D is for Donation - Chris - Sci-Fi & Fantasy

There was some equally interesting stuff in Chris's latest parcel, some of it ID'd thanks to Shaun's excellent Fantasy Toy Soldier Blog (link below), my go-to for a lot of this stuff, although I probably don't consult it as often as I ought to!

 

My second Crackerjack space figure, there were ten, not twelve, which I know because soon after showing my first here, all ten were posted elsewhere by three different authors, well, fancy that, as Private Eye would say!

 

These were the chaps ID'd on Shaun's Blog, here;

 

https://fantasytoysoldiers.blogspot.com/p/name-brand-sci-fi-toy-soldiers-after.html

 

About 2/3rds of the way down the page, as Trendmasters' 'Rumble Wars', and there are many more on that page, but it's nice to have a reference sample, for future comparisons.

 

One of them however, the one on the right here, would appear to be a copy or second tranche figure, he's smaller, unmarked and a slightly different pose, to the figure he appears to be aping, on the left in each shot?

 

I don't know if the larger figure is a King Kong knock-off, or more of a monster-monkey-man, but standard 'zoo' fare, he isn't, and more of a Halloween-targeted 'rubber jiggler' item I suspect.

 

The cat might be from a board-game, while the two googlie-eyed critters might be from the same maker, despite being quite different subjects? The eyes are the same size, they are both the same dense PVC, they are both pencil-tops. Although one also has a charm loop, which could be for a tassel, and it could just be coincidence!

 

More anthropomorphic animals here, with a flocked bear, blow-moulded cat, and several of those 'small animal family' types, which predate Kinder's hard plastics by a decade or so. Particularly interesting are the two Tony-Tiger charms, as they are umpteenth-generation, much size-reduced, copies of the original sculpt also seen here as a larger key-ring.

 

The three-wise monkeys are teeny-tiny, and may be from a kit of some kind, they are 'styrene, and possibly too small for Christmas crackers? While the large black cat must be a Halloween thing?

 

Trolls! Two cracker/gum-ball charms, and what I think must be one of the Wheetos premiums, there have been several sets over the years, having the coiffure'able hair of earlier trolls, the Wheetos ones also have distinctive faces and props/costuming like this guy's fiddle and shorts.

 

A pair of Sugar Puff's aliens, I used to think they were 'cutesy', as you might expect of kid's breakfast cereal premiums, but increasingly, they now seem to look a bit sinister?!

 

Barbarians ('Doomlords of Gulch' if Tomy version) from Crossbows and Catapults, I have mentioned in the past that there are different versions of these, and it's a future post to try and sort them all out, here you can see a clear size difference between two issuers' figures, with a probable Tomy original on the left.

 

Blind-bag Star Wars deform, a couple of novelty cracker/Halloween skeletons, and a damaged Hilco spaceman, with two new to pile figures; a large (60mm'ish?) manga/anime type ninja superhero and a smaller figure who may be a Robocop clone?

 

A large robot, who has a mechanism underneath, which resembles that of a bayblade, and may indicate he was some kind of launched, spinning novelty? A pair of Manta Force from Bluebird/Tomy, and another Buck Rogers 'C3P0' pencil-top eraser to be colour checked against the master sample, and that bloody beebly-beeble from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century!

 

He's damaged, but fully marked, so gratefully received, as a sample, but I hate the little twat! I have a bagful of the Corgi ones and I hate them too - in fact, checking the Buck Rogers Tag, I've never had a good word to say about him, and always manage to insult him anew! He ruined an otherwise good TV serial!

 

Classic, big-box, TV-advertised, this-year's-big-Christmas-hit toy! I'd gone off to be grown-up, or as grown-up as I could manage, and missed most of them, but remember "Tee-Cee-Arh . . . totalcontrolracing!", the Star Bird one, "Em-Be-Games!!!!", Chutes Away, another with a helicopter and the exploding-bridge one!

 

This, originally from Tomy, was one of them, a bit big for me, and it will probably be offered-up as a swap (for other toys), but Chris explained it was only included as a space-saver/packaging. It ran up and down a track while two players fired ball-bearings at it, loser saw his bunker go airborne when the Terrible Tank reached it!

 

British Palitoy TV Ad; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMSfzxSy2FY

 

Finishing off with a few more of the Christmas cracker putti, it will be fun returning to them all one day and finding there's a whole, multicoloured orchestra, even if they have a limited number of intruments!

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.