S is for Still Unknown, but More Clues?

Posted here before, once or twice I think, I won't link back as there's probably more information in this one, unknown spacemen, and they're still unknown, but a few clues and the missing pose, with extra colours, might jog someone's memory?

 

This is the current 'here' sample, actually shot weeks ago and off to storage in a day or two, I think the older post used a different sample, and the two can be brought together (with a third lot?) at some point for a more definitive post, if we get a brand or set-title, at some point!

I shot them all twice as the colours were a bit 'fluid' under different light conditions/flash, but there are two reds, one pinkish/heliotrope, the other more fire-engine! And three distinct greys, one blueish, along with a caramel version of the toffee!

But these came with them, in the same blue as some of the figures, I think Shaun associated the figures with a 'space tank', from hearsay/without pictures, could they be the ones Chris sent which we looked-at here, the grey is similar, underside is similar, but they have revolving turrets? It would certainly allow two 'sides' to have vehicles? There's probably a play-mat and some palm-trees missing! Shades of Y-Wing fighter to one of them?

These are some 'suggested' names I gave them, as they seem to tick the boxes, making them maybe mid/late 1990's and the new Star Wars trilogy pushing Buck Rogers repeats off cable?

While I was PlayPlax'ing the other day!

G is for Giants, Galaxy Giants!

Could have been 'T is for Two - Scales!'! We're box-ticking the Tim Mee Space Patrol / Galaxy Lazer Team figures here today, still available from Jeff Imel under his Victory Buy / Timmee labels, and have been in production now, as several entities, since at least 2012, in various new colours, but we're looking at the originals here.

 

These are the original 54mm set, there is clearly more than a hint of Star Wars about them, but a bit of Star Trek too I feel, in the lady with the machine that goes ping! The more conventional pair of astronauts are lifting from MPC's set I suspect, with Darth Tim waving a sword about, and a Buck Roger's chap on the far left . . . box-ticking some serious box ticking!

There is a figure missing from the above, I know I have him in 54mm (there is another sample with all colours somewhere? But for now . . . 

 . . . we'll have to look at the five-inch/120mm version instead! Not Chewbacca, oh no . . . no, no, no, not Chewbacca at all, who's he, indeed! He even has The Hulk's ripped shorts and a pair of antennae, so you don't draw that conclusion! This also shows a third colour, a very 'spacey' gunmetal gray.

Not Buck, Not Vader and Artoo-Timmeepio! The other colour of the originals was a screaming, electric pink. Issued in 1978 (as 54mm figures, Star Wars the film had been released the previous year) the upscales appeared in 1979, probably to try and compete with Kenner's phenomenal Star Wars action figure line which was changing the toy industry forever, at the same time? These are also the 120mm versions.

The Turtoise (or Tortle?) and one of the astronauts, you can see the MPC DNA as clear as day in the latter, but Crabster (or 'Lobbab') has no real or obvious influence I can think-of, besides a dozen 1950/60's pulp sci-fi novel covers!

This blog also covers them;

http://secretfunspot.blogspot.com/2012/07/return-of-galaxy-laser-team.html

 

 . . . with a very interesting Argentinian side to the story involving Anteojito magazine, which I think has been mentioned here before, but isn't in the Tag list!

 

*********************************

10 days later and Woodsey's found some more!

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2023/10/tim-work.html

Q is for Question Time - Rack Toy Question

Sean at Fantasy Toy Soldiers had these somewhere, and I think he has more poses than me, but he too was asking for further information, so, hoping there are different readers here, I'll ask too - does anyone know anything about these chaps and chapesses?

They are about 50mm (a Hing Fat trait?) and pretty mid-to-late 1980's in style; a bit Star Wars, a bit Nottingham Mafia, a bit post-apocalyptic and straight-to-video! Medium density polyethylene and, apart from the sci-fi subject, typical 'army men' rack toy fodder.

Colours are also very Hing Fat, ignoring the two shades of grey, and these are also very reminiscent of the Galaxy Rangers from Hing Fat, which is not to say they are Hing Fat, but might be, or might have been supplied by them for someone else?

 

Looking at the two in the larger picture, could they be meant to be Buck and Wilma from Buck Rogers, after the 80's TV series? They carry no mark (which is also the case with the Galaxy Rangers I think?), and I have one heat-shrinkage figure who is useable - the white plastic chap in the small picture.

F is for Follow-up - Buck Rogers on a 20th Century Pencil

Returning to last August now, with a follow-up to the post on Buck Rogers silicon pencil-tops from Imperial, following a rather lucky purchase the other day. Highlighted by Brian Heiler on Facebook, in his long-running '5 Awsome Things On eBay This Week' trope (he finds these things, so we don't have to!) and a small bidding war, I was the successful winner of two whole boxes of them!

 

Although the seller gave a good description of the lot and how he'd sorted them into actual Buck Rogers and the more generic knock-off stuff with a Star Wars vibe, he didn't say there was one of each piece in each main colour with three extra colour-variants! Had he, I might have been out-bid; equally, if I'd spent more time looking at the images accompanying the lot, I might have worked that out for myself! And compared to other boxed sets/part-sets which have come-up (several now) it was a fair win I think!

Wilma and Buck flanking an Imperial Stormtrooper type in the upper shot, and Cee-D2 and Artoo-3PO to the right of the execrable Twitty-Tweet the Twelek Twiki in the lower image - god I hate that fatuous character!

In red; Buck's Defense Directorate starfighter, a Maruder from the bad-guys, led by Princess Ardarla (stangely humanoid, but whose back-story is never fully filled-out if I recall correctly?) and an A/B/Y-Wing! In yellow; the Back Rogers space station, a horse tranquilliser dart and one which is equally unplaceable! That last one is the only sculpt with full symmetry in two planes.

Buck's ship again from various angles. It's much closer to the one seen on big and little screens than the risible Corgi ones, with their squashed wings, elongated noses and 'elf-und-safty' crossbars!

I've already added another colour variant to these and a third blue of Wilma, and I only had four here, so when I get the storage lot added-in it might be quite the sample!

The box with side and back, the scanner is at the new flat, while I couldn't wait to shoot these here, so full high-res images can wait for the A-Z entry in a year or so . . . wasn't I saying that over a year ago? You don't want to know!

 

Shout out to the seller too, Corey (swankcat on evilBay), as there was a real problem with the parcel, and when you've invested a chunk of dough, the last thing you want is for the tracking to keep saying "Delieverd on the 17th" when it was only delivered to the tosser-station at Erlanger, Kentucky!

 

Thankfully, Hermes (who are still Hermes on the tracker, despite changing their name to Evri here (to hide their piss-poor reputation?) picked it up and ran with it, even though feeBay had lost all interest in it, on the wrong continent!

The Global shipping programme is such a profiteering scam it's untrue, how can it be better for fleaBay, Pitney Bowes (last heard-of selling typewriter paper in the 1970's) and Hermes-call-us-Evri, to all take themselves a percentage, and spend an extra week or two doing so, when parcels sent direct from Canada or through USPost can be here in three days for less money . . . fussa-bloody-russa!

Of course, 'Evri' left it in full view of the road all day while I was at the London Toy Soldier show, despite my having a huge wooden trunk in the porch with 'Parcels Please' written on it, which both beat-postie and Parcelfarce guy seem to find regularly? Our civilisation IS coming to an end, I mean . . . it just is!

C25th is for Buck Rogers

Except I'd never actually seen a Buck eraser! To be fair, for a decade or two I've only had the 'trooper' and while I Knew Wilma and Twiki (the stupid kid/dog/little sister tea-time viewing-ruin character) existed, I did wonder as to the full extent of the set.

Still my favourite, and shot before the other's had been found, he's a generic space soldier, with little in the TV series I remember looking anything like him? But then I don't remember many of the space ships in the topper/eraser set being in the series either! He's really channeling the Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars and seems to have taken a space fire-hydrant up his jacksie!

I should state here that I watched the series . . . because - Sci-Fi . . . but it was shit, It was shit then and it's shittier now, it was worse than a bad Dr. Who story-line, it was cheap, it was a conveyor-belt for B-movie 'stars' heading down and wannabe stars heading-up, and there were no sweeping space-opera battles or anything, it was a naff, band-wagoning off-of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, without the budget or effects, it made the half-a-decade older Space 1999 look sophisticated.

