F is for First Flying Saucer

Except, they're not saucers are they, they're domed, and it's not my first, as I have the wonderfully lethal Marx Mystery Spaceship, and its half-controllable, 20-kiloton, kinetic-engine, with air-raid siren wind-up! But, this is my first 'full size' Hong Kong, placky-tacky, big-box toy, and I think it's one of the more common designs, not least than because PMS reissued it without stickers, a few years ago, also branded to a 'JS' (?), and claimed for China on a rack-card.

 

This is the older version, with NASA stickers, and while it was a bit grubby, which may have contributed to a cheap price, it cleaned-up near new, abart from playware to the gummed-paper flag.

 

What was known as a 'bump-and-go' toy, an eccentric steering, at the front, allowed it to escape obstacles by changing direction every few seconds, like a robot vacuum-cleaner, but it doesn't collect dust, or cats tails!

 

I don't know if the PMS issue had the original markings, or a new China-related message, but as far as I know the original was an unbranded generic?

 

One vinyl, one paper. Another Sanddown Park purchase, it ticks a box!

O is for Original Artist!

Shot this on Adrain's table, at the May Sandown Park toy fair, by BP Fairs, which is a good excuse to remind you there's another one (show, not painting) this coming Saturday!

 

Gouache (I think) and airbrush on art board, and we'll call it 'UFO'! There is a Dave McCoy on Faceplant, an American Artist with similar work, but more natural or abstract subjects. He also seems to always sign with a small 'c' on the Mc., so it may not be him, does anyone know who painted this?

UFO is for UAP - Imperial / CEM / PMS / Titan - Sammy Steel Series, Micro Adventure, My Adventure Journey, Space Adventure, Space Explorer

So, the last trio, except as Sammy Steel it extends to nearly a dozen sets, and two or three of them were issued as generics in France by the looks of it, but for the purposes of this post we're looking at the non-Sammy Steel sets issued in the UK and Germany, which are a trio.

 

For the Imperial US/Australian Sammy Steel story (which seems to include Titan Toys here, but I've not seen them in packaging), this is the start page for a four-page explanation;

https://mikestoybox.net/2014/07/12/sammy-steel-series-1-mighty-max-knock-off/#jp-carousel-6429

 

So, my two are in the middle, both PMS (which - at the time - might have meant a 99p Stores exclusive?), with the card back to the left and a generic from feebleBay on the right, although decent shots of the rocky one have escaped this post, it may be in storage?

 

We get two identical flying saucers, but only on the outside, as even then, they are different colours, while the inner liner is very-different between them both. To go with them is a rocky 'meteorite' based on what is supposed to be a volcano sculpt!

I didn't really notice that the German one is another card, and while I did shoot it in its entirety for the group shot at the end of the first post in this sequence, I don't have a decent single card shot! This was imported by a CEM?

I haven't opened this PMS set, but you can see the 'rest of the world' generics have all the contents of the Sammy Steel sets, but in new colours and without the Sammy character figures, although, I'm pretty sure I have him, the sabre-toothed smilodon (on the Blog somewhere?) and a couple of the other pieces not found in this trio, so they will all turn-up eventually!

 

Note the plug-in dish/ariel and fold out ramp, scudding about loose in the blister!

I did open the PMS version of this one after I'd got the CEM one to keep whole! The lizard man looks better in green than the Sammy Steel orange, in my opinion, although the fliver/flyer/hover-bike is probably better in the original grey? And these are all - sort of - 20/25mm compatible.

So, six true UFO 'saucers' and three more esoteric designs . . . I hope these posts have helped some with the ID'ing of these which have confused for some time, and as I say, these posts are a bit half-cocked, and we will return to them when I get everything in one place, and find the few missing bits (I may have the meteorite/cave), maybe do it as a single page, with all the sets/links together in one place?

And this is only what I've found, there's probably more; more packagings, more importers, more brand-marks, and while I don't often address money here, I was going to have a long paragraph or two ranting about the money being asked/paid for the US/Aussie sets, only to find someone has one of these PMS cards up on evilBay right now for 50-smackers? WTF? These are recent, cheapo rack-toys, you should hope to get, or pay no-more than 15-quid for, and - intrinsically - they are a fiver's worth of tat!

UFO is for UAP - Hinstar / Avra / DAS / Dival / Eugene / Simba - Galaxy War Striker, Star Warriors

Chapter two of this particular story, and my first encounter with it, I'd picked up a few loose micro-mech's a few years before I got my dog-faced trio with their big, blue space-taxi! And one of the first to get a good write-up (as Hinstar) about 16-years ago, but I now can't find the site?

