot of the older Hong Kong companies (they were formed in 1974), we know little of Supreme or their output, as it was mostly contract manufactured for third parties.

But from the late 1980's they did (like Soma - another older company) start to mark some stuff (mostly packaging) so that it was ID'abl at the point of sale, allowing us to ID other stuff by default, even though A) not everything they produced and/or marketed followed the 'pattern' and B) even today they don't always mark their stuff!

Case in point is this 'shelfie' I shot in Basingrad last Friday, these are a reissue of Supreme's first version (mid-late 1970's) knights, marked-up to Halsall's rack-toy brand My Toy - Time4toys, new paint (compost-green shields over a silver wash) but otherwise unmistakeable.

In a few weeks (when the budget is healthier) I'll get the set and we'll have a quick look at it in close up, as a stand-alone.

I hope everyone is familiar with these (as this is all I've got - and all I want really!), Supreme's second attempt at knights, trying to compete with the action figure market/craze of the post-Star Wars 1980's, they were chunky, too large and produced in red, black and blue vinyl-rubber with gold and silver highlights, over-sized polyethylene weapons and similarly huge shields with stickers struggling to obey the rules of heraldry only added to the action figure look. Not to mention the Greco-Roman archer with leg-armour!

In recent years they (Supreme) have issued two newer sets of medieval figures (both pirating other makers stuff - Italieri for instance), along with Saracens for them to fight. However, they themselves have been subject to much piracy, and due to the 'back-door' nature of a lot of piracy in the Far East some of the 3 version figures have ended-up with the 1st version!

And due to my coming late to the collecting of large scale examples, while we're going to look primarily at those early ones, we will be mostly looking at the copies here today! The above being all Italieri sculpts/poses - from the current 3rd/4th 'sets' except the silver one (middle bottom) who's from one of the 3rd generation sub-pirate sets.

Both Supreme and its imitators have issued these in various sizes over the years and we have looked at the 25mm Blackrock Castle set donated to the Blog by Brian Berke before, next to it we see 30mm and 45mm versions, both unpainted, with the 30mm probably being Supreme (nice detail, PVC) and the 45mm a late pirate brand, in ethylene.

As can be seen from the artwork on the card, painted versions are available and I have some 25mm versions in a boxed-set of the castle which I thought was on the Blog somewhere, but can't find it so it may be poorly tagged; tags/tagging rather evolved as the Blog grew! Found it, which means it's in the attic . . . somewhere - it's the Guildford-bought one which is still missing; in storage!

Here we see the standard copies in 50mm (the 'action figure' rubber-uglies are 60/70mm) from at least two origins/sources, of which I'm sure one is Hing Fat, but can't find the reference, so will leave them off the tag-list for the time-being, but you can see the difference in the bases, likewise Applause may have issued some!

Another pose and we have 30, 45 and 50mm and again the late or 3rd generation copies are less accurate, having been re-cut, or mucked-about with! Also 'again' the only actual Supreme in the shot is likely to be the 30mm PVC chap!

Another pose and again the 45mm is derivative rather than a straight piracy, but only insofar as he has elements of other figures from the same original set, tacked-on or swapped.

Ditto, but showing the difference in base shape - between two generations of copy - clearly, suspected Hing Fat on the left.

I shot him so I'm posting him, even though this is supposed to be a post about the foot figures. The 30mm version and an unmistakeable Supreme horse with a splash of paint; the mounted figures get the huge weapons scaled down to still look over-sized in their diminutive ring-hands.

Contents of the whole tub shot together, although there are some painted ones still to go in it, they too, are probably copies - we looked at them before but I can't find the post (what am I like!) and I have more of the small scale (25 and 30mm) in storage, which we will come back too with all the forts - one day!

Note also that some of these - otherwise quite recent - black ones are getting brittle and will soon be no more than landfill

These have been sitting in Picasa for so long I'm happy to get rid of them! They were shot when the contents of the tub included a few 'similar' types and so included here are Jean'esque (foot, oval cartouche base, missing pole-arm) and Timpo'esque (mounted, shield sticker) figures now in another tub . . . ironically enough, the one with the four Supreme rubber-loons in it, as they won't fit in this one!