It tried to be wordy and worthy, with Trekian morality lessons, or parables on life, but without the charm of Star Trek, and the lead (who's real name I can't even remember) was NO lead! But its run coincided with when we had our Bush colour TV and then moved here, so I watched it religiously hoping it would improve, or have at least one proper space battle!

The additions, for some reason I shot Wilma back-to front, more on that in a minute, but you can see she has the Imperial Toys markings on her back. Buck is to her left and that annoying little fucker 'Twiki' the ersatz K9-R2D2-Daggit thing is the blob of orange. the space craft are make-weights which seem to have been bought-in or - at least - added from another line.

Casting around for an image of Wilma the right way round (these are all in storage already) I found the original listing, of the lot I bought a while-ago . . . maybe a year-ago? Is still on Picclick! The whole box is on Pinterest, Worthpoint and at least one website, I used the Worthpoint one, but it's probably not the best.

The dumpy 'steampunk' dustbin ship (pink above, blue one in the post!) was previously part of a range of scented erasers (a trend which started in the 1970's but which had its heyday in the 1980's I think) in bubble-gum colours, and one of my two troopers (both the same green) is not marked Imperial, so there might have been a generic issue of some/all of the figures.

There's also a standing robot who looks more Diener and may be from another source, but whatever other issues they had, they were clearly interchangeable cavities and were run-together for the Imperial set - six figures (including two robots), six vessel. You can see one of the ships (yellow, bottom right) is vaguely a 'Thunderfighter' from the TV series.

Did I mention I can't stand Twiki . . . he grates on me like a Republican senator trying to talk on women's issues.

Now fully updated here.

D is for Do I Not Like That Beadally-beadally Bass'tud!

Said no Turnip-head, never! I really didn't like the poxy thing, is was the ersatz idiot-kid/fluffy-dog (Daggit)/K9/R2D2 of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century franchise, not that I was that enamoured of the series as a whole. The majority of the budget seemed to have been spent on the opening titles and the episodes were mostly Dr. Who quality, but without the action?

Anyway, Corgi had a poke and produced these two as 'enhancing play-value accessories' to accompany a die-cast space-fighter model - 647 A1 - Buck Rogers Starfighter. Polystyrene, the robot chromium-plated over neutral plastic, Buck in white with minor paint highlights.

Kill 'em, kill 'em all, or they'll keep coming with their mildly witty, slightly saccharine, child-like asides and platitudes, kill 'em now, all of 'em! Twiki? I think I called him Twiggey last time - I don't care, I hated the little bleeder!

I'm afraid I can't do that Dave, I'm not tall enough.

F is for Follow-up - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

This post has a history almost as complicated as the bear's one yesterday, in that I noticed the main trope of the post a few days after the last post on the subject, which was a bit of a gap-filler itself, as I was working with a small sample. So I rounded up some new shots, but given how many there were in the previous effort, there was little else I could do with what I had.

Equally- the shots I took of the trope (the backs of the comics) were frankly kwarch, so at some point I borrowed them, scanned them, added then to the rather piss-pot poor folder's contents and forgot about them for a while. Then the other day I managed to pick a near-mint set up for £1.50p and it was all back-on!

So, the 'trope' of the post: The pre-production shots used by TSR for advertising the game contain some stuff which never made it to the game, That - in itself - is not uncommon, relying on catalogues for information is always fraught with the danger that the thing never saw the light of day, but I thought it would be fun to compare, in the hope that people might recognise one or two of the interlopers?

On the left is the earlier advert for the game, the later on the right, now I forgot to note the dates of the magazines, but they were only about four-months apart, and from 1988. Both were UK issues of 'American Comics'; DC's Superman I think?

The one on the left has several features not found in the final set, while the one on the right (also advertising Dragon Lance - Graham A . . . post coming soon now; thank you!) is accurate to the published sets, except in the colours of the six armies.

The most obvious anomaly is this chap, who stands in for the 'Gennies' (which I think should be pronounced Jean'eeze, rather than Jenny's), genetic engineered humans, larger than the standard humans.

Now, the question is - does anyone recognise the sculpt? There are that many of them in the publicity shot it seems they must have been either commercially available (probably whitemetal) stop-gaps for the PR studios photographer to work with, or - possibly - taken/borrowed from another boardgame, whether TSR or not?