 

Marked on the underside as Hinstar without a date, each of the three machines (only one is strictly a saucer), comes with eight robots, which I assume are based on/cloned from commonly licensed 'Mechs', from Japanese or US Kid's TV output?

 

Imported into the UK by DAS, into Greece by Avra, and Germany and it's neighbours by Simba, they are all brand-marked Eugene, and I have a screen-cap which seems to indicate a Dival also imported them to somewhere, but Google won't search for Dival, defaulting to 'Devil' without the option to search for the asked phrase/task instead?

 

My original sample, shot in 2013, at the time they were in the Galoob boxes, as someone had authoritatively stated they were Micro-Machines, not an attribution I was ever happy with, they didn't have Galoob quality, they didn't have MM bases, they didn't have Action Fleet or Army Gear articulation, and they were both polyethylene and clear knock-offs?

 

But you can see they had three colourways, and more than eight sculpts (I still haven't tried to work out how many sculpts there are?!!), with metallics that vary from batch to batch and are best described as Brass/Gold, Copper/Bronze and Silver/Gunmetal/Aluminium. The one on his own at the bottom is mould-damaged, and quality on all is no better than rack-toy 'army men'.

My three, with the original 9 and others which have come in I should have enough to calculate the total number of poses, but simply haven't got round to it yet! Generally the colours of the robots tie-in with each ship, but there were larger space-station sets which may have got a larger mix of figures.

 

While one issue (Holland?) got human or humanoid figures in primary colours which I haven't tracked-down yet. Their vessels may all be different colours too, the pale blue 'arrow-head' is navy-blue plastic in the Dutch issue.

Two spaceships and a flying saucer, which has offset 'battleships guns' sticking out to be broken off! All these sets can be traced back to Polly Pocked, not the Mighty Max most websites suggest (for all three sets), as Max himself owes his existence to Polly, who predates him. Equally, Galoob, who had the most success with this stuff, were only exploiting an existing idea from Bluebird Toys.

A couple of interactive parts, with a moving radar dish and sliding 'elevator' capsule, mine all came together about 18-months ago, but then went straight to storage, so I can't remember offhand what details the other two had, the silver one may have had sliding seats, and the orange dome in the brown one may have done something?

 

The Greek Avra sets, they were issued as the above three designs as well, with an Avra sticker, but here have been given new ship designs (on the same Eugene cards, slipped into the Avra boxes) and you only get five robots per card/box.

UFO is for UAP - Uni-King Toys / Peter Kiri - Mysteries of the Universe UFO

So, I'm not so fussed about the absolute order of these, but these are the 'better' of the three lines (marginally), so I'm leading with them, even though the Uni King sets (which I call the 'Triple Flap Families') were dated 1996, against the 1993 of Imperial's Mighty Max knock-off - Sammy Steel!

 

March 2021 - Sci-Fi & Fantasy

These three posts are a bit of a mix of Internet stuff and my stuff, as the bulk of mine went to storage before I'd got all the shots I wanted, although some of them had already gone, or been separated at some point, the best are the Hinstar (next post) as all three loose sets came together at the end!

 

So, variously generic or, as the larger sets, credited to a Uni-King, and sometimes the UK importer Peter Kiri, these are a lot of fun, and you get little 'families' of aliens (hence my shorthand name for them!) with a few accessories, in a 'flying saucer' or UFO which unfolds in three sections and has a micro-mini UFO as the roof-piece, which can be flown off! By fingers!

We saw my first family, incomplete, way back at the start of the blog, the dog-faces, in the blue saucer, and a black saucer came loose from Chris Smith I think, not that long ago, but they are both in storage now, one with a couple of bits missing, the other sans contents.

 

But I did get the figures from the black one, although I'm not sure if I shot them, and these (Greenies) may be an evilBay image? The 'Greys' I did have to hand, but the accessories were only partial! Basically, you get two adults and two kids!

 

The green set, with its micro-UFO sitting atop the central column. This one also has three not-so-greys, moulded into their stasis-chambers, and - like the other three - a revolving floor, which allows for a second layer of detailing underneath, visible in sections as you push the missing segment of floor/gap around the central column.

Spiny-twisty things, there seems to have been plans for a third cover/hatch (hole next to left-hand feature), but for reasons of budget, or technical difficulty (or forgetfulness?) it never happened? The saucers and accessory-pieces are a 'styrene, or brittle'ish polypropylene, while the figures are PVC or one of its substitutes.

