L is for Loose Lots - Sandown - Sci-Fi & Fantasy

There's still a couple of Sandown related things in the queue, but they may join the many folders down the bottom (of Picasa!) which date back to up to fifteen years ago, it will get posted one day . . . it will! In the meantime, here's the sci-fi and fantasy element of my busy scurrying and ferreting, back in February!

 

Gareth found these and brought them to my attention, he managed to get another, 14th pose, but I've already got a reasonable sample of these, and we have seen them here before, painted, and as unpainted late production, including whacky plastic colours (fluorescent pink, green and oranges), as well as visits to bagged and loose Thunderbird additions to the range, in soft rubber and polystyrene, so I've probably got the missing pose?

 

Ovni (UFO) from Comansi, I don't know if these are factory painted, or home-paints, the seller and Gareth thought the latter, and when painted, they tend to have brown bases, so these are probably not 'official'. But, they were sold under various guises, as well as the UFO moniker, and the late Thunderbirds sets, they came as Battle of the Planets and as The Invaders TV series tie-ins, so they may have ended up looking like this at one point - the seller had quite a few, all in the same condition.

 

The fact that some faces are painted, others not, is also odd, a home-painter would do them all the same, a team of out-painter's wouldn't be so fussy? The real interest, to me, is in the plastic colours underneath, mid-green and metallic blue, which I think are earlier than my previous samples, making the whole sample, a better representation of Comansi's output.

 

A few minutes after publishing - In fact I think there's more than twenty poses in total, with the six Thunderbirds characters, maybe closer to thirty, we've seen a girl, a chap holding a space rifle parallel to the ground, a zombie/Frankenstein's Monster type, I think there's another kneeling one I don't have, a guy waving a space rifle, a guy holding an equipment box (which gives us 20/26), so when I've got my four or more samples together, we'll have a proper looks at them despite having had several 'proper' looks at them already! Doh!

 

Game playing pieces I suspect, and in the style of all that MB Games' stuff licensed from the Nottingham Mafia (Battle Masters, Hero Quest, Space Crusade, Space Hulk et al), but I'm in the dark as to which game these are from, and it's only the bases of the blue figures which are leading me in the GW direction? 

 

A blow-moulded astron . . . sorry, cosmonaut from the former Soviet Union, and while I'm not posting Russian stuff at the moment, this can be lost in amongst the other stuff. Not believed to be a parachute toy, but more of an infant's garden/beach/bath toy thing, a big chunk for tiny hands.

 

 "Wrestlers sah! Millions of 'em!"

 

Mattel's M.U.S.C.L.E., always nice to add a few more to the tub, especially these - mostly - coloured ones, when I first started finding these, they were usually the flesh-coloured chaps, and early web-pages would suggest the colours were rarer, but I think they were just later, so came to market later, and therefore come onto the secondary market later, too, they seem to turn-up quite often these days, but a nice sample, with a pocket monster to the fore.

 

The sublime and the ridiculous! Cherilea and Matchbox, although I'm being unfair, the Matchbox K-2002 Flight Hunter was a reasonable effort as the long-night of the long-knives in the toy industry of the early 1980's, bit deep. While I got the elusive space-slug, because he was affordable, due to his short-shot foot, I doubt he misses it!

 

Don't forget it's the London Toy Soldier Show tomorrow;

 

http://www.toysoldiershow.co.uk/

I is for International Rescue

Shot these on Mercator Trading's stall at Sandown the other day, purely as eye-candy. we looked at them years ago, but they were sitting there, so why not? The character figures from Thunderbirds, who were added to the existing Ovni ('UFO') line from Comansi at some point.

 

Bones and the Boss are obvious, but as far as the brothers go, it's a case of what colour you paint the sash, I think! There may be some clues for the more dedicated aficionados, but I'm only a casual, childhood-nostalgia type fan!

Seen with a couple of the smaller cereal premiums from Kellogg's, which also got issued by Tom Smith in a set of Thunderbirds Christmas crackers. You can find them in a more stable polyethylene, but these are more of the soft PVC ones, which were kicking about in large numbers a few years ago, and tend to get squished in the pack.

Home painted, we have Bones and Lady Penelope, although different sizes, both sets get across the woodenness of puppets quite well I think? That's it, just box-ticking some eye-candy!

F is for Follow-up - Comansi Space

Very-much following up on this old post, a few more have come-in over the last year or so, and we're gonnarave a quick shufftie at 'em!

On the previous occasion they were all the later unpainted production, while today's are all earlier painted figures and these four came in loose, and, a bit like the Lik Be figures, they are that half-NASA, half 'spacemen' type which is sometimes harder for me to get my brain around! But the amount of weaponry leaves them in the spacemen camp! And as you can see -  a high spacewoman count!

 

A rather naff TV tie-in was this card, and it's ONLY a card, the contents are the same-old 'OVNI' (UFO) figures from Comansi, and indeed, as a similarly painted/quality sample of four, the loose figures may be from one of these sets, as you do get four figures!

As you can see, these, the contents, are very similar to the loose sample, with a duplicate pink-lady, or at least I think she's a lady, the guys are so effeminate and lipsticked-up it's hard to tell who's what, and nothing wrong with that, but I see a future where we all have to wear a badge just so people know how to address us without insulting, and/or whether they can hit-on us, or not!

Pink . . . Person, from both sides, that's it, pretty much the same Tags as last time, no monsters, no aliens and no Thunderbirds, just the space people pretending to be Battle of the Planets characters, heading for the discotheque!

 

And now I'm off for a shower and an early night, because . . . it's the London Toy Soldier Show in the morning!

S is for Seen Elswhere - 40mm Comansi / Novalinea

These were not only seen elsewhere - on the intermawebby thing - recently, but are the shots (in colour) which illustrated my (black & white) article in One Inch Warrior magazine about . . . err . . . 20-years ago? I really don't know where the time goes, but I suspect Hell has played it's part in stealing the hours, days and years! Only scans, and lowish-res', so captions, rather than full blurb, they'll be looked at properly, again, another day.

 

Long boxes, I believe these were saved from a damp shed in Malta (?) or Cyprus, by that stalwart finder of nice things, Mike Harding, back in the early 1990's.

 

The box art from the three of them.

 

Loose figures as found in the sets, unpainted examples are from the later Novalinea branded sets, painted will be Comansi issued.

 

Horses, Indians get a quiver of arrows,

cowboys and cavalry get a sheathed rifle.

Accessories are the same as for the 54mm range.

Except the Teepee / Ti-Pi / Wigwam, which is downscaled.

 

Both sides of a flyer, which came in a larger set.

This was in the tub my loose samples came from, it went the way of all flesh, being very discoloured and brittle.

Comparison between the Novalinea box and one of Esci's classic red-box sets, a clear attempt to impersonate and (given the contents) mislead. And a bit naughty as Franco died in 1976, while Spain would join the EU in 1986, so there wasn't the 'Franco / dictatorship' excuse of being 'out in the cold' to justify such piracy against a near-neighbour?

Base marking of the 40mm figures.

I'll do a better job in the future with photography!

The Yolanda mark is the same 'Saloon' font, in the same 'TV' frame!

This was the label from a tub of 54mm figures, and the reverse of the sheet shows it to have been recycled from the Thunderbirds line, which included new character figures and some of the earlier Ovni ("UFO") space figures reconfigured as 'red-shirt' army-builders!

T is for Toob...no, Make that 'Tub'!

This is a post which has been in 'Draft' for so long I can't remember why I never posted it and/or what I was holding it for? So I'm chucking it up here as a bit of eye-candy, with a view to getting it out of the draft list (currently five), so the total number of posts equals the total number published!

 

Sent to the Blog by Juan Angel (Gog on https://toysfromthepast.blogspot.com/) also ages ago, even more 'ages' ago, so many thanks to him, and is shots of a sealed or at least unopened Comansi 60mm Wild West set, and an early one I think, later ones had a mix of painted and unpainted figures, while these are all painted. You can see cowboys, Native American Indians and Cavalry.

But it's not the earliest as it has a couple of unpainted horses along with a painted one. I might have one of those Comansi Sheriff's badges, from a 40mm set of these I had years ago.

Three tatty Indians which came in a year or two later (we may have seen them in a show report?) which I added to the post, but still didn't text-it-up or publish it, so, well, here they are now, nothing special, but up here at last!

G is for Generations of GI

Flagged a couple of posts ago (I'm alternating figure posts and mini-vehicle posts to get some stuff cleared out of Picasa . . . while catching-up . . . a bit!), these are the US troops from Comansi I picked-up at the London Toy Soldier Show a while-ago.

Pretty wacky, and definitely in the 'toy' section of the model-soldier venn diagram, and we seem to have the three main generations here, with a early one at the top, realistic olive-drab plastic, four-colour paint-job and a smooth, slightly clipped-corner, ovoid base.

Below him to the left is a simpler one with the raised-edge base in more of a pointed-end lozenge and to his right a late, unpainted one in a bright, 'infant' colour plastic.

Not sure about the grey paint on bottom-left, or the grey plastic of top-middle for that matter! But clearly there were many tranches/issues/batches of these over the years, note the all-over painted one is white plastic under the paint - he may be a home-painted 'bright' one?

A couple of bazooka men, again, is the yellow one a home-paint? And again with the grey plastic, were they issued as Marines in grey or something? I thought this might be a interesting post, but it's raising more questions than answers!

From the colour I'm guessing the flag-man (10 stripes and 24 stars??) was an early shot of the late base type as he matched the flat-based one in the first shot, the bottom two are grey and green again?

Previously seen elsewhere shot of them all, all is proves is there's a lot to collect if you want one of each . . . I think I'll stop at this lot, I may have a couple more in the storage GI's and I could grab some more of the late, bright-colours if I see them going cheap, just for a wider sample, but . . . well; they're nothing to write home about, although you can get a Blog-post out of them!

S is for Show Report - London, July 2022

Can you believe it's nearly the end of September? I took these at the end of June; seems like yesterday, and the next one is already on the horizon!  I picked-up an eclectic mix of bits at the show, although I notice we've already looked at one!

Starting at the top, since all the good works of Plastic Warrior magazine in bringing the background of BR Moulds to a wider audience, it's fair to say we're all looking around for the various items on the list, and here's one; a Mountie!

He could do with a re-paint, but as one can never know if he was factory painted, small-scale commercial painted or home moulded/painted (his intended fate), it's better to leave him 'as found', I think!

Various purchases during the course of the day, on the left, two celluloid guards from Japan, a probably French ostrich in an unusual pose, one of the standers-by from the Gemodels humpty Dumpty nursery-rhyme vignette and six of the figures which I think come from Monaco, common in France, but I seem to recall they were poly-something, or something-poly from Monaco? Copies of Crescent and MPC with another iteration of 'that' kneeling cowboy pose!

On the right a handful of bits from Adrian Little of Mercator Trading, the lucky-bag Indian (top) is a fantastic range of marbled colours, three bubble-gum premiums and a lead pilot below him and some oddments on the bottom row.

We saw the Supreme contents of the big-bag a while ago here, while we're not talking about the card at the bottom, right-now; inhuman bunch'o bass'turds, we'll return to them when they return to the family of civilised countries, while the Spanish card holds a few Comansi space figures.

I watched someone else almost buy it several times over the course of the afternoon before putting it out of its "will'ee-won't'ee" misery and taking it home myself! Branded to the Battle of the Planets license, it contains the standard, painted-era OVNI ('UFO') space figures.

Speaking of Comansi, someone had a heap of them and I kept going back and getting a few more and a few more until I had a shed-load! Can't remember if it was Gareth or Steve, but they were reasonable on the day! Here we have most of the Italian Infantry from at least four batches, mid-life (thin, ridged-edge bases, factory paint), A German (top right, earlier with a flat base) and a Brit'.

There were a bunch of US troops too, but they will get their own post shortly. These are 'real' toy soldiers in that they are largish, daft poses, quite crude sculpting and wacky weapons in wacky colours, but that makes them more fun, not less!

Nice mix here, again, from around both halls I think, can't remember if the astronauts came from Adrian or somewhere else? But both have still got their nice green faces and their helmets so a very useful addition to that sample, I only need a good robot now, I think?

In the same image; a nice Merten Indian tied to a tree, a French Indian and similar C20th infantryman, prone, a HK copy of a Timpo bear, a French (?) circus horse and the Black Chine pirate from the Isle of Wight.

The Dragon is a tiny bendy about 4cm, all-in, probably from a gum-ball machine's prize capsule, while above him are four really nice figures; a Spanish Dancer and a Spanish bullfighter, who is not from the 'usual suspects' but a slightly smaller, hard 'styrene tourist trinket I've not seen before?

Next to him is a slush-cast Napoleon, also touristy, who has - as his honour-guard - the Babes In Toyland pose from Marx I was missing when we looked at them recently, so a nice box-ticker - dubbed Valiant or Hooligan! I'll call him Bob! I don't know if I have two now? Rather lost track of them!

These were definitely from Adrian, and I think he obtained them the same day I got my original set, about 15/20 years ago, so I know how cheap he let me have them for and thank him. It's a full set of the Raja ice-cream premiums from Regimento ("The Regiment"), but a cleaner sample of the red/blue than mine, which I specifically chose for the other colour figures.

With a couple more 'other' coloured ones which came in from Chris Smith a while back and another from a show, it means I now have a really nice sample of these. Below them is one of those dress-up/play hunting-horn Indian 'riders'.

On the left we have more premiums, Flintstones and some Gem 'popsters' . . . I can't stop buying them, as there's so many colours and I've had enough luck with drum sets, so aim to make up several whole bands!

To the right more French production, Brian explained about Harry's box the other day, and I managed to get my mitts in it before everything had been hoovered-up, among which were these - some of the other French stuff, mentioned above, came from the same source.

The named Indians are what they are, while the knight is a copy of someone else's figure I think, but the two Zouave types are early SEGOM and a really nice find, we looked at the small scale back at the beginning of the blog, and I knew of both larger versions and the metal production, but I had no idea these existed in plastic, obviously the one on the right is missing a standard or flag and pole.