T is for Toys In The Media - Part the somethingth . . .

 

I was reminded in the early hours of this morning, of the words of Jamie Delson, owner and CEO of The Toy Soldier Company, when he was interviewed by the New Yorker magazine back in May 1992 . . .

 

. . . which has me contemplating, as we've visited them about four times now! Above is one of the pairs the modern Culpitt carried, still available from a few sellers online, they were previously sold by various other brands, sometimes as a six (although only five poses remain), and have clearly been around for several decades! Are you a starving man in the desert, readers, do you know one?

This was illustrating an 'advertorial' puff-piece on watches in The Sunday Times, back in October 2002, and shows what are probably the Toyway reissues of the Lone Star Guard's Band, under the Timpo label.

This was a common ad' back in the . . . 1990's-early 2000's? Advertising an ISA producd for Egg (now the Yorkshire Building Society), and is obviously artwork, but drawing heavily on the Subbuteo footballers designed by Charle Stadden.

Launched on August 5, 2011, the Juno probe to the Jovian system has three crew! Origianlly designed to be crashed into Jupiter at the end of the mission (to protect the integrity of the moons we are hoping to visit in the future), its mission has now been extended (for a second time) until late 2025, so these three are still very-much up there, or out there! I don't know where the cutting came from?

 

Galileo found Jupiter, the other two are more obvious!

K is for Kinder Cam Toys

A common trope with Kinder since the start, is toys with offset, angled or split axles or studs (offset cams), whereby the offset section/s drive other components, which produces novelty action as the toy is pushed or pulled over a surface, not much blurb needed, so here's a few I shot earlier!

Group shot!

Note different style of ice-cream cart with lower sides.

C is for Centaurs!

I've been wanting to track these Merten oddities down for the longest time, and eventually bought a mixed lot of ex-factory stuff off the German eBayer who seems to have inherited a shed-load of them! 

 

As far as I know there's only the three, and they must be quite a late thing as they don't appear to be in the early catalogues, but they are rather fine! The spear is a seperate moulding, for a ring-hand, and for now I've left the excess runner pieces and flashing in-situ. I think the dirt may be a combination of long-storage somewhere dusty, and mould-release agent 'going off'?

I do have one factory finished one, and the debate is do I try to paint the others to match, or do something more home-custom on them? That rather typical Merten-pink is a bit too bright for my liking, Mediterranean God's offspring would have been olive-tanned I feel!

 

From the 40mm range, and with no other fantasy figures I know of from Merten, I guess they were to be fielded against the medievals, to do battle with the many arm-variations of them and seduce the equally numerous medieval maidens which are another favourite of mine from Merten!

 

Comparison between the two like-poses. The runner remnant might be an actual 'sprue' it's quite solid-looking and cone-like, but the cone is facing the wrong way for a typical sprue, and one would assume all three would be on one still smallish tool?

F is for Fanciful Fellows!

Bit of a box-ticker, literally as it's the contents of the Charbens & odds ancients tub! I don't have many, but have managed to find most types (I've just realised I think there's a blue Hong Kong copy missing?) and all the poses.

My two originals, paint's a bit thin on the ground these days, but then the ground is shiny polymer which never held paint well, and although some early Charbens were chalky for the reason of pain adhesion, this set was a late addition to the range and didn't get a chalky iteration.

Unpainted/home painted, they may be from one of those home-paint sets, I don't know, but it would make sense? Flesh plastic and another two poses, you may have noticed they are all fighting over the wild strawberries . . . in their scale; the size of watermelons!

He's just helping himself with an axe swing! They were sold as Romans, but everything about them screams Greek, and a rather fanciful, pre-Classical era, Trojan War/mythical Greece at that!

This one is unpainted hard polystyrene, and may be a Prindus (Prison Industries) figure who avoided the painting phase in his hurry to find giant strawberries?

Duplicates from the recent/current form of re-issue, a dense, rigid polymer in a neutral grey. You may have also noticed the kilts are a bit short? The greaves look a lot like pantomime booties as well, so there's a quite theatrical look to them, but they have plenty of charm, and might work as Etruscans against true Romans?

Because there's a bit of room in their tub, they get the odd's which are - from the left; an Athena Greek . . . Greek tourist figure, not that rare, but finding the spears intact (polystyrene) is always a bonus.

Then a chess-set pawn, who's a bit more Roman. I think you can still find these in various finishes on Amazon, as whole (and not cheap) chess-sets, in metal or plastic, but these older ones are often to be found in rummage trays at shows, and while not a copy, his shield seems to have been influenced by one of the Marx 60mm set. Finally a modern Greek from Conte Collectibles, I think.

This guy's also in the same tub, a bit bigger than the others around 60-65mm (I didn't check at the time!) and from the liberal quantities of gold and silver paint; probably Argentinian! The fish-plate or scalloped armour has me thinking of Poseidon, was he from a set of gods? Also quite Ray Harryhausen'esque!

SCS is for Scary Creature Set!

