F is for Follow-up - Combat Plunder Post

Basically looking at the 'who are they' figures, I'm afraid it doesn't add much, but is a useful reminder of where we're at with these. I had a couple of other supporting images in Piacsa, so I've put a few up, at the end of the post.

 

This is a shot of the versions I was originally told were Galoob, and which are copies of the Galoob Micromachine smallies, or were pantographed-down for them, but there is no evidence to date that the 40mm versions were actually, ever sold by Galoob, however they are quite common as Realtoy, Daron or Sky Mark. I'm now pretty certain these came from whichever Chinese factory was supplying Galoob.

 

While this set is the softer copies, which I have pencilled in, with the minimal of circumstantial evidence as being from Pioneer, or whoever supplied Pioneer, given they were primarily a die-caster. Here in Imperial/Buddy L branding, we have also seen them as Stonegalleon and Woolbro/Toy Leader, while the smaller, unpainted copies, are more likely Pioneer. This is a poor shot, which I think must be the seller's picture of a set I bought, as . . .
 

. . . I have managed to scan the lining-card! You can see several of the firefighter figures which have come in with mixed lots, and some construction workers, I hadn't even made the connection on! The prone figure is not a Galoob sculpt.

 

Shipped into the UK by Titan, which puts Supreme in the frame too, but only loosely, they had their own sculpts, the larger Ackerman et all., set. I'll try to remember to do a follow-up or 'roundup' on them too, once the Chris donation posts are done.

 

The best way to understand it (or not!) is to click the Realtoy Tag, but it's all getting a bit confused, and I'll need to bring everything together in a larger post, with all the sets, and the many loose figures (no duplicates so far, due to three sizes, two materials, and a dozen or so plastic colours and/or paint-ways), set side-by-side.

 

And then, are the bigger (50/54mm) ones we saw from Greece (Zita Toys) also Pioneer or another supplier, the evidence is they are Pioneer, and they have some of the firefighter poses too. The fact that the rough, oblong based versions are now being found alongside the smoother, ovoid 'Galoob' bases, suggests one source for all bar the Realtoy, and what evidence we do have, is that Pioneer (or their supplier) may be that supplier?

 

Some more of the poorer copies of Marx's 45mm GI's, in two shades of green, I have a few of these too, somewhere! We looked at them quite early-on in the Blog's history, here

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2012/07/l-is-for-late-thanks-to-blogger.html

 

The hard-plastic, painted-polystyrene versions turn-out to have been a troop supplied with this battery-operated ("Bateries not included"!) Power Mite truck. A similar yellow truck with (I think?) cement-mixer OR aggregate-tipper bodies had the six (?), very finely sculpted, 35/40mm construction workers, like Blue Box's copies of Dinky, but much nicer, and very brittle. They may also have had a later, window-box issue? I think a comment on that old post may have been confusing these with the smaller Miniature Masterpiece sets?

 

A reminder of the smallest packaging variant of the Supreme/SP Toys issues.

Metro is for Play Set

Only two images, but having mentioned Pioneer in the previous posts . . . and an important post here as it fleshes-out several musings on Small Scale World over the last few years, and it does so through the medium of what the dim-witted branch of the hobby derisorily call 'plastic smalls' . . . in public, on the record!

A classic rack-toy; which, when bought (late 1990's) was probably still in the sub-pound price-bracket. An under-scale house, raised flower-bed, picket fence in three parts and store-front, all in polystyrene (or polypropylene - I've never opened it), a blow-moulded soda-dispensing coin-op' machine, a die-cast pick-up truck in the Matchbox 1-75 or Hot Wheels style and a small PVC figurine. It's notable for being aimed more specifically at little girls, rather than boys with blokey army-men or both siblings with a unisex plaything.

Actually . . . I think the 'store front' might be the raised deck of the house!

But, I hope the more observant of you will be thinking "He's shown us this before" - I haven't, or "I recognise that figure" - you should! It's the Galoob 'everyday' clothes Pink Power Ranger figurine, copied in a larger size and they've hardly changed the paint-job!