They appear to be vaguely bird- or animal-faced (respirator?), with a 'blaster' held high in the right hand and the left holding a tapered shield. Do you recognise them, have you got some?

The figures eventually issued are the upper row of the lower shot here, firing two blasters back 'over their shoulder' as it were. I've also done an Airfix comparison, and you can see how the gold 'character' sculpts seem to have a hierarchy, with Buck and Black Barney larger (equal to the Gennies), Ardala and Doc Huer an intermediate size while Wilma and Killer Kane are as small as the human 'Troopers'.

The same conundrum is to be found in the space fleets, where the transports (left) are correct in the press-release image as for the game (as the Troopers were), but the other two craft are very different.

The 'Battler' (middle) is represented by something looking more like the Triang/LP 'Supply Force Mercury' married to the wings of an SR71 Blackbird! It's replacement in the actual game having more in common with a Klingon 'Bird of Pray'.

The fighter (right) too, varies between the image and the set, but by not so much, the issue one being similar to a Cutlass, the artwork using a sharper dart shape which looks familiar and may be from another game?

A shot with upper and lower surfaces and all colours, the transports look a bit like intergalactic ocean liners with their wide deck and lines of port-holes.

The factories are hardly changed, maybe the top right-hand corner tweaked/simplified to help the mould-release process. But the 'Satellite' is completely different with the PR model being more of a land-based radio-dish, while the game gets little killer-stations with a bloody-great ray-gun mounted on them.

As an aside; if you have a Galoob Micro Machine Star Wars collection, these satellites with their orange-segment, surface-detailing will make perfect heavy-machineguns for Snow Troopers on Hoth, matching the larger sphere-enclosed accessories that came with a couple of those sets, or the Action Fleet equivalents.

While the second set of magazine adverts had the correct set's artwork, the box itself gets the incorrect artwork from the pre-production publicity.

I have studied both sets of artwork, and as far as I can tell, the gold characters are in the correct sizes and poses, but there may be slight differences suggesting they were using masters or other production-phase sculpts, rather than the final issue mouldings, it's hard to tell.

And colours of all armies in both sets of artwork are different from the final production choice, the pale blue being closes in both pictures.

Finally; the near mint set that came in the other day had three damaged figures, two 'shot-shot' mouldings, caused by either the mould or the resin being too cool for proper production, causing the flow to stop before the tool cavity is filled, low pressure at the injection head in another cause of the same result!

I was going to replace the three with the ones I had here loose, but noticed that while the bases on all the figures in the set are smooth, the odds'n'sods are all marked with a reversed seven; so it would appear there are at least two tranches?

I have a set in storage, not quite complete and all the cards 'punched', but the box is better than the new one; I hope that between the two, I will cobble-together a really good one.

B is for Buck Bucks Ageing . . .

. . . by 400 years and finds a world pretty-much unchanged, but with very stupid robots and the odd spaceship! I didn't think much of the TV series back in the 1980's and the toys which sat on its coat-tails weren't much better, this one being TSR's effort: Buck Rogers: Battle for the 25th Century.

Also a bit of a box-ticker as it's got a big section in/on Boardgamegeek and has been Blogged elsewhere/elsewhen. It's a funny one for another reason; I have the whole set which when I was preparing a few board-game articles for One Inch Warrior (link below) years ago I realised was missing one of the character figures.

At a show in Birmingham (NEC) some chap had a set's-worth of figures in a tub for about 50p per figure, this was about 6/8 years ago, so I picked the gold character figures out, he too only had five, but I thought "Well, chances are!" only to find that actually Murphy dictates that sod's law trumps chances-are, and the missing figure was the same (it's one of the two women but as they are all in storage I can't report which one).

At probably the last Car Boot Sale I attended, also about 6 years ago, I got four in a bag of game pieces, still with the same missing figure, as one of the two absentees! Some time ago, maybe a couple of Plastic Warrior shows ago I picked up another five with one female missing but still didn't know which one, and with the other growing pile in storage, still couldn't blog the whole set!

