F is for Follow-up - LJN Swivel Heads

Whinging Pom here - too hot to bloody sleep! 

 

So, it turned out that Chris had actually sent me shots of his LJN figures ages ago, and they were languishing down the bottom of Picasa (I look upon my numbering of image folders as a scrollable 'ladder'), while he sent me more the other day while conversing on them as part of the most recent donation, so let's have a look at them!

 

LJN were what you might call a medium-sized toy company;

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LJN 

 

And like most medium-sized companies, they ultimately failed, being bought by a bigger fish, or at least one with deeper pockets, but for a while they were big in licensed products. The figures we're looking at here, were more of a generic catalogue gap-filler though, gotta'have a few toy soldiers or model figures in the listings!

Play-sets, tied into LJN's own property, a 12" knock off of GI Joe (Action Man), called Mr. Action, were announced in the 1975 trade catalogue, as E-Z-Fold giant action playsets, and Brian Heiler has them here; 

https://plaidstallions.com/reboot/1975-ljn-toys-catalog-emergency-the-rookies-mr-action/

 

On Plaid Stallions, but he's not sure if they were ever issued, and I think someone else has them listed as another US toymaker's product. 

 

But clearly they were LJN's, and came to market somehow, maybe as counter-top dispencer/pick boxes, and while I initially thought they might be copies, based on the French Cofalux's 60mm swivel-heads, I don't think they are, the kneeling with rifle is similar to a metal mocherette of Kit Carson, but he's waving his above his head, so it's no more than a passing sculptural similarity.

 

Two of the figures share a sculpt, with the hands' contents rendering one an 'officer' (pistol) and the other a rifleman, throwing a very dinky-little grenade. And obviously, they are Vietnam era/Cold War troops with M16's, minimal webbing and no packs.

 

I did however, instantly recognise the US Cavalry as Elastolin 'swoppet' copies, albeit welded together at the waist, and with most of their accessories also permanently reattached as a part of larger integral mouldings, only the neckerchief being still separate, along with head/hat.

 

Meanwhile, we looked at my small sample of the combat Elastolin's back in 2019, with help from Girly-girl, who, that March, was as alive as both my Parents and her son, all four gone now, with Covid, Putin and Trump adding to the mess Farage had already started!

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/03/h-is-for-haussers-homage-to-half-n-halfs.html

 

And, you can see, the sculpts are not the same as the LJN GI's? So they would seem to be pretty unique, compared to the cavalry knock-offs.

Markings are a simple H.K. on the GI's, a fuller HONG KONG in a DIN font on the foot cavalry (both marks are quite common on various toys from the colony, the full-stops on the HK being possible clues to future ID'ing of true maker), and an LJN -specific marking on the horses bases, one has to assume it's the same for the Indians, and Peter Evans thinks there may have been cowboys too, both taken from Elastolin, although the thumbnail in that catalogue seems to show the crude Star/M-Toy types, mostly Britains, Lone Star or Timpo piracies.

 

Chris's more recent close-up shots of the six combat troops.

Returning to whether or not the sets were ever issued, as Chris pointed out in his correspondence with me; "Maybe the E-Z-Fold sets were never produced as the Vietnam war had just finished and maybe considered ill-timed or poor taste?", and with Brain H also having misgivings on their execution, it may be that the figures (already ready for the catalogue photo-shoot) were cleared as loose figures. This would have been at the same time Highlander were failing to get their Vietnam-era project fully off the ground.

Can anyone else add anything to the circumstantial evidence, and musings of Brain, Chris, Peter and me? Can you remember how you encountered these, back at the time?

D is for Donation - Chris - Military

Some lovely figures here, and a pair that have driven a follow-up, which will appear out of the current sequence, between this post and the last of the Gogo Crazy Bones posts. I seem to be in an odd rhythm at the moment of blank days and multiple post days, it's pure coincidence really, and it means you don't have to return here daily, but if/when you do, there may be a few posts to catch-up on!

 

A right old mix here, and because we've just seen the Marx 45mm link (in the previous post), here's two more of the possibly candy-holder vehicle/vessel plug-in/twist-in crew, and there's a strange deform behind them who may be a known character, but not known to me!

 

Chris filters out the rack-toy commonality, but sends the interesting ones, and here it's the two metallic olive-drab Airfix American Infantry piracies to the right, the Toy Story / Tim Mee clone to the left, another of the Timpo officer knock-off, and one of the large pound store ones from a few years ago.

 

These two 25mm Marx Miniature Masterpieces had not anticipated the thoroughness with which Royal Fail and/or Parcel Farce would explore their weaknesses and exploit the hell out of them! Sigh! But they were the only casualties this time, and it's bound to happen occasionally, with old figures.

 

A brilliant find, not only is it another WWI American clone from Airfix, not only is it another complete bubble-bottle handle/blower, but it's a new colour, and a new pose, and not just any pose but a prone pose, who, if you save him, after the bubbles end, by separating him (and his base) from the stalk, is now firing at 'planes.

 

And there's a lot of significance to this find. The first two finds (both by me) were in red plastic, if we now have green, we can assume maybe blue, yellow, even/or black? Certainly some other colours, second; we now have three poses, including a prone, so will most of the set be found? Will the wire-party be found as two separate figures?

 

Now if I've ended up with three, after 40-odd years (previous find was over ten years ago), how many centuries will be needed to get a full, or more informative sample?! The hope being that somebody, somewhere, made a decent hash of collecting a load at the time, and that they may turn-up poorly described on feeBay, or undescribed but included in a larger job-lot at a local auction house?

 

Other possibilities which become stronger with this find are that A) Airfix (or General Mills/Heller) might have licensed the figures, or even loaned the old cavities? B) They might be by Dulcop, who by the 1980's had moved out of figures* proper, and into bubble-bottles, in which field they are still globally known. With both the neighbours (Barravelli and Montaplex) also known for producing daft, upright/foot versions of Airfix prone/mounted figures, there is a Mediterranean thread running through the practice?

 

*The Dulcop figures carried by the - then - new, and growing, Plastic Warrior magazine, back in the late 1980's, were specially commissioned by them, and, from the plastic colours, consisted of half old-stock from the warehouse, and half new-runs, for the magazine. 

 

LJN GI's, another nice find, and there will be a follow-up shortly, Chris says the chap on the left is complete, as per the factory, but the chap on the right might not have the correct head, a problem with all these Hong Kong originating figures.

 

Again, I wondered if the poses might be taken from Cofalux or similar (see earlier post), but more on that in the follow-up.

 

These are brilliant too! In bright green they are sometimes (late issues?) the figures from the Lucky/Helen of Toy 'Woods Edge' or 'Tank Trap' comic-offer games, fighting the Ex-Giant Germans, in the mid-greens a common rack-toy figure, and I have a few in yellow/mustard, but I've never seen them in orange, or this blue, and I've never seen them on the runner, or in such a dark green, so quite the find! Copies of the Marx and Blue Box 25mm figures.

 

We saw the modern ones from Corgi Classics here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/08/t-is-for-tactical-strike-by-corgi.html

 

Right-back at the start of the Blog, but I had no idea there were WWII sets, and the 8th Army chap here, with a side-hat, is more LRDG/SAS than regular infantry, while the German looks to be an older man, possibly in glasses or with a monocle, and maybe Volkssturm?

 

More grist to the mill; I have meant to sort these 1st version Airfix clones out several times, and it's another project for the But is it Giant page (no, they are not Giant!), but it won't be for a while. These are one of the lesser versions I think, with the smooth base undersides.

 

Many thanks to Chris Smith for some very interesting figures. 

T is for Two - Follow-up to Fingers of Fictional Fun

This is a follow-up to a rather bitty Sci-Fipost from January, but I said at the time there were more ET's in the post, while there were also developments on the Remco diver front - they are also spacemen!

Increasingly, it's hard to know with some things whether what you're buying is all original, in matters Corgi-Dinky-Lesney - for instance - there is a lot of reproduction stuff around, especially the accessories, while Tri-Ang Battle Space has repro' parts for all the little jigets, and some of the larger pieces; track-side and wagon-underside triggers, missiles etc . . . sometimes they are obvious (white-metal castings), sometimes not so, poured resin . . . painted . . . while 3D printing is only adding to the confusion/plethora of stuff offered.

One chap on eBay has an enterprising line in replacement figures for the Remco 3D board game 'Lost in Space', which uses the spear-gun figure from the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea sets (even further apart than my suggested one of 20,000 Leagues!), I think they are 3D printed but they don't have the tell-tale striations of deposit/extrusion printers so they may be the sintered liquid type; equally they could be cold-cast resin?

But they are fun, and given what the original games go for, I grabbed a set purely to tick the box, as far as four new figures goes! This is the least close to the originals, being semi-transparent, but also my favourite! The blue and yellow are a bit off from the Remco playing pieces too. Lost in Space with an underwater dart-gun!