Fully marked to Pioneer, this is on one level only circumstantial evidence, but strong enough to become empirical over time if the absence of something stronger continues. I have suggested those Realtoy-Daron copies of Galoob soldiers might be connected to Pioneer and that some of the other 'might be Pioneer' figures . . . err . . . might be Pioneer! Also there's the question marks over the Zita and yesterday's Stonegalleon (and the contributed Firefighters - which I haven't forgotten about; Theo and Brian!).

Well, I suspect quite a bit of it is Pioneer, probably most of it and that those larger copies of the Galoob figures used by Dacron, Realtoy and Sky Marks ARE Pioneer as is this figure, along with the carrier deck-crews and possibly both baseings and sizes of the firefighter/mechanics and the painted/unpainted GI's seen in previous posts, even the Zita/Stonegalleon may well be Pioneer, as all the combat types/sizes/paint treatments share some poses. It even explains the one softer Realtoy firer in flat-green paint.

Contemporary with the other known makers I keep mentioning in these posts - New Ray, Smart, Soma, Supreme - as they were, if not working together, at least watching each-other very closely as they exploited the same pocket-money and window-box niches in the late 1980's and 1990's. With the lesser Wing Mau and K&M (before they adopted the Wild Republic moniker) also producing bits of this stuff. While in their larger 1:32^nd scale Street Muscle series, Pioneer produce very detailed and well made/painted driver-figures

And it's ironic that 2019's frantic Google'ing, astronaut post and firefighter/mechanic follow-ups have been confirmed by something so inconsequential which was in the collection all along! I imagine today's card was one of four-to-six with the other everyday-clothes Power Rangers similarly scaled-up.

And if this is all confusing, the Pioneer or Realtoy tags will get all the musings up on one or two pages, in reverse order of the evidence coming together - with help! I would have brought them all together and re-shot them, but they are away already! I have had some more of the smaller unpainted green ones come-in and they confirm the links tighter with pose duplications.

Oh! And it's sub-branded to the UK importer HKT with a  sticker!

A is for Army Men - RTM '17 - Part IV - Mostly Smaller Scale Crappytoys!

Or at least, this was going to be the small scale post but a number of larger ones crept in so it's not, also the numbering rather peters-out around the time we find out what happened to the 16 some of you may have noticed yourselves not noticing so far! In other words - it's the loose ends of what has been no more that 'What's in the Fritz-helmet/Modern Chinatroops' unknown's box'!

Seen before on the Blog, more than once I think and being carried by various brands at the moment as the default small scale, they are actually around 30mm and a second shade of silver-grey - distinct from the silver - surfaced in the 'Big Bag' from Peter Evans.

I re-shot the shelfie (right-hand picture) I got so fuzzy last time and we can see rust-brown still to enter the collection here at Small Scale World Towers while Brain Berke shot the left-hand bag when he was last in the UK, it showing an apparently darker green set of figures.

Here the same figures are being offered on Alibaba by an 'E-Toys', made-up brand if ever I read one, but clever and you wonder why no one else thought of it first, but maybe they have!

Number 16 has been in the collection for a while and may date back to the Hong Kong era, but he has the chalky look of more recent China production.

The broken figure seems to be Hong Kong, but without a base it's not clear, he also seems to be quite original? Next to him is a green, soft PVC, copy (?) of the believed to be Galoob for Realtoy (et al.) in denser plastic. I've put the question mark in brackets as he may be from the same factory/mould, just for a different contract, and some of Micro-Machines own figures - especially the early, unmarked, small scale 'combat' ones were in softer PVC anyway?

The other three are small-ish scale (all in this shot are around 40mm) copies (or homage) to the ring-hand MPC figures, I have no weapons or helmets for them so don't know if they had them but suspect they must have, if only by going by the little belts - which are removable! I'm guessing gum-ball machine capsule toys, but they may have had a header-carded bag, or blistered outing too?

