F is for Follow-up - Marx Space

As a follow-up to last Spring and Autumn's posts on the rather mixed contents of my two Marx playset boxes, and associated stuff, here are a few scans with a bit more info'. Not much, but it'll get Burbank attached to the Marx Space tag, and may have clues as to one of the size variants of space-base accessories?

 

So, Burbank Toys of Wellingborough, were the Marx sales 'arm' of Dunby-Combex-Marx, although I think they also carried some Mattel items, and they issued at least one glossy catalogue (in 1979), which has three space-related playsets.

 

This is the Martian Landing Playset, and you can see that the 'Aliens' group (presumably all Martians in this case!) is the same six figures which keep turning up in apple-green, not the seven claimed elsewhere? But that could be a British thing, either a Swansea leftover or a Burbank-specific detail, however it might explain why I have picked up a few of them, now?

 

The Air Command set is, like the Kennedy sets seen here last February, more realistic, and has the trucks and ground crew of those sets, with four delta fighters, while Star Station 7 has the NASA'nauts with a full set of vehicles and most of the accessories. Note also: the Balloon-tyre mould tool seems to have gone missing, or stayed in the 'States!

 

It struck me that the colour of the accessories in both sets here, matches the smallest version we looked at in September, so it may be that they too, are Burbank-specific, which would make sense, as these sets were literally among the last iterations of Marx, and as part of the 'far-flung' UK arm, might well have got a third, or copy set of tools?

 

Schmidt in Germany produced a board game, Weltraumfahrt 'Space Travel' (On Board Game Geek), with four glow-in-the dark astronauts, and you can see the artwork draws (heheh!) heavily from the Marx tower accessory, for the ship which takes our intrepid Weltraumfaher to their destination.

 

I'm not sure if I've got the figures/contents, or if the box came with something else in it, or even empty from a friend, but I scanned it, during a scanning-session, before it went to storage, I was buying a lot of space-stuff at the time, and most of it went to storage unshot, you may remember the shot of the car, all packed up with space. sci-fi and fantasy, when we looked at the pocket sets a few years ago.

 

This is from a Marx branded fold-up flyer which probably came from a toy, you know the kind of thing, Spears and Waddington's were always including a leaflet in their board games, it also included the wheeled skier set (which might help date it?). Not dated, but pre-1971, from the pricing, which equates to about £2.40p.

 

I have a vague memory of a friend having this, and it being quite heavy, I mean to the point where, as an eight-/ten-year-old, you were happy to surrender it when it was somebody else's turn, as your wrist was getting achy! There's a small, pre-digital, record-player and speaker in there, long before true miniaturisation! U2 Batteries became SP2 and are now known as D-cells.

I is for If I Have To!

Not really in the mood, so expect an intermittent service in January! In case anyone else hasn't noticed, the World's going to hell in a hand-cart, and there's no sword-based baby to save us. And who had Putler turning out to be the mere Mussolini to Trump's Hitler, on the card for 2026?

 

Happy New Year!

I know from my job, this was generally, a crap Christmas, the most telling sign of which, was that all the fairy-light shit and illuminated/inflated, technicolour bollocks in peoples front gardens (hey, you can do it tastefully, or you can do it as half-arsed shit, or OTT classless excess, most chose one of the latter two options!) had gone by the 5th. Last year many were up through the second week of Jan', and we weren't swamped, at work, like last year.

 

Anyway, plenty more to say, and I'll keep saying it; those who pretend it's not happening deserve everything that's coming, for never getting involved! Getting back into the saddle with a simple box-ticker, this is from the UPC scans folder, and follows-up, or follows-on from the previous posts on the subject - Monograms many copyists.

 

I was promised a load of stuff on the subject back when we looked at them on one of the other occasions, but I've heard nothing more, and suspect Covid may have changed those plans? We looked at them, in no particular order, here:

 

Revell/Roco-Minitanks - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/07/m-is-for-monograms-many-mates.html

 

UPC (1st post!) - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/05/u-is-for-universal-powermaster.html

 

Fujimi - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/07/us-army-is-for-more-clones.html 

 

Model Power - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/08/r-is-for-roco-as-rack-toys.html

 

Hong Kong's finest! Still needs a lot of work, but this was a reasonable primer! https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/m-is-for-monograms-men-made-much_10.html

 

You'll also find Past the Post and ABC, and others, on the Monogram Tag, but this is the UPC supporting stuff:

 

Box art from the HO set (3034), copied from Roco.

 

Rather dodgy early photocopy of the instruction sheet from the James Chase collection. 

Catalogue image, 1968/9.

From the same catalogue, the image (and box art?) for the "1:40"th set (5149), actually the same vaguely 1:35th of all the other versions which aren't reduced to HO/OO.

An instruction sheet I happen to have, and which may sort the question over some of my polystyrene samples, which seems to hint at an alternate box-art, closer to the Revell 'convoy ambush' artwork, of one of the larger sets. In fact, that's a clue as to Roco's being copies of Revell, as the Patton Figure was only in that large 4-kit set, he being the Sherman tank commander?!

 

That's it, just a box ticker!

F is for Follow-up . . . and Update, and Image Dump, and A-Z Page Update and Contribution and Apology! Highlander Miniatures!

Jason, who I think might be Jason Pontiac (?), sent the Blog a shed-load of Highlander Miniatures stuff, which has been languishing in Picasa since 2020. Now, with Covid-19 that year, then a Mother, Friends and two beloved Cat's, dying about the place, over the next three years, while I fought HMRC, HMCTS, local authorities here and in the Channel Islands, a lazy, belligerent Brother and an . . . uncommunicative Step Mother, not to mention venal auctioneers, grasping antiques dealers, and dishonourable Estate Agents, I hope Jason will forgive me for taking so long to sort this out, especially given that I have churned out some 2000+ posts in that time, but it needed time, it needed a clear head . . . and there's more!

Armour

M60 A1's, A2 'Starship's, M107 and M110 SPG's

 

All the work on this ephemeral firm has been done here at Small Scale World over the last 11-years, with help from several people. And as part of my own research, back at the start (2014) I found, when Google was still useful, a catalogue, listed in a University's research and reference library, back in the US.

I wrote to them asking if it would be possible to have a copy, for wider dissemination (on the Blog), expecting a small fee for a couple of stock images, only to be told it would be in excess of $25 dollars, which makes one wonder how people can afford serious research, the answer is increasingly, they go to European or other countries' places of learning!

Anyway, I didn't proceed at that time, knowing that if it existed it would turn-up, and in 2023, with the images from Jason still sitting here, I found one on eBay, which with postage was less than the American Uni' wanted, so now I have the whole thing, to share with everyone, for free, and which is on the A-Z entry, or it will be in the next few hours (by the time I publish this), covers, below;

Front

 

Back

 

It came with a 1977 dated price list, but there's an extra set, listed in the catalogue, and descriptions differ between the two, and with the cards we've already seen, so it's a hard one to annotate, and I've been re-writing the listing for an hour or two already, and thought I'd get this started to help sort out my thoughts, and the images, some of which will go over there!

Jason's main aim was showing us the longer-barrelled SPG, and the standard M60 A1, but he also has a lot of infantry , guns and other stuff, which he remembers going to a ". . . toy store 'warehouse' in Brooklyn in the mid 80's" with his father, and purchasing them, presumably as clearance?

Image dump - finally!

 

Another small development, was the purchase a couple of years ago of an A3 scanner, allowing for the scanning of larger documents, and so I scanned the old broadsheet-cutting as one piece, and because the catalogue is split here, and whole on the A-Z entry, while the split cutting has been on the A-Z page for a number of years, I thought it could go here, whole, for balance!

