P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Sci-Fi and TV

We find ourselves looking at another favourite subsection of mine, the Sci-Fi/ & Fantasy stuff, although there's some media-related in here, there's also some in the final 'mixed' post.

 

Both seen before, I suspect, a Poundland Pterodactyl and an old novelty skeleton.

 

Ger'Nomes! A probably Euro-premium or Wundertüte, with a thick layer of paint to be removed and what I think might be the Tobar John Major jobbie in the middle, but either side is some even-more interesting fellows, if more pixy'ish! A multipart PVC one to the left which I suspect is another Xandria piece from the Netherlands, and, on the right, an ex-keyring chappie, who may have been a Leprechaun, but he's not really green enough?

 

Among the small-scale stuff were two totally new to me/Blog/Hobby astro-alien types (red and green on the left) which are probably small 1 or 2 ¢/p type gum-ball machine's capsule prizes? The 12-wheeled micro-rover is in the style of Micromachines, but from somewhere else I think (anyone know?), and the blue chap is another premium/gumball prize type, being a reduced-scale version of the old Manurba sculpts,

 

A handful of post-Giant stuff includes a red alien from the big bags issued by Novelty Headquarters Inc., and is a useful find! While we have one of the blow-moulded derivatives of them behind, the eyes are everything with these, and he has both! Strangely, despite being on the blog lots of times now, some people were struggling to ID them the other day despite being followers of-, and [occasional] commenters on- the Blog, almost . . . deliberate amnesia!

 

When they are that desperate to post the same thing days later, they are feeling threatened by you, plagiarism, even of ideas, themes or subjects is the sincerest form of flattery!

 

I know, but this was a half-full folder! Two modern takes on cavemen, and another of the small ones in polystyrene which turn up from time to time, I now believe they came as scenic accessories, with an Aurora type range of model-kits from Life-Like, which were actually inherited from Pyro, so could be either?

 

The mini blue 'superhero' came as companion pieces to larger ones on Pound Shop cards a few years ago (probably still a few out there somewhere), a Cylon Warrior from Mattel's 1978 Battlestar Galactica line, I have the Earth pilot somewhere I think, a lovely Terminator, sans arm, but possibly an unlicensed rip-off piece, and an MB Games piece courtesy of the Nottingham Mafia!

 

The Superman keyring was a very generous inclusion in the package from Chris, as I think I know guys on Podstalions who would swap an arm for something both vintage and DC! In the middle is . . . a dough/cookie cutter? Something like that, infant crafts of some kind, but figural, and apparently glowing with radiation! The Orange guy may be a racing driver, and I vaguely remember doing a show-repot on a company at Kensington Olympia who had a bunch of similar figures?

 

As well as the Giant knock-offs, there was a smattering of the Lik Be (still LB, for obvious reasons) robot/alien types, always useful, and in this early, clean/sharp state, possibly HG Buck Rogers fayre? Many thanks again, to Chris Smith, for sending these, for me to share with the rest of you.
 

F is for Follow-up - G is for Giant . . . Not!

It's a funny old game, this toy soldier & model figure collecting, just when you think you've cracked something, something-else comes along to fuck you up! Exactly a year ago I posted the various Giant and copy astronauts/spacemen over on the Giant blog, I don't seem to have done an announcement here on the home blog though, but they went in here;

 

* Part I - Introduction

* Part II - Giant Originals

* Part III -  'C1' Copies

* Part IV - 'C2' Copies

* Part V - 'C3' Copies

 

And I was pretty pleased with the result, it cleared-up a lot of the confusion over the various types and I tracked down examples of most types of packaging, compared and contrasted, and illustrated the various different marks. It wasn't definitive; these things never are, but the articles did the job! Until now . . . 

. . . when first, Gareth showed this at the last Sandown Park toy fair (where I shot the above), only to let me have the example today at the London Toy Solder Show. He's about 45mm and has some age, but is probably a scale-up of the Giant mini's rather than the other way round, and only points to more to be found!

So, large scale copies of Giant smallies - the search goes on!

I is for It Was the First of April!

OK, so yesterday's posts were both attempts at April Fools; the Airfix Space Tank is actually the Centurion card mucked about with in Picasa (I was pleased with the shadow of the firing lever! While the Revell kit is by an unknown artist and was kicking around on Faceplant the other day with no byline, so hat's of to the original artist - if anyone knows him, let us know!

 

I actually posted several edits on different groups or threads on Thursday as I worked on it, so with yesterday's shares it's got out there!

 

I'm still not comfortable posting, given everything that's going on, but i realise that life must go on, and if Putin's going to start WWIII I may only have  a few weeks to get 15-years worth of work done, so it behoves me to just get on with it, however there is still Real life stuff in the background too, but I'll get back to posting something!

In the meantime I did post some stuff over at the But Is It Giant Blog; the Giant 'Space Men' got their day in the sun with five posts covering the main points

Introduction
Giant Originals
Copy Type 1
Copy Type 2 (Woolbro etc)
Copy Type 3

 

While I also took a closer look at the three Roman cards, previously seen in the 'page' at the top of this screen.

 

980 - Roman Legion Chariot Attack

981 - Roman Legion Assault Group

982 - Chariot Race

 

If you go over there and scroll they will all be in the reverse order to above!

T is for Two; The Toy House Toys!

Or, T is for a half, as I won't spend much time on one of them, it's destined for the 'But Is It Giant' page, and already has an intro' article, to go here, so that’s for next week or something, after I've got Rack Toy month out of the way . . . although we're less than half-way through the articles in that (RTM) section, so I'll continue to work through them for a bit!

Commonly referred to as Toy House (even by them, themselves!), there is officially a 'The' in front! A large-scale Western buckboard wagon, in bottle-bag with header card and a blister-carded lot of repackaged Giant aliens (from Mars!) with a flying-saucer / space-station / UFO thingy.

So to the wagon . . . only nine pieces and simple at that but I couldn't resist the colours; muted oranges and a turquoise-blue wagon body! Design is a simple one-horse affair, for all those one-horse towns!

Riders are quite specific with an offset locating stud on the driver (I think the sculpt is a copy of a larger figure with a locating stud in the center of his butt, whom was seen here at Small Scale World in passing once. The 'guard' who is very casually posed has a more complicated and very specific locating 'key'. The horse - who is expected to pull a bloody large wagon - is a skeletal-thin semi-flat!

I also suspect this is locally (US) produced; there is no sign of Hong Kong on anything, the plastic is a bit 'western production' chalky and the design seems to be Payton's but with a single late '45mm' horse instead of a fuller team, interestingly, the card mentions 'horses' and shows two? Also; there are four locating studs for what must have been a tilt/cover, which is missing, and for which there isn't room in the bag.

The whole assembles into a lovely carpet/garden toy with tons of play-value - if you're five - and have a small handful of stuff to carry about!

S is for Soviet Space Tanks!

You know I like the odd space tank and you know we often see early Soviet toy AFV's here, so let's combine the two!

These are clearly trying to represent the old air-mobile Russian BMP (or at a stretch the regular-force's BMD) and the ASU mini assault gun, but by using running-gear more reminiscent of an MT-LB's or the BTR50 (fully-tracked cargo trucks)'s and using identical superstructure, what we've ended up with is a 'new' family of space tanks . . . bargain!

Waiting for the 'Off'

Crewed by gum-ball copies of Giant Aliens (shades of 2000AD's Invasion and Bill Savage fighting the Sov's to liberate Scotland!), the BMP-alike is in the foreground, the ASU-alike behind, you can see that both have too many road-wheels for either real life vehicle, while the identical superstructure is clear.

Airborne Infantry;
'Seek & Destroy' missions

The fact that they are bright blue (Soviet 'Airborne' blue?) helps with the off-world theme and here supported by Giant originals (note the better quality of the mouldings).

Construction is a simple clip-together and the hard polystyrene equivalent of Airfix 'readymades', but with less accuracy! I don't have a maker for these yet, they are unmarked, but I haven't looked for them on the two main forums yet, so that will probably come with time.

'Bivouac'

I love them, clearly recognisable as Soviet armour, they are also and undeniably 'Space Tanks'; yeay! I've marked them up as 28mm, but their fictionalisation makes them what you want them to be.

Some Wiki-pages so you can make up your own minds;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMD-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASU-57
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MT-LB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTR-50

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP-1

B is for Blobs

As well as the '100-figure' carded sets (more on numbers when we get to the guards!) like the Wild West one we looked at last night, there were also '50-figure' sets, but with 49 figures!

It was brash of the Hong Kong pirates to place their products on such obvious display, given the poor quality of most of it, the reason I tend to refer to it as 'shite' even though I collect them - note to non-English speakers; the word rhymes with Kite or Bite, not Kitty...which would make them shi....you get the picture!

And no set required more brashness, even bravery, to put on a card in the full glare of a 1960's corner-shop's flickering bulb than these...

Starting life with Giant branding, even the Giant ones were pretty poor, and 'blobs' is a reasonable moniker in this case. Indeed, next to the Giant originals, there's not much in it, these have a different base-mark, but the detail is only slightly poorer and may well be put down to mould age?

The trouble with these is that they are constantly sold as Giant, yet the true Giant are as rare as their Aliens, while these are as common as muck on a farmer's boots, they were sold on sheets of fifty [49] and a hundred, for pocket-money prices, included in other sets and can be found in three main generations.

The other generations are in storage (which gives us the excuse to come back to them in  a few years!) so you'll have to take my word on the rest...There are two other base types, unmarked and marked in a circle. Nearly all examples are silver, but small numbers of metallic blue (and metallic purple?) turn up from time to time with roughly equal numbers of standard silver versions, these are probably from 50+50 cards like the Cowboys & Indians.

Occasionally, instead of being moulded in the purple plastic, they are just painted - definitely in metallic purple - and this is a brush-splash across either the trousers or upper body or the whole body. In both cases; this would have allowed for two sides....warfare!

On the subject of 'other sets', this one from 1969 has the astronauts, with a Dinky Honest John missile knock-off, a couple of pocket-money paratroopers, a micro-plane and the common (ex-dime store moulding) cannon, along with bunch of copies from Airfix HO-OO figures.

The tactical battlefield nuclear rocket is being ridden (piloted?) Major Kong style (Dr. Strangelove) by two helmeted loons, clearly determined to get forward observation taken seriously! Although, they're facing to the rear, so seem to have had second thoughts!