L is for Lots of London Loot - Sandown February - Space & Pop Culture

So, I would seem to be catching up with the stuff that's come in over the last ten months or so, and the Sandown Park show, just gone, produced quite a collection of bits and bobs across scales, types and genres for the stash, this post is what I'd normally call the Space and TV, but they weren't TV first, being corporate mascot and comic characters!

 

I have quite a few Bibendums, and we have seen him here before, but this is far more animated than the usual standing types. Quite large and a modern PVC-substitute, I'm sure it's a pretty contemporary promotional piece?

 

Slightly futuristic lines to these dime-store pieces, the car and caravan being more conventional, and marked ACME, one of the trading names of Thomas Toys in the US, I think the truck is unmarked, but I'm sure it'll be in Bill Hanlon's book? Looks like a simplified copy of Archer's 'Future Cars' sculpt?

 

Adrian had saved these two Cherilea / Hilco's for me, the standing guy has a damaged weapon, but they both have their correct helmets and put my squad, much enhanced with superglue up to about ten, with most complete, but all short on helmets!

 

Bully Lucky Luke figures, the eponymous hero, his horse Jolly Jumper and his dog, Ratanplan, these are soft PVC and scale well with the Comansi/bubble-gum premium ones seen here before.

 

The Dalton Brothers, from the left; Averell, Jack, William and Joe, also Lucky Luke characters, these are in a hard, possibly phenolic plastic, or early 'styrene, from JIM in France, and are in a larger scale.

 

Brabo bendy toy! Larger again, and manufactured in that slightly sweaty PVC, some Hong Kong makers used/favoured at times, but only to a slight shininess, not the full-on weeping stickiness of some old toys from the colony!

 

Mixed, larger-scale space figures with two of the Marx metallic blue ones, a Tudor Rose (marked) licensed copy/mould swap of Premier's pulp spaceman waving pistol and a - probably - 1970's PVC gum-ball, capsule-machine robot.

 

Three of the LB (for Lik Be) copies, I couldn't remember which ones I already had, so just grabbed all three against the possibility I might still need some poses, which may be among this trio, and because paint was quite good, except the bases!

 

We've seen them before, and now attributed them to two names, Toyway and the original GLJ, with packaging, so I thought we should see them from the back! I got excited as I thought I'd 'found' a fourth pose, but we've actually seen them all before!

 

These have been a steady stream-in, over the last few years, Italy's sub-scale copies, titled Space Legion (Legione Epaziale), from little pocket-money cards, again copied, but from Archer as well as the Premier biggies. I like the marbling, it gives each figure a certain character or uniqueness!

 

These are the Giant sub-copies I called 'Copy 2' here, and while the most common of the four types so far found, this particular batch is a late-production run, with a lot of heat-shrinkage dwarfism! They are also, mostly, in a darker gunmetal than the usual samples? You can spot the three more common silvery ones among them, and they are guarding two valuable dome-helmets (Archer / Glenco and Britains?) for the spares box!

S is for Sorry

I knew you wouldn't want the swan and babies for a whole day, so here's an apology!

When I published the Novalinea set of Lucky Luke with a bit of a "well I never", I'd forgotten that Juan Angel ('Gog' of Toys from the Past) had actually educated me, some time earlier, to the connection when he sent me these two images, so - sorry Gog; you'd told me! I'm not apologising to the rest of you, for subjecting you to a floating swan with attendant rug-rats . . . live with it!

Nice bagged set of loose figures, with an interesting mix of unpainted and painted figures, the header card artwork is the same as the blister-card, but simplified, so possibly a later issue; clearing unsold stock, it's not a full set?

Gog actually sent me several shots of the bag (from both sides) and I used them to get the following collages together of the various figures . . .

Painted Figures

Animals

Unpainted - as per the original premiums

There are several poses here that weren't in the other set, both undertakers (?), the dog and the prison-garb Dalton's, so it must have been a larger set. The dog is actually a spitter for the Scoobie-Doo from Comics Spain?

Also today I published a minor page on sale condition/description, it gets a bit ranty at one point but those male doll collectors take themselves far too seriously!

L is for Lucky Luke

This is an unusual set, branded to Novalinea (Comansi), it contains what I think is a complete set of the Lucky Luke bubble-gum and ice cream premiums made by (and still marked;) Tito.

Obviously with these premiums there was always a search for other ways to market them once the promotion they were originally commissioned for has come to an end, and you often find them turning up elsewhere - as with the Tatra Warriors of the World. But to get the whole set, nicely laid-out is a treat.

A close-up of Luke and his near neighbours, I have most of these loose in storage, so we will return to look at them in grater detail another time. Indeed, I may have all of them, as I think I've got the vulture in another place with the rest of the known or suspected Spanish/Portuguese premiums?

Around the same time as I took these into the collection I also picked-up this copy of the smallest but eldest Dalton brother - Joe, he's a very poor-quality copy, but without any obvious mark, not even an HK so he remains a real question mark.

The copy Dalton's feet compared to the feet of the Indian female - I had trouble getting the mark to show, purely down to the plastic colour, but you can see how poor the copy is, unmarked, without the two little holes all the originals have, but with tons of flash.

Because this is the only copy from the whole set I've found in 30-odd years of seriously collecting, especially small scale (and as a stand-alone piece he is 'small scale'), I wonder if he was the only one copied - because of his size (maybe the vulture as well?) - as a gum-ball gift, he's certainly small-enough for a capsule machine of that era - the Kinder-egg sized stuff is more modern. But that's all just musing or pure conjecture?