So, many apologies to Jason for the time it's taken to get his images up here, and many thanks for his sharing them with the rest of us. His subsequent purchases of carded sets, and some AFV close-up's, have gone on the A-Z entry, along with full-scans of the gate-fold catalogue, the price-list, a fully updated product listing and some card scans.

And to anyone else who's sent stuff, I haven't got round to yet, it will all get put-up here eventually!

 

It needed a quiet Christmas morning . . . and half the afternoon!

 

https://smallscaleworld-g-h-i.blogspot.com/2016/02/highlander-toy-and-miniature-military.html 

 

The full entry is still not 100% complete, and certainly not definitive, but it's the best info' on the Web, and seems to sum up the company's history and product list, to a satisfactory level.

R is for Rack-Toy Round-up - New York

Brian B has sent us a sample of what's hanging on the hooks in New York's Bodegas and Trading Posts this festive season, and there are some past names to check again, with soldiers, frogs and, err, well, we'll get on to Brain Rot in a minute!

 

A nice set of tropical frogs from JPW International, probably seen before in different packaging, possibly available elsewhere for more 'geld' under a bigger name (K&M, CollectA or one of the Japanese moulders?), but with 8-10 in the bag, around the 30-cents mark, per frog!

 

Hunson's current 'Army Men' offering is a mix of two armies of figures, being later sub-piracies of Matchbox and other figures, it's better than nothing in a landscape which has so few army toys beyond the big-box, generic, action figure stuff.

 

Speaking of Action Figures - this unbranded set has an interesting action-figure scaled swamp-bike at the top! I can't really make out the figures, but I think they are the little ones we've seen many times now from Poundland and the long-gone 99p Stores?

 

While Brain Rot is . . . err . . . a knock-off? Continuation? Extension . . . take? I think we'll call it a 'take', a cleaner take on the Skibidi Toilet meme-stuff, which we also saw here, also courtesy of Brain a while back, apparently not coming out of Italy, I shall defer to Jan, who covered them on his Site of Curiosities a few weeks ago, and found a link which goes some way to explaining!

N is for November's Sandown Park - Erasers

And not just any old erasers, but that the bulk of them are probably Diener Industries, one way or another, the other factor being that they are also French premiums, but may, due to petroleum, also be British! I picked these up a few at a time, every time I passed the chap's stall, and wish now I'd hoovered up the last few, but they were mostly duplicates, I think!

 

These are probably not Diener, as they are proper eraser-rubber, but I thought they'd go very well with the Lik Be (that's LB of course!) and Holly anthropomorphic musicians, in a future comparison post / battle of the animal bands! They are also pencil-tops.

 

These are all clearly marked Diener Ind., with a '(C)' mark, and are a mix of generics, Disney, cute and a Fontanini clown-sculpt knock-off, along with an Easter basket of bunnies! And they may well belong to several sets, or even some of the sets below, as explained as we go.

 

These are unmarked, but are manufactured in the same smudgy silicon-rubber of all Diener's 'erasers', which were always shit erasers, as they just smudged pencil around the page, leaving everything looking awful! Again, they could be from more than one set, but the paint ties them into the premiums below. The red kitten is a slightly different sculpt to the yellow one in the previous shots - head moved to ease undercuts?

I can't work out if this is supposed to be some kind of anthropomorphic Viking, or a French TV character? Nor is it clear if it's damaged, poorly fettled or had a charm/key-ring loop removed?

 

These two, both Disney, are marked Esso and Disney Prod., and were a set of premiums, given away with Esso fuels, defiantly issued in France, the complete sets are to be found in the pages of Jean Piffret's book Figurines Publicities, but, as I think I've mentioned before, we had some when we were kids, not from this set, but from the set of woodland (or other) animals, some of which are in the upper shots.

 

Indeed, the slightly Beatrix Potter'esque pricklepin in the same flesh pink as the odd figure above, is one of the items on my nostalgia wants list, as it was in my pencil case until I was far too old to have affection for such things! And the three little pigs would also go with the other musical mammals!