Speaking of Realtoy and moving up a scale, if anyone tells you the figure lower left is Realtoy, tell him he's making it up as he goes along - again! The Realtoy one is bottom right and we looked at them here a while ago.

The upper image shows the unknown 50mm figure, a couple of the denser/harder PVC Realtoy (et al.)'s; they have also been marketed as Daron and Sky Marks, while I've been told they were Galoob, and certainly follow Galoob poses; along with the softer 'copy'.

In the lower image we see the various colours now found, the sailors being consistently painted the same, the others coming in desert-sand, olive-green, a 'Russian' SF/SWAT/Urban camo', a general camouflage and the woodland green 'copy', however there is a commoner reverse camouflage with sand as the dominant background and blobs of green and brown but I don't have one in this pose!

Similar figures (looking odd as they have no belt-order/webbing) are being offered by Smile Station on Alibaba and evilBay (upper shot) or at least they were a year or two ago, I can't find them now, but that's made-up brands for you, easy come; easy go!

Another set of similar figures were Blogged here.

While the various unknown carrier-deck ground-crew in the lower picture manage to look like both the unknowns; the five in black PVC are very similar to the green chap but a tad taller, while the lower three are in a soft silicone-rubber and look like the not-Realtoy figure!

However, I now know the lower chaps aren't carrier-crew, they were sold in a Realtoy-like, but unbranded/generic window-box 23710 Die Cast Metal Airport Play Set, two per card, so that may where the larger unknown figure originated, not the civil airport; but another generic window-box!

Found these on Alibaba, they look to be all new poses, of some merit and in a smaller scale; mabe45mm judging by the accompanying vehicles? And - note two new variations of the CAD-CAM-hulled AFV we looked at the other day.

Those Tamiya 1:48th copies (which Arlin Tawser ID'd here a while ago) came-in again, in a larger sample with the 'Big Bag', still unknown, but by adding one 'missing' figure gave a photo-opportunity of 6 poses x 4 figures x 2 armies for a 48 total which I suspect will prove to be the/a full-set/set-count? Miss-moulding has reduced a couple of the B.A.R-gunners to mere riflemen!

Finally, we looked at Skylark yesterday with a nice set of figure sculpts in a larger scale but in the smaller scale they are offering these really poor copies of some pretty poor 1990's copies of copies of Airfix, which (the 1990's ones) were also issued with Majorette AFV's.

G is for Galoob...I think!??

Modern vinyl kac-ka, so text light, and image heavy! The only problem with these is their heritage...they are regularly listed on feeBay as Galoob, they half-mirror the Galoob small scale figures in both pose and the mid-1990's numbering under the base...but I can't find them in Galoob packaging? Hopefully someone seeing this will be able to confirm or deny...

Comparison shot between the subjects of today's post and some of the Galoob MicroMachine figures, the sailors share a paint scheme as well as pose similarity, and both the earlier unmarked figures from 1993/4 and later figures are 'twinned'.

They came (come?) in five types of decoration, the sailors unique in their blues, the combat figures in an 'urban' DPM of the type that came out of the Soviet Union in the 1980's, in blues and greys, along with less common sand or light-olive versions...

...and (top right) an even less common temperate/desert camouflage. There seem to be 20 numbered poses, of which I have still to track-down five by the looks of it. The airbase/sailor/MP type is a home re-paint, his arm has also been cut and glued, but the Internet suggests it was glued back roughly where it started life...still; it means I'm looking for 6 poses in all...not a priority I must say!

The reason for the question mark over them being definitely Galoob, is that they are still available on the internet under Realtoy and Daron labels (Googling 'Daron Action City' or Realtoy likewise will take you to these screen-capped images - I haven't tested them for live-sales status though). Both seem only to be generic rack-toy brands and to carry only the same three poses (in a standard insert) in the least common colour variant, so it may be that they only got these, and that the rest ARE Galoob...can anyone confirm this?

The two Hummers are very useful for 25/28mm war games, while the VAB and chopper are good to go with 20/23mm figures, the truck's nice, but small, the tank is charity-shop fare, along with the accessories!