Then last weekend Gareth brought me a small bag of stuff among which were the full set: 'Good things come to those who wait'! So I can now Blog them, but all the player characters, killer satellites and micro-rocket ships are still in storage, so you win's some you lose some . . . anyway I had fun taking the pictures!

So these are the six character figures (I think the names are with the right piece) each in charge of an army of a different colour in a game with a Risk-type look (the mechanism however, is much more convoluted), the first thing that become clear is that there are two sizes and what looks to be three sculptors across the set (including the two 'army' figures) and I believe there is a naughty reason for this . . .

. . . although I can't pin them down (yet), several of them look familiar, and I suspect they are all lifted from metal sets of the era (the game was issued in 1988), there were tons of companies around '78/82-onwards advertising regularly in the modelling press with this sort of stuff, and I think that's where they come from?

The smaller-scale hooded-girl on the left (Adarla?) for instance, looks very familiar as a role-play 'sneak thief', the equally small guy (Killer Kane?) on the other end of the line-up also seems familiar, while the guy next to him with the 'aytees' jumpsuit and notebook (Doc Huer, supposedly an older man?) looks likely to be based on the Guildford, Surrey dwelling alien - Ford Prefect - from the BBC's TV rendition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Again I seem to remember him from a Hitchhiker's set (not the Denizen Miniatures set) announced in Military Modelling's On Parade or G2?

The 'army builder' figures, I've only got the one big one here, but it's all you need for a post like this!

Again a massive difference in size and sculpting style, with the smaller one looking like he's been taken from a lead/whitemetal, post-apocalypse, Sci-Fi, war-games, street-gang, while the larger one looks like he's from a 28mm Role Play range, and possibly based on some cartoon figures from Heavy Metal, the graphic novel magazine, I also remember a set of space warriors called 'Doomguards' who looked a bit like this figure, is he a Drilliet or Mobius character?

If you followed the BBG link though, you'll know he's meant to be bigger...genetics!

The only contemporary plastics were the Matchbox Adventure 2000 figures (ironically copied by HG Games in their equally poor Buck Rogers set), one of whom has the same hussar-jacket buttoning (which has a special name I know, but: no Internet at home, library in storage!) as one of the Buck Rogers figures, they (the Matchbox) were also a bit bigger yet.

Although, giving it a moment's thought - as well as possible connections with the TV series and maybe lead figures, along with the Matchbox design similarities it must be said; both the main TV characters also bear more than a passing resemblance to the equivalent figures in the Airfix 54mm set, also contemporary with both the TSR and Matchbox issues, and containing other figures which paid homage more to both Dr. Who characters and members of Blakes 7's motley crew.

Playing on the plains of Planet Bhoringcova! Daleks with mind-slaves (why not - Cybermen seem to have them these days!) maneuver into attack formation, a mixed group of older (but much better) Daleks and Cybermen surround a last stand of the characters, and . . . "Can you tell me where I am . . . and when, please?"

Sometimes in Picasa you highlight say, two Merit shots, you want to collage, then, accidentally - or absentmindedly - hit the collage tool for the set of photo's in the folder above - the result was so abstract that I thought it suitable to subject you to!

I realised afterwards that the gold-backed character line-up has the look of Nigella Fáràgê (rymes with c**t) meeting The Trumpton (war with Iran now odds-on!) in that wholly overblown and tasteless vestibule last week!

A man who decorates his corporate HQ like a set on Dr. Who, circa 1983 has just been elected President of Oohessay, but then, I guess he has kept his hair-style from 1983! Mullets and war, with sexism and rusty pick-up trucks, there's your end-of-year predictions for what to look forward to in 2017, from the oracle at Waltii, get that tinned food in now.

If any of the metal guys recognise the sculpts let the rest of us know, if not I'll do a little digging myself in a couple of weeks (I happen to know I have four days of unlimited free Internet coming-up - whoohoo!) and see what I can come up with!

C is for Corgi Characters

This is the least complete of all these Corgi posts and yet it was the largest area covered by Corgi who really bought into the licensing 'thing', producing a lot of adult and children's TV, comic and movie characters, or vehicles based on them.

My problem being that while often know what's what, it can take years to correct the 'unknown' boxes, especially as in recent years my stuff has been in storage twice, in three venues with 6  moves! So...most of the Sci-fi,  Marvel and DC stuff is elsewhere and a lot of the anthropomorphic cartoon stuff likewise, while the Superheroes are deliberately in another box...but here are a few to give a flavour of the oeuvre...