Meanwhile, the other ET figures had arrived, so I took a few shots, I thought I'd only taken the comparison shots below, so took another line-up last night, consequently there are two good shots! These are the LJN ones, and a total of six is the whole of series 1, six more (series 2) are obviously harder to find!

Clearly different tranches have lead to marked differences in decoration, although I couldn't tell you which came first, the rule-of-thumb is usually they start better and get poorer, which would probably make the left-hand one the earlier issue? He's reading an ABC!

F is for Four Fingers of Fictional Fun

A few Sci-Fi bits and bobs which were kicking around various corners of the Laptop, and which might as well be shoehorned into one post to clear the decks a bit!

Star Wars key-rings; We've seen a few before now, but I thought a comparison was in order, and we have - from the left - an LED torch, Lego 'maxi' Darth Vader, followed by three normal 'minifig' sized rings, then an Applause young Anakin/Vader, which I think is part of the avalanche of merchandise which accompanied the fourth/first movie.

I don't know how many there were in the Applause set, so the gap is for the missing Vader in an otherwise complete set of the capsule key-ring figures, cleared through The Works a few years ago, then to Pound-Plus, branded TPF Toys for shipping-in by STL.

ET's, a planetoid's worth of ET's! The three to the right are licensed LJN, and from a set of six (or eight?), while the chap on the left is marked J.A.R. Sales, and may be more of a knock-off than an official product, but both lines are dated 1982, so may both be legitimate?

I have no idea how many of the JAR ones there were and scale on them is 'big' as he fitted in a bikes shopping basket I seem to recall (never seen it, have no intention of seeing it!), so about 1:18^th or larger? I guess there was half-an-idea for them to be compatible with dolls, for playing-out the movie scenes?

Ignore the Greek, he's been joined by three of his compatriots recently and will be Blogged separately at some point. I managed to pick up both the Remco divers from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea last year, but they have been separated already, one here, one in storage - funny story; TJF managed to score a brownie-point with this one when I posted it elsewhere, but really, Journey to the Centre of the Earth / The Land that Time Forgot / 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea / 10,000 BC and a dozen other movies of the time were basically variations on a theme!

The metal-detector/mine-sweeper one is missing the base-stud, but as it's only used to lock them onto the floor of their retail carton, it's more a question of Do I remove the other one?

The chap to the right is supposed to be Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the head's all wrong, so I'll leave it to a jury, preferably a Bristolian one! He's a soft polyethylene and Argentinian.

Picked this up cheap a while back, as a sort of follow-up to the other day's Lunar Rover post; it's Dinky France selling-off the Zygon War Chariot crew figures as 'astronauts' in their spare-parts program! Daft in'it . . . got tub full's of orphaned seated figures and I go and get three more, but it's always about the packaging!

The funny thing is I know I have a metal Gort somewhere but can't find him, and there are more ET's in the post, so we will be returning to both those subjects in the not too far future!

News, Views Etc . . . Vectis - Early December

 Next two Vectis auctions are later today and tomorrow; nice things in both . . .

Lot 183

'Go Home' 

Thursday 3rd December 2020 10:00am
TV and Movie Related Sale - starts 10:00hrs

"The TV and Film related sale to be held on the 3rd of December features an interesting collection from a Hasbro employee, items include standard samples and prototypes, from Transformers, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, and Star Wars. Further items in the sale include Action Man vintage equipment, accessories, outfits, vehicles and figures. Star Wars carded and loose vintage figures, Legacy Collection and 30th Anniversary collection; Planet of the Apes carded figures, Dr Who, Austin Powers, Lord of the Rings, He-Man Masters of the Universe, Star Trek and Superhero figures. The sale will also include My Little Pony, Mezco Studiocraft Enchantica figurines, Cherlilea Military vehicles, books, magazines, annuals, Lego, signed photographs and displays, and games."

Catalogue and download

Lot 1265
(see also 1266 and 1271)

Friday 4th December 2020
James Bond '007' and Specialist Die Cast Sale - starts 10:00hrs

"The James Bond and Specialist diecast sale to be held on the 4th of December starts with The Buckinghamshire Collection which features vehicles from Autoart, Minichamps, Kyosho, Corgi and Johnny Lightning, plus slot cars from Carrera and Scalextric. James Bond figures also feature, from Corgi, Action Man, Sideshow and Exclusive Toy productions, and the collection includes gift sets, props, books, memorabilia, and promotional items. The Sussex Collection features Corgi Gift sets promotional sets and posters, and The 50 Years of Bond Collection includes further Corgi vehicles and gift sets, Limited Edition Gift Sets, Autoart, Kyosho, Little Soldiers James Bond sets, figures, guns and pistols, Corgi Icon Figures, original and replica props, DVDs/VHS, advertising material, posters, and signed framed pictures. The sale will also include Part 2 of The Kempshott Collection, featuring Dinky buses and coaches, pre-war train sets and French Dinky; The Ian Townell Lotus Collection, a Mechanical Horse Collection and further items."