I could have used that last year . . . oh; I almost did! Having explained - last year - how I bought the Fantasy Creatures Set II from SCS Direct because it was less numerous in the Amazon listings, and that I was hoping to get Set I in the Autumn, when I went back for it, it had totally disappeared (along with all other SCS listings on both Amazon and evilBay), and it wasn't until July/August of this year that it reappeared, but it did and I nabbed one!

Packaging art-work and contents, the contents - like the two sets we looked at last year - are not equally divided between the two colours/'armies' with dark grey suffering severely from outnumbering, nor do they come to the advertised total of 100 pieces.

As seen here, there are four each of the light grey and only three each of the dark grey, except with the Minotaur, but that small victory for darkness is lost to the missing Knight, who's gone AWOL, with his head, so not even biting people to death!

The sculpts; the upper shot shows two which wouldn't look out of place in a ray Harryhausen movie, the Serpent-lady is a vast improvement on the old DFC/Toyco ones, while the lower shots are more heraldic, with a Griffon and a lovely 'Welsh' dragon.

The figures are manufactured in a quite soft, modern, substitute-PVC, and tend to distortion in the packaging/shipping, so I've posed a few Unicorns, they are all the same pose which should - I suspect - look like the dark grey one.

The lower shots have two roman skeletons as they should look (left) and a couple of quite different ones which I'll hang-on to as they are - these sets get split and shared with two other collectors once I've done the images - on the right.

Wizard, Knight, Minotaur and an rather nice Elvin Huntress, the Minotaur would make a lovely foil for a few 20/25mm Greeks in a little vignette, the Wizard is a bit LotR's Gandalf or Asterix druid in execution and the Knight is the weakest pose; he looks like one of Monty Python's round-table questors - hence the reference above!

Ogre/Ork types with one or two heads, a Dwarf and a vastly oversized Fairy/Pixy! The Dwarf suffers from short-shot'ing on his helmet horns, and the Fairy is rather out of place against the others, but they are all nice sculpts.

Brain has started painting his, they are still on the work-table and he pointed out that the camera-flash is a harsh critic, something I've noticed/suffered from in the past, but it gives an idea of how they'll take paint, and if you’re pondering on who/what that dragon is, he's an Alien . . . coming in the next ['newer'] post, in a short-while!

SCS is for Scary Creature Selection . . . II

And no, we haven't had 'I' yet, but this is only a box ticker, due to they not being in the tag-list yet, and Shaun having done a better job already, but it IS Halloween, and these were on UK Amazon the other day so I grabbed them and here they are; 'Monster Scary Good'

And the first thing to understand is that while they may look a bit expensive in on-line sales listings, what you are getting is a huge box, with the equivalent of four or five Airfix 54mm boxes'worth of stuff, and they are ten-times cheaper than some of that stuff coming out of the East right now!

However, SCS Direct are a bit naughty in short-packing the sets as per the advertised contents, no doubt something they would counter with the 'Contents May Vary' term, except . . . hold on a dang-minute . . . there is no such term - I think they are counting the headless rider and his horse as 'two figures'; the cheating monkeys! Heay-ho, still cheap-as-chips for what you get!

Clockwise from top left, the 'wolves' are err . . . just wolves! I suppose you could use them as werewolves, I've called them dire-wolfs to big them up a bit (I don't want them getting insecurity issues!), but they are just wolves, nicely sculpted servants of Dracula, Satan or the Lords of Morrrdorrr, but just wolves!

The wingless dragon is among my favourites in the whole set if not THE favourite, it conforms to none of the specific traits of it's kind having no wings and a bipedal posture, however it's crest/spine ornamentation reminds me of chess pieces (rooks/castles I guess) and you can imagine him/her heading-off the Red Queen on a flag-stone chess board in an Alice III?

The female barbarian is nice, but hardly a F. Frazetta or C. Achillos' Amazon; she'll do! The frog-warrior though; lovely, and a cheat that we only get two, one of the smaller sculpts as well, if they gave us four they wouldn't be taking the piss on the content count? And for painters out there, he's crying out to spar Little John on a log over the brook - my money's on Phinius Froggie!

Same pack drill; The male barbarian is similarly so-so, they are lovely sculpts, but more cave-men than 'fantasy' monsters. While the headless horseman is more 'horror' than fantasy, which is odd, as SCS Direct do Horror sets too?

The winged creature is closer to a wyvern than anything else (Cockatrice/Gryphon in the above listing) but with birds wings not dragon/bat wings and a big bird at that! Not my choice and suffering the worst distortion in the packaging due to it's size and softness.

Cerberus is lovely, the Cyclops is equally everything you'd want from such a chap and will go well with the 1:72nd scale one from Atlantic (seen here before I think but I'll try to arrange a comparison shot soonish?).

The 'winged female pan/siren' is also a nice figure . . .

Dance of the evil witch-bitches!

. . . who would benefit from paint, but again shows the influence of the G. Gygax and Nottingham Mafia world's on these things and how far they have moved away from the traditional heraldic, 'classical' or even Tolkien'esque picture of them?