The yellow submarine, who (of a certain age) didn't have one of these, not because we knew what it or they were/was, but because our still slightly uptight late-Edwardian parents could attach themselves to the younger 'Hippies' vicariously, by buying us a psychedelic cartoon submarine barley large-enough for the four-man popular beat-combo occupying it!

Hey maaaan...anybody got a carrot...I know I've done that one before...I'll do it again...he was a stoner! And that F***ing snail...I hated the bloody whining whingeing moaning mollusk!

Tom and Jerry - unbeatable, when Tom gets sliced into a dozen pieces by a toaster or something falls to the ground in a heap of pieces, shake himself together and continues the pursuit! Why didn't he go and live somewhere else, dumb-ass! There was a Tom, and this toy came out 30-odd years before Small Soldiers and their roller-skate.

Pink Panther...two cool for school - period. There was another PP vehicle (the pictured one is off some kind of motorbike thing), a car with a huge fly-wheel and with a pull-strip motor, not sure it was Corgi thought, or whether it had a separate figure?

All the above are favourites with a whole new generation of infants, though the Magic Roundabout has had scene and dialogue changes/makeovers.

Buck Rogers and dribble or whatever the pet-robot was called - Yes; I could look it up but then someone might think I give an ess-aich-one-tea!

The Hardy Boys, there are a couple of three figures missing from the bands line-up here, not a big seller so the figures aren't as numerous.

The figure with a cloth-cap is from Postman Pat or Thomas the Tank Engine or Bob the Builder or....it's from the Corgi flood years...

Wonder Woman (looking like a native-American dwarve), Spider-man and the Green Lantern? Hornet (thanks M7 - see comments) There are loads missing here, other Spidy's, three sculpts of seated Batman & Robin's in two sizes, a Hulk or two, a large Batman, Superman...

M is for Marx and Matchbox

While digging out the Marx WWII G.I's the other day from the 'Marx - Odd Sizes' box; I found my little 'space' fire engine, God knows where it came from, although I remember having other vehicles from the range as stocking-fillers one Christmas when we were kids. I seem to remember the guys over at Moonbase Central showed a few a while back, and a Google search might help find the article, although they are starting to add 'tags' to their blog now.

So here it is with the 30mm Space Commandos from the Matchbox 'Adventure 2000' series of 1977. There was a bit of a fad for this type of vehicle around the early 1970's, as I also remember small animals with similar wheels (mouse, puppy, kitten etc...) and others with wind-back-and-run motors.

Having enhanced the fire truck 'photo-shoot' with the Matchbox figures, we may as well have a look at them - all three from both sides, they are in a pale blueish-silver metallic polyethylene and are in the same rather dated style as the Airfix 54mm set that would follow these in 1981, not surprising as both lots were the work of one man - Ronald Cameron!

HG, a US play-set issuer in the 1980's produced several Buck Rogers sets with cheap Hong Kong rip-offs of the Matchbox figures, which were slightly larger, slightly cruder and a more greyish-silver, the HG figure is the left-hand one in both shots above. Click and enlarge the image and you'll see the faint 'HONGKONG' on the much fatter base.

A few lose-ends; A nice painted figures that came in with a mixed lot - top left. The connecting plate that held the figures in under the card liner to the box and the little spruletts - as I call them - on the base of the figures in the shots top right. All three can be found with them but only the two ray-gunners are joined.

We looked at similar nodules Here and the main perpose of them is to ensure that the figure itself moulds completely by giving the hot resin somewhere to flow to 'beyond' the product itself, rather like the channels in a hot-metal mould.

Being metallic, these figures are starting to get quite brittle now, a fate they share with the very similar coloured Marx navy and others, bottom left shows the detritus in the bottom of their tub! The final shot - bottom right is a comparison with other Matchbox products, showing how Mr. Cameron has his favourite poses, with two Battle Kings and a figure from the Super King airport crash tender.

Added 17th July 2012;

Courtesy of Gog over at Toys from the Past comes this image of the guys in situ, the box is actually a reproduction, but a good one! Might actually be an original...translation issues!