I'm missing a tripod, which should be red, but is white on the packaging artwork, in fact all the packaging artworks show pre-production stuff, and there are various subtle differences in design and contents. The missing elements mean we can return to this set another day, when I've got everything together and filled any gaps!

 

Each set is themed around a couple of tropes of the UFOlogists, here it's 'Greys' and the Easter Island Moais, the huge monolithic sculptures carved by the Rapa Nui with NO help from phuqing Aliens! And the little Moai is also missing, but I may have one somewhere in the stash, but I fear mine is Lego, Kinder or something similar?

18/12/2023 - Late Addition:

My original 3 of 4 'cute' aliens, I'm missing the other 'child'.

I is for In Space No One Can Hear You Blow Out Your Candles!

Cake decorations, not rack-toys, but the price-points and ephemeral nature of the products are pretty similar, and as I say most years, a few days in, RTM isn't just for RT's! Wilton today, and their quite eclectic output of Space Toys over the years, and probably not all of them but the ones I've been made aware of.

 

These are all generics, in that the rocket also comes as a stand-alone cap-bomb, and while I think I have one now (might be on the Blog?), it wasn't here when this post started to take shape.

 

Likewise the MPC copies are pretty common, these seem to be not the best copies, but not the worst, and from the colours (which I like) may be the same ones issued in rack-toy bags by . . . errr . . . Payton? Someone like that!

While the Ajax-Archer copies seem to be the soft-plastic with paint, Hong Kong figures also issued as both rack toys and bagged parachute-toys, in which guise the later, unpainted mouldings, are quite common. But the helmets would seem to be unique to the Wilton issue copies?

I can't find these in the catalogues I have, so they must have been a short-lived item, if they were Wilton, I was told they were but can't find anything definitive, I believe there's a second pose, I only have the one at the moment, but note, on his back; the same KT in an oval cartouche, as the firm which issued all those statuettes and pencil sharpeners, stationary stands etc . . . we've been looking at here at Small Scale World in the last few years !

 

He (previous shots) may even (with his mate) have been the production versions of the two in this catalogue image, with the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) or lander, as I don't think I've seen these either? Revell scale-ups? Behind them is the Gemini craft with two larger scale astronauts.

 

Here's the three of them, what do you think, could he be contemporary with the other two, having replaced the 'mock-up' press figures, or am I still looking for three other astronauts? And the bigger guys served to ID others in the 'unknown seated pilots' zone! the KT is about 45mm (50 with the domed stand), the other two 60+mm

We have also looked at the loose candle-holder figures here, not that long ago, but there was a second set with a UFO and one each of the two figures, so Junior could have space-cakes until he was eight, on two purchases! Then, if he makes it, the nursing-home staff could get them out for his eightieth!

 

The collection, as it stands, minus my loose UFO figures. The catalogue image above seems to show a transparent red-nose, mine is a totally opaque, flat red. And I'm not sure if the figures are even in the bag? I think they're stuffed into the ship, but I can't check as it's gone to storage.

 

 

I think I nicked this off evilBay to remind us of the figures without opening (or having to find) my bagged set!

UFO is for Undersized Forces of Offworlders

As a sort of 'follow-on' rather than follow-up from the recent eraser and other mini-UFO/Space type posts, including the Buck Rogers stuff (which Woodsy and Mitch managed to miss!) I found these, but they are all teeny-tiny little things no bigger than a thumbnail, so we go down a size, to Micro-UFO territory!

 

These are currently on Amazon, branded to Kid Fun, for possibly a few too-many quid, and seem to consist of 24 sculpts, each of three colours for a 72-item count, no more than 30-somthing pence each, so one can't be too harsh, if you are looking for things to fill party bags, 20 kids will get at least three each?

While these may have a bit of age about them, although not as much as the graphic might suggest? Japanese minis sometimes referred to as 'glico' due to the use of similar minis as premiums in the Glico food combine's confectionary products, and here, possibly intended as erasers?

 

Looking at the two sides of the card, there 'might' be one or two other designs, but I suspect this is all of them, there are six designs here, all slightly different, but all marred slightly by the little finger-grip rod sticking out of the top of each.

 

Obviously, my Japanese language skills are less than rudimentary, but I think the right-hand view's card is showing the types of movement 'observed' by UFO watchers? While the left view a more fanciful showing of 'known' UFO designs! Branding looks like it could be Crescent! Or Crescent Moon?

There is a seventh item in the bag which I suspect shouldn't be there? Unlike the hard vulcanised ribber of the other six, this one is a soft silicon of the stretchy-animal type, and is either a malformed piece of factory-junk, or a bag with two corners tied-in with string?

 

If the former; it's just fallen or been thrown (by machinery?) into the bag accidentally, if the latter; it belongs in a different set, perhaps with a figure to hold/carry it? It could however be a bonus item (like Strelet's streletsi?), to be collected one at a time by multiple purchases of different sets to build a 'free' set? You can see the fine detail on the actual UFO's also contrasting with the smoothness of the probable interloper!

And they really are all no bigger than a thumbnail!

 

They remind me of two of my favourite sci-fi shorts, one of which might have been done as a Tharg's Future Shocks cartoon in 2000 AD? In the first a mighty invasion fleet has spent many-years in hyper-space travelling from wherever to invade the luscious looking Earth, only to materialise in front of a big-rig on a US highway which promptly smashes them into a billion pieces without ever seeing them, as they were no more than a cloud of gnats in our scale, the other story was similar, but a dog licked them off his food after they landed, or something like that!

Haha! Two hours later and Geoff found this one on eBay, now (nine dollars plus postage), same set, same soft silicon-looking addition, but clearly a 'death star' type space station, with one or two sucker 'ears', which have obviously deformed on mine, so that's that mystery solved!

F is for Follow-up; the Mailman Called!

So, further to the previous two posts, the other sucker-toy spaceships turned-up, as did another larger lot of mixed erasers, pencil tops and fridge magnets, so a quick follow-up here, a return to rubber robots later and then something else, because you can have too many multicoloured infant toys in any given period!

 

Three new ones and a duplicate of the evil-looking crab-like, bomb-shaped, claw-armed one! I have no idea how many there are, or how many colours they come in, but I think I have seen them in the background of other fleaBay searches over the years, and there are a few more to find . . . or one or two maybe?

I shot them twice as it'll be a while before we see them again, I don't doubt! And as I said the other day; they are made out of a polymer which doesn't seem to be aiming at erasing anything! So potentially capsule toys, sold as 'sucker' novelties rather than erasers?

They still stick to windows, but the sky was less interesting today! The act of photographing them against glass with the background at infinity (photographically speaking) makes them looks slightly fake, Photoshoped or an animation cell!

The other set which came in, contains various themes, some of which I've been aware of (spaceships and robots) some I wasn't, while the two 'mineral samples' (or asteroids?) came with a different lot a while ago, but clearly match the rest.

 

Spaceships on the top row, the fighters may be re-issued, I know I've seen the F14 Tomcat in other colours (Diener?) but they may be bigger, likewise, the vehicles in the bottom row have 'vintage' counterparts. Another clue to their being re-issues is that markings differ between them, while the quality of the mouldings is good, due to their being from Japan rather than Hong Kong or China.

There's also some robots, here compared with a previously mentioned Diener chap ('Gill Face'), nicely compatible, and again I don't know how many there are, do they go with the spaceships, or are we looking at several part-lines here? I suspect various part lines, re-issued in gold/silver elastomer and sold out of shop-stock grab-trays? Certainly I do know the robots had a vintage issue, in primary colours, and there are several more to find in either iteration - a lop-sided 'duckting' one and a couple of Diener-alikes!

UFO is for Utterly Frivolous Objects!

Following-on from last night's post, I sort of went off down a quick flying saucer/eraser rabbit-hole, and here's the results, nothing too exciting, but it's all fun!

 

The Imperial saucers again, along with those polyethylene ones we looked at here, and the red one in the middle which is a newbie! Not sure if it's meant to be an eraser, or just a novelty, but it has a sucker-pad and is manufactured in more of a PVC-alike, than a pencil rubber material type?

On the left here are two combined erasers (outer, white portion) and pencil sharpeners; hidden within the coloured transparencies. They are still wrapped in a crisp film, but I can't decide which one to open!

Adding the two rounder ones from the previously blogged lot (and I forgot the Silvercorn saucer in that post, but I don't know where it is right now, to compare anyway!), and a mini UFO Frisbee, branded to Dick Turtle, who was the mascot/brandmark for one of the lucky-bags available in the late 1990's. He WAS a 'space' turtle, more normally depicted riding a rocket, than a UFO though!

Three more of the sucker set (there's a few in the post, so we should soon be returning to them briefly?), they are more generic in their sci-fi'edness, but shades of Star Wars and Star Trek I think? Even Alien, with that chunky, funky-green 'factory ship'!

They stick to windows!

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!