O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Sci-Fi, Fantasy, TV & Movie

As a complete contrast to Pirates, this is the stuff of a whackier nature I picked up at last June's Plastic Warrior show, not as much in this category as some years, but a couple of really quirky things, a nice box-ticker, and a rarity or two!

 

A T-Rex, on a skateboard, waving an axe? It doesn't get much weirder than that, except it's just about to! And while it may be Kinder, it could be a lesser make of capsule-egg, or even a gum-ball type thing?

 

The Heudebert marked copy of a Captain Video figure was a lovely find, and while the original is one prone to damage, here they've shortened the firearm into more of a pistol, and despite the fine barrel, it has survived! While the actually Kinder gnome, is standing front of the Lone Star toadstool house!

 

And no, this is not where it gets weirder, this is pretty weird, but not the real weirdness! A money-box/bank, made by the same division that was responsible for the rubber pet-toys and squeakers, this is a stable (non-weeping) PVC, issued under the Eaglet branding.

 

This is the box ticker, a set of the Toys R Us bucket set True Legends - Mythical Warriors fantasy figures, one of each pose, so someone was offloading their master set? I've seen them credited to both Toy Major AND Chap Mai, it's likely to have been one or the other, and with other True Legend sets having the Toy Major sleleton warriors, for now, I'll go with them. Brian Berke did send us a handful of these, a while back, but no one ID'd them at the time!

 

Weirdness, but still not the weirdest, the Alien is about seven inches, and while made of rubber, seems to have a very solid interior, like it's metal underneath, you could certainly use it as a cosh! UFO lawn-skittles maybe?

 

The Wonder Woman is a cord-tie type thing, I've seen others, for school-bags or whatever, sometimes they are a keychain type thing . . . I don't know, I'm blagging it, off vague memories of things seen, out and about, it was in one of the donation bags!

 

From the right . . . no, the RIGHT, we have another of the larger Captain Video space/GI figures from Lido Archer, then an unknown figure which looks both character-driven and a bit Phidal-looking, but probably not actually by them, maybe a Ben 10 thing?

 

In the middle is the female scarecrow, pencil-top, who looks like a line-up completer, for the John Pertwee era, Worzel Gummidge set; I don't recognise the character? I have three now, I think, and I assume there's at least four, so, with this and two Gummidge's, I suspect I'm still looking for a rendition of Una Stubb's Aunt Sally?

 

The monkey is a tea-bag premium I think, while on the far-left, is the real weirdness, it's so weird, it's been left-off the left of left-field! 

 

This was in a bunch of smaller bits from Adrian, and I looked at it and said something about 'fun' and 'homemade', and he looked a little hurt at my dismissal of his offering, and sure enough, when I got it home (my eyesight is getting shit! But I have got reading glasses now), it became clear that while, yes that is bread-bag ties for arms and legs, the whole assembly seems to have commercial thought, and actual design behind it?

 

Originally a cartoon dog keyring and pencil-topper, the green tie has been carefully designed to have the arm-and-leg twists run over the top of it, and down channels in the sides, so as it's pushed into the pencil cavity it holds everything tight. The boots are gum-ball charm, football boots, while the cartoon hands should have convinced me straight away.

 

Everything is PVC except the bag-ties, which are in a non-standard (for bag-ties) colour, and everything is filled/sealed with what looks like the plumbers-sealant I use for PVC mends. That someone ever thought this up, let-alone thought it might have commercial potential is extraordinary, but someone else looking at it, remembered something like them, in gum-ball capsule machines!

 

It's a commercially manufactured, 'homemade' bendy toy, gum ball prize! Of a dog, in a tie, with Mickey Mouse gloves, and football boots, with googly eyes!

 

A couple of Matchbox whatsit-2000 figures, an Aristocat cereal premium, an unknown . . . trash-panda? Kinder maybe? A phone-ornament/hanger, of Buzz Lightyear, an Autobot's fireable fist (?) and a Star Wars looking, action-figure sidearm!

 

Kinder either side, Daffy Duck as a plug-together 'Steckfigure', along with one of the cartoon 'deform' spacