H is for How They Come In - Brian, One of Two

I was trying to get them all in one post, but it wasn't going to happen, even with collaging, so I've split them sort of equally! A lovely parcel came from Brian Berke in New York about a month ago, and it was full of lovely things - you may recall we looked at the micro/space stuff the other day - and, of which these are the first half of the larger stuff.

 

 We're going to start with one of the real mystery suprises . . . my first thought with these was 'Flipper' the TV show (some Larami rack toy from the 1970's), because of the two dolphins (did Flipper have a mate?), but the characters just don't match, and these look much younger/newer, although they could just be clean and un-played-with?

 

But we have a girl (Flipper has two lads) who looks to be in medieval clothes, or 1950's snow-garb, she could even be a page-boy 'he', or a young (and poorly sculpted?) cheer-leader? With her is a ground-crewman of some kind (helicopter, carrier-deck?) and mechanic/sunbather/daydreamer, who's possibly the poorest sculpt?

They seem to have come along with some standard 'rack-toy' GI's copied from Airfix and more seventies in look and feel. Indeed, I did seperate them, but realised subtle changes of shade of the plastic colour were in both bags, so the soldier's bag is rolled up and placed in the character's bag, suggesting I'm not 100% either way, but don't want to seperate them until I know for sure!.

Now, come-on guys and gals . . . who knows what about these, someone must know something? That there are colour variations suggests quite a production run, and whether they were made last month or forty years ago, someone must know something? It's quite a hard polyethylene or nylon'y polymer? Can anyone help ID these, they need to be in the Tag list correctly!

 

5-5-24 - Brain himself came up with the answer the next day! But it took me a while to get a shot and wait for it to disappear from the sales site! They are Marx, from a late Dunby-Combex/Burbank era playset, Undersea Adventure, from about the same time as those odd, carded, 'shelf' vehicle rack-toys, or the late Guns of Navarone photo-art boxings. These khaki ones are reissues. I believe the vehicle stared in a few space playsets as well!

There were a nice bunch of flats, a couple of poses are similar to those ascribed elswhere to Cracker Jacks, particularly the bucking cowboy and baseball hitter, but they are not the same, and the [sports?] shooter too, while the ones in the larger image have the same bases as some Cracker Jacks, the others don't, so some other source maybe? The boxing kangaroo's "Put-em-up put-em-uuuuuup!" suggest an Australian connection?

 

I've divided them up (and photographed them) in three lots according to those bases, with the vehicles having quite angular ends, the bulk ovoid or 'cartouche' bases, and the other two figures something in-between, I suspect they all go together, but it helps to identify differences at the start rather than later!

We love paratroopers here, we love paratroopers in donation parcels! And this quite large one, is a different version, again, of one we've seen here before on more than one occasion, with quite high production values and a very small Hong Kong mark in the parachute case/bag.

These are US Cereal premiums, given away with Nabisco's Rice Honeys, and apparently manufactured by MPC, each has its name on it and there are some less common ones among them, and they are biggish with the Oarfish at 140mm/5½ inches, that's about half-a-banana, for some Faceplant readers! Clockwise from the flying fish;

• 17 FLYING FISH 20 IN
• 6 MANTA RAY 20 FT
• 17 NEEDLE FISH 5 FT
• 5 PORCUPINE FISH 5 FT
• 4 OAR FISH 30 FT
• 18 SAWFISH 20FT
• 3 GREAT WHITE SHARK 21 FT
• 9 BARRACUDA 10 FT

Ten feet? Ten phuqing feet? That's more than fifteen bananas! I thought barracuda were slightly-vicious, angry-salmon things you could punch on the nose, I don't think I'm ever going in the sea again . . . they come in herds, you know! Yes, there are two 17's?

 

Three lovely, full-on 54mm-compatible fantasy figures which I haven't found on Shaun's site yet and don't recognise, but they look a bit Tolkien'esque? So possibly a recent knock-off, although by recent, one has to remember how quickly the last 22-years have sped-by!

Lido Wild West, and originals, not the slightly insipid pastel ones from Hong Kong I have somewhere, so useful additions for future comparison shots, a modern AWI figure (Accurate/Revell or Imex?) and two very interesting copies of the M-Toy/Marty (Maymoon) barbarians, but in a smaller size, fantastic!

I can't remember who the big guy kneeling with the radio is, Marx, Ideal, or late Aurburn? But the others are the larger size of MPC, and are very useful as I have a few that are darker and lighter greens or metallic blue and silver, so these mid-olive green ones are a nice addition.

 

You know I struggle to thank these guys enough for these donations, and the best thanks is to share them enthusiastically with the rest of you, but many, many thanks to Brian, there are some real treasures above, and more to come, which, if I can blurb them up in the next hour or so, I'll schedule to publish for 9:30 our time (GMT).

And can anyone ID the dolphin 'playset' figures?

P is for Prehistoric Animals

And rather anachronistic, cave-dwelling, humanoid types! Each of which is marked HONG KONG on the handle/shaft of his axe, spear or club. Kent Sprecher credits some to Tim-Mee via either Sinclair gas stations in the 'States or Cracker Jack, but all mine were sourced 'over here'.

I picked this little lot (right-hand image) up over many years in one's and two's and a couple of larger lots that came with the plants, I'm pretty sure that at some point they were issued with the plants (copies of Marx Miniature Masterpiece accessories) but it may be a weird co-incidence? And with the paint and HK mark must be assumed to be Tim Mee copies - a safe assumption!

From the artwork I think we are looking at - clockwise from; Labradoodle Rex, Penguinman, Dimetropuma and Kuthunkacow! They certainly didn't come with plants when issued in the little header-carded (left-hand image), rack toy Prehistoric Animals poly-bags, of which I have . . .

. . . two examples, the contents of each are separately shown in the two images above. You get the three poses of caveman (around 32mm) and six dinosaurs/pterosaurs drawn from a known list of seven sculpts (Kent shows nine from Tim Mee), but with each set adding a new sculpt to my loose sample - there may be more?

They reappear as slightly smaller (30mm), gum-ball machine's capsule prizes (upper row) or Christmas cracker novelties, unmarked, unpainted and with sub-scale animals including something more mammalian (a unicorn-gazelle-goat!) for the cavemen to hunt!

While the lower row are smaller-copies still (28mm) and were all bought in Germany over a couple of years, so were probably wundertüten, or something similar from elsewhere in Europe; sobres/kiosko (Spain), bazaar (France)?

These were bough at the same times as the five smaller ones and from the same sellers, but may not/probably don’t go with them, the figures are a soft polyethylene (as the other two types were), while these animals are a harder polypropylene or ABS type material.

Finished to a better standard and with finer engraving, they are larger as well; the plesiosaur is around 60mm, but I suspect they are some kind of premium, or perhaps an early blind-bag collectable? The dimetrodon though is a distorted moulding, probably from too-early removal from the tool, causing shrinkage-fattening and a blister.

U is for Unknown Wild West Flats - 4 - Odds and Sods

So we come to what else is in the Unknown Wild West Flats box, recently out of storage and topped up with the bits I had here. Actually a few of them are known I just haven't got round to labelling them up or moving them so they are in the final shot!

Only the two poses, and I can only try to get across the feel of them as being like gritty rubber, the sort of stuff Auburn or Sun were using to make their early toys, but not so hard, possibly only because they are younger/newer?

It's almost as if they have been made from 1980's exterior door & window sealant or shoe mending compound!

Although only the two poses, they keep turning-up! And while the figures are - in the main - well formed (one of the archers is a bit short-shot at the tips of things), the bases seem to tell a different story! I suspect a hand-operated injection machine? The gate marks are at the head-end, so lack of 'puff' or dropping-off puff seems to have been the problem here!

These are interesting, sold to me as German sweet-premiums (wundertüten), they are only etched on one side, the reverses being blank. I wondered if they might be cake decorations when I first saw them as they seemed to have icing-spikes, but in fact they are just the poorly-gated runner-ends.

Looking at the way the 'base' line runs out to the cactus on the prone figure, suggests the sort of thing glued into snow-shakers, but they are a bit big for that at 60-odd millimeters, so I wonder if maybe they are factory blanks from some similar touristy thing, perhaps deep-framed pictures or 'box dioramas' - a slap of paint, some lichen/flock, a bit of sand-paper as a base and a formulaic gouache-painted backdrop?

If they are wundertüten, they must be quite early, as they are nowhere near the quality of the later Jean/Manurba/Heinerle stuff, nor even up to the detail of the margarine-premiums of that age?

While I have lots of margarine giveaway types in the 'known' boxes, there are the two gold ones here who are orphans, the one on the right being a poor copy of the Siku original, the one on the left a more original Mexican type.

The red chap holding his saddle was a recent purchase and seen here then, the rest have some info. attached; the pair shooting each other are from a board game; The Fastest Gun by Denys Fisher, missing are yellow and green 'good guys' and a bunch of black 'bad guys'!

Pretty-sure the white, running Indian is Nosco or Crackerjack (or Nosco for Crackerjack!) but I need to check and get him labelled correctly. The Tipi is a flat scenic accessory for fully-round Polish figures from PZG (the design continues round the back as the outside of the shelter), while the other five are purportedly from Italy, I'd like them to be Portuguese Osul, but I fear the bases are wrong, and they may be from a board-game?

These are all polystyrene, bar the orange chap who's ethylene, the two game-pieces who are polypropylene and the PZG which is a recycled polymer mix with some of the properties of each of the other three types!

So that's me' unknown Wild West flats, if you can anything to any of the figures in today's four posts it'll be much appreciated, but the search goes on, in any event!

P is for Pooch!

I've got tons of these somewhere, we looked at a few - rather fuzzily - here, but this lot has accumulated recently with mixed bags in May and the vending novelty purchase...

...Poodles and Scots/Highland Terriers always dominate these lots, with crude copies of old food premiums coming second. I think it's (Highland Terrier thing) down to the original (and much higher quality) gifts associated with whiskey brands, they were in glass, wood, ivory, Bakelite or 'ivorene' and we will look at them another day, along with the similar cats.

Lots of them are fitted with charm loops, some finding their way to the thin-end of a key-ring/key-chain. The two big blow-moulds will be infant or beach toys I suspect, rather that capsule toys or Cracker novelties, and speaking of 'crackers'; another source for these cheap plastic bubo's is the American food brand Cracker Jack, and the brown flat to the top right is from them I believe, and possibly the white one above him?