The distortion (which plagues these - as delivered - like a Corona-virus) is obvious in the two unicorns who should be identical poses! I'm actually going to try and keep them like this, but both bases will need re-setting with hot water. I also shot them with the set of ex-The Works Paint Your Own's (now Unique) we looked at back in August's RTM.

I think while half the problem is the soft material, the other half is their own weight in the box, which in warm Amazon warehousing or going out in trucks on hot days, leaves them settling onto or into each other in the box, all the thin parts and the sheet material (wings, bases) suffered some bending or distortion.

Finally the 'mermaid'; another really nice but un-traditional sculpt, if the winged one is more pan that siren, then this one is a siren or sea-harpy, whist also being clearly a  mermaid (fish's tail, she's no hog!), but with the sword & shield she is also a bit of a sea-amazon. The shield is the weak-point, but paint would hide that.

As you can see they all come in equal quantities of Mediterranean- and Atlantic-grey, in a substitute PVC and that's them!

G is for Greeks Bearing Similar Shields

Bit of a late one today; as I said [wrote] on Friday [Thursday] I hadn't got a plan for the weekend, and while I managed to get Saturday and Sunday covered, Monday rather went by the wayside!

Also apologies for my inaccuracy on Friday, it's not Vanuatu we're about to sign a trade-agreement with, it's the international power-house that is the Faeroe Islands! As someone with more knowledge of these things than me on the News Quiz pointed-out on Friday night; they're going to send us puffin meat, in exchange for the mould off Ms. Maybe-Maybe-not's jam!

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Another box-ticker, another set of the Toyway-Timpo vinyl figures with separate bases, we're off to Greece this time, and frankly, this set is not as nice as the Romans, the sculpting is a bit . . . sort of lumpy or rubbery! But there are some quirky figures and it's a full group.

The whole set, 10 figures, the painting is also a bit of a let-down, they are all 'text-book' boy's-comic Rome with all the red and silver, and they were - of course - from the bronze-age and Greek! Two musicians and a woman hardly help with army-building either!

Those musicians in full! The guy on the left is obviously a signaller, but the one on the right might be the more Mercurial, godlike character . . . Hermes! Or is it Ares/Mars?

The figure on the left here is also supposed to be a god, well, goddess I think; Athena/Athene (Minerva in Rome)? While the chap on the right appears to have been designed for a chariot, which - to my knowledge - was never offered, but might it have also gone with, or been designed to go with the Timpo Roman chariot, which Toyway may have been thinking of? As it is, he looks like he's about to start a race with an invisible watch!

Spearmen - a hideously unbalanced spear being wielded by the guy on the left, the other two are OK, although the middle figure looks more early Roman to my eyes; maybe he's the General? At least his cuirass is the right colour, while the chap on the right is wearing the latest in kilt fashions; imported from Polynesia!

Swordsmen - probably my favourite figures from the set, perticularly the old man on the left; some crocked Trojan packed-off to do his duty and die properly; the other two quite good poses, the kneeling figures is particularly nice, but all three let down by the fact that their swords have morphed into letter-openers!

The shields are all reasonable designs I think, most taken from actual Greek art or artifacts in museums, although the originals wouldn't have been quite so deep in relief, most being only painted-on? They fall down in the bright-yellow on silveriness of them all!

A scale comparison shot, with similar figures from two Atlantic sets; the woman with amphora being taken from a Roman set!

F is for Follow-up - Greco-Trojan Warriors

Following-up on the recent Trojan Warriors post Brian sent me a few images of his very 'clean' group and something a little more interesting, a Hinton Hunt metal Greek hoplite with the proper 'Bell' cuirass from 1972.

Here he is, he's in the queue for a re-paint and Brian reminisces;

I used to shop at the Hinton Hunt store on Camden Passage, late 60's early 70's. A wonderful eccentric place depending on whether the husband or wife was manning it.

From the stock I would say production over several days or a week was one range only. This meant that if you arrived just after new stock there would be a range of hundreds of one subject. I remember this one figure had dozens of variations of just the arms and weapons. I must have put this one aside when I ran out of metallic paint.

To which I would add that Rose Miniatures had some lovely Greeks too, around the same time, of which I have some small scale versions somewhere.

Posed with Brian's Britains; you can see he fits right in and scaled to within a gnats-crochet of his plastic brethren, although with a thinner base he's probably the equivalent of 55mm! It would appear that Herald's Trojan Warriors haven't taken kindly to his presence though?

Thanks Brian!

M is for Minotaur

This has been in the not finished zone for so long, I can barely remember when I started it! I wanted (want!) to do a little vignette of the mythical creature belonging to King Minos of Crete, being despatched by Theseus.

The base is a Hong Kong copy of a Gulliver 40mm piracy of an Atlantic American Indian, to which I have added a real Stag Beetle's head...no I didn't, it had been hit by a car! The head is a loose fit, but a bit of filler will help get it looking right and blend it into the body.

Placed next to a 1:72 scale figure (Zvezda?) for scale, he is intended to be Theseus goading the beast. For accuracy I suppose I should be looking at a bulls head, but I like the slight fantasy element of using something else, which still has 'horns'!