Catalogue and download

*************************************

The ongoing global health scare means various special instructions are still in place . . .

COVID - 19 RESTRICTIONS
 
Please note there is still NO viewing, or attendance in person at these Auctions.
 
Absentee bids can be emailed to admin@vectis.co.uk, or placed via the Vectis or Invaluable website, up until 2 hrs prior to the auction commencing.
 
ON THE DAY OF THE SALE, LIVE BIDDING is available on www.vectis.co.uk or www.invaluable.com, or TELEPHONE BIDDING can be arranged.

For telephone bidding please contact Vectis prior to the day of the auction. We will arrange for you to be involved live via telephone on the day of the sale. We will call you two or three lots prior to the lot being offered for auction.

There is no charge for telephone bidding.  

SHIPPING

Please be aware there is still a slight delay with our current despatch times.

Our packing team have been working hard to catch up with the 5 weeks closure we experienced in March/April. When we re-opened in April we did so with a skeleton staff, we are now back to full capacity and they have been working tirelessly to ensure your parcels are packed as quickly and professionally as possible; the team are now currently packing and despatching September Sales. 

We thank you for your understanding and patience in these unprecedented times. 

COLLECTION   

If you wish to collect items, we would ask customers to first call and pay for their purchases. Ask for a collection appointment date and time. This will allow the packing team to prepare your items and have them ready for you, reducing waiting times.  

PLEASE ENSURE YOU WEAR A MASK WHEN COLLECTING LOTS (UNLESS EXEMPT)

Please note we will be closing for the Christmas break on Thursday 24th December

and will reopen Monday 4th of January 2021.

 

If you would like to collect your Lots before we close, please contact the office

to arrange a collection date and time.

 

And Vectis can - as always - be contacted here;

Vectis Auctions
Fleck Way, Thornaby,  Stockton-on-Tees, TS17 9JZ
Web. - www.vectis.co.uk
eMail - admin@vectis.co.uk
Tel - +44 (0) 1642 750616
Fax - +44 (0) 1642 769478
Sales [currently] commence at 10:30hrs 10:00hrs

Sothern Office
Unit 5A, West End Industrial Estate, Witney, Oxfordshire, OX28 1UB
Tel - +44 (0)1993 709 424

T is for Thundercats

Something I totally missed at the time, which might explain why I only have the two examples, more likely though is that they are not that numerous, and would seem to have held a value which I think is beyond what they are - recent vinyl product from the age of mass production - more numerous, younger collectors?

Apparently this chap is called Mumm-Ra, he's about 60/70mm (attic!) and made by Galoob, I'm guessing here from standard kids cartoon tropes that he's a 'bad guy' - bad teeth, green skin, hood, links to Egyptian mythology, chunky wristbands...?

A 'good guy' from LJN (Lewis J. Norman, the reverse of Norman J. Lewis; founder), the chap's called Wily (or Willy) Cat, and is a titular 'Thundercat', we know it's a 'he' because there was a more svelte-looking Wily Kit! He came carded with a larger, jointed action figure.

I was planning another subject for this post, but by some act of serendipity I discovered an arcade in Reading on Thursday I didn't know was there, despite passing it countless times. Looking for something else I found two collectors shops next to each other, the one being all trains and die-cast I avoided due to finances, but fatally went into t'other and found Wily Cat, not cheap but couldn't not have him join the collection.

I had the picture of Mumm-Ra in the Galoob photo-set I've been picking from, so after a quick Google had this brief post, which adds to the tag-list with some esoteric - if modern - stuff!

The shop is Reading Collectors Centre and it's in the Harris Arcade just out of the train station, as you walk up to the town centre, on the left-hand side opposite where the buses stop...

Reading Collectors Centre

I think I was in No.14, which is mostly comics, records and a few action figures, the private display cabinets have some lovely bits and pieces in though, the whole set of R&L Crater Critters, the Thunderbird cereal premiums..I'll be back to look at No.15!