CMV is for Coincidental Miniature Victory!

Yesterday's post (on possible Zulu Warriors) was cobbled together at quite short notice, but ties in nicely with this post, as it's more American Indians, also Britains' copies, also a make we've spent time and treasure on here at Small Scale World, and when I say 'we', both Chris and Brain have contributed to the growing canon of CMV here.

Picked this up a while ago, it's a CMV-marked, header-carded, bottle-bagged, rack-toy, the best thing to kick-off Rack Toy Month proper! It is also marked-up to GiG, who I have mentioned before, but only recently learned were a co-operative importer for a group of smaller Italian retailers, presumably in competition with the larger wholesaler, Baravelli - Barrelbelly to followers of the Pennsylvania branch of the hobby, I think!

You get a the whole Britains Herald camp set, but . . . in hard, glueable styrene! I use the exclamation mark not in my usual jocular or over-excited fashion, but because, not only have previous CMV finds here been in soft polyethylene, but styrene doesn't often last in one piece for the time these have been around (late 1960's/early 1970's?), which may explain why I've not even got broken samples in the collection?

Marking varies with the figures marked either CMV or MV with what looks to be the same 1005 code and a Hong Kong (the seated Chief is further-marked 'D'), the fire marked Hong Kong only and the Totem Pole marked CMV, 1187 and with a remnant of Kong, which ties-in with the lackadaisical marking of the khaki infantry seen here previously!

The Teepee/Tipi is the best, as it's an improvement on the semi-flat squished original being an all-round, more realistic design, with a very common 'made in Hong Kong' marking inside the tent. Another point of interest is that the totem-pole is a hollow 'straw' moulding.

So, a nice find but it raises all sorts of queries about the greater output of CMV, how much might have been in brittle 'styrene, are there 'ethylene versions of these and so on? Questions, questions! But one clue to the answers is the totem pole Chris Smith donated to the Blog a while ago, which IS soft 'ethylene, but, has had the top closed-up.

I is for Is Nothing Sacred!

Well; what to make of this when you first see it . . . from Hong Kong, to Italy, to Germany, to the Potter's Sandown Park toy fair and then . . . into the stash! Where it should be safe for a decade or two.

Yes; it is exactly what it looks like . . . almost! A Hong Kong copy of a Britains Mini-Set, apparently made for an Italian importer/jobber; GIG, which as several Italian toy firms both old and current have a Gio...g... in their long-titles is no real help, but as none have turned-up in the US or UK, the inference has to be an Italian exclusive, as some Baravelli (or Solpa in Greece) stuff is relatively unique.

The still extant GiG were importers of more universal/generic 'army men' at the same time they were carrying the Galoob Star Wars mini-figures and LRG knock-offs, they fit the bill, and I suspect are the same company, despite the different logo-font?

The Britains original as advertised on the retail shop door-card (left) with errors and in the catalogues (right) with some errors corrected (shield/bow hand), and a headdress which better resembles the sticker actually issued, however the rear Indian is still not crouched enough.

The clones, rather obscured by the packaging - one day I may open it carefully, but I'd rather look out for loose copies now I know they're out there! The cowboy is coloured more to match the other Wild West Mini-Set, but the Indians are a good likeness and they got round the sticker-issue by painting-on the headdress.

Britains set less the small dead tree/shrub for which I still need the base! These are a funny thing and worth a bit of pontification;

As a small-scale-only, private collector for the longest time, usually on a low budget, I have picked-up most of them (no tractor and the footballers are a bit slim-on-the-ground!) as bits & pieces in job lots over the years, these are from a bagful' with lots of figures, two trees, a little tree, no outline base and a shortage of individual-bases in all colours, I'll get the missing bits in the end, but . . . with three base colours, there must have been quite a bit of production.

Now - once I'd become more involved in the public hubby, it became clear from their dialogue that I was in 'competition' (to locate/purchase) with the 54/60mm guys, who had come down a scale and 'rated' these because they were Britains AND because 'They weren't very popular and are really rare - especially the late six', but actually they're not!

Even the second tranche can be found (I saw three tractors on the weekend just gone - two on one stall), and as bits there are a few at every show I attend. The boxed sets, or even complete sets are hard to find intact due to the number of small pieces per set, so their premium price might be deserved due to rarity (but there's a lot of ex-shop stock around still), but overall, I think they have been appended a mythology (and value!) they don't actually merit.

Funnily-enough, or ironically; if one set seems rare, it's the second diver set (with shark), which we (my brother and I) had as kids!

The clone's tree is slightly smaller, with simplified branches, but a bigger vulture! The 'outline' or containing-base is a lot larger than the Britains one, which was quite tight from the outer-edge to the individual-base edges. The vulture is also painted, unlike Britains', and with a green tree; the copyist has almost made a better set!

There were colour-variations with the Britains figures too, again pointing to a larger volume of production, if not actual sales.

G is for Guerre Stellari

I ran out of 1 image posts, so here's a bunch of Italian repacked Galoob sets; the Star Wars 'mini-heads' nothing else to say about them - so here's some pretty pictures . . .

. . . so that's Christmas over! Where next . . . hummm . . . Actually . . . I just noticed there are some Galoob originals in among those GiG shots!

S is for Star Wars

Here are a few not so much rarities, as just unusual items from the Galoob stable, now fully taken over by Hasbro.

The first is a group of three Micro-machine sets issued to tie-in with the paperbacks of the same title, dealing with what the dedicated Star Wars fans call the 'Expanded Universe' that is the universe containing all the characters, and events from, mentioned in or referenced by ALL films, comics, books, animations, toys etc...ever.

They (the dedicated ones - Love Star Wars, hate what the geeks have done to it) have tied themselves in knots on more than one occasion, not least when the money-grabbing one (aka; George Lucas - Love Star Wars, hate what the originator has done with it) brings out a new film or cartoon ignoring something already 'established' the the 'EU'.

Each set contained three EU characters and the ship/vessel most closely associated with them, if I could brake-off learning Klingon long enough to give a stuff about this nonsense I'd further explain, but suffice to say that for a small scale collector, the only thing of interest is that you can get Iberian packaging variants with Gig or Ideal logos!

Here we have the original Galoob 'Action Fleet' Naboo fighter on the left and the Hasbro re-issue of a couple of years ago on the right, note how the re-issue has an enhanced paint finish, with 'weathering' flowing back from leading edges, gun ports and blind-spots and has a chunk of battle-damage. Similar changes were evident in the decoration of the other re-issues, such as the X-Wing, the only one where it caused a problem (in my jaundiced eyes) was the AT-AT walker, which was given a snow-splatter that made it stand out like a sore thumb next to the old ones.

It's one thing to have a couple of aged tatty fighters in a squadron of cleanies, but it's quite another to have a battalion of AT-AT's with the reasonable weathering of the originals, joined at the front by some that seem to have lost a fight in a paint factory with the marsh-mallow man!

These are late production Galoob/Kenner 'Action Fleet' figures as issued in Japan, where they are collectable premiums like Kinder, but often without the chocolate, although with some sort of edible addition. The sets are sold in card boxes and usually one is a secret issue not included on the card/publicity material. In the case of this set from the small capsules Tomy are increasingly selling over here, it would seem that only the seven figures (two; paired and three; large/with large equipment piece) were involved and all are on the card.