 

While these are just marked (C) Walt Disney Prod., but you can see where the Esso has been obliterated on the tool, so there was probably a commercial issue too, at some point.

 

Therefore, I think a couple of the sets annotated by Piffret, as French, were issued here, also with Esso, at some point around the late 1960's or early 1970's, possibly without the paint highlights of the French and more commercial Diener issues. There were more sets issued as premiums in France, though?

 

Four other, non-Diener, non-Esso types, with, from the left a grotesque facemask pencil top, this was probably from the era of cereal-premium totem-pole funny-faces and the semi-flat African mask charm type premiums. Next is a vampire, or Dracula type, in his casket, and just waking-up, by the look of it!

The footballer is bigger that the Hong Kong painted ones, issued as either key-rings or pencil-tops, but may have been the inspiration for them, and he is a pencil top too! While the 'finger fright' rubber-jiggler just came with them to make a round-number! The first three being, again, 'proper' eraser-rubber.

N is for Not Really A Follow-up!

Notes on previous stuff seen here though, and images pulled from three folders and added to a set I got off Steve V yesterday, at the London Toy Soldier Show in Camden, and which opened-up a narrative for the other shots.

Marx's 45mm Air Force figures, with a rouge Space Patrol chap, in the same metallic blue plastic, waving his gypsy earrings about, at the back there! You get seven ground crew and four pilots, which, it being then, the 1950's, means the guy in a leather jacket is probably a milk runner from Transport Command (or whatever the USAF called it), next to him is the SR71 Blackbird or X-Plane pilot in high-altitude 'space' pressure-suit, along with two more conventional, fast-jet pilots.

 

With the exception of the sci-fi interloper who has the older flat base, these are all the later version with the raised under-rim base, and it's interesting to notice that the last pilot on the right has been sculpted to hold something? The hands are the wrong angle for a cockpit rim, and the arms are the wrong-angle for an access ladder, so I wonder if the sculptor's efforts fell on stony ground!

 

I think these are the ones sent by Brian Berke a few years ago, I thought they were gray, and I thought I'd published them, but they may be somewhere on the Blog already, without the needed Tags? Anyway, these are the recent reissues, and came in grey or this flat, sky-blue.

These are the contemporary figures from Deluxe Reading, and this image is courtesy of Chris Smith, as part of an eMail conversation we were having, following one of his donations, and the revelation that the orange ones were issued, over here, by Thomas in a header-bagged, oversized Jeep of theirs, which we saw here.

While I suspect these (MPC, Pyro or Revell?) come from a model car kit, as racetrack personnel, but they could be from a 1:48th scale aircraft kit, and go very well with the figures above, and the other set we saw in the Kennedy Space Centre a while ago, here. The paint on them will be OBE's, and there were at least two shot-runs, one in grey, one in silver, both a polystyrene 'kit' plastic.

 

So, thanks to Steve, Chris and Brian, a quick overview of USAF (and NASA) air and ground-crew, from over half a century ago! And the reason I hadn't got round to them before this, is because mine, mostly rimmed cream, chalky polyethylene (Marx Swansea?), with a few flat metallic-blues, are still in storage.

S&S is for Seasonal and Superb

Brian has sent his seasonal shots of Scully & Scully's window display, he said he was fighting refelction, but they all look good to me, and as we all know what's coming, we don't need any more of my waffle; enjoy!

 

Many thanks to Mr. Berke for these, it's an unpaid mission, to fight the New York shopping crowd, and get these images, not just at Easter or Halloween, but especially at this time of year, and they are the most exquisite examples of the slate-etcher's art, even if, these days, they are cold cast rubber, or even metal moulds? And they are beautifully painted as well, a real treat Brain, thank you. It's starting to feel very festive!

 

09/12/2025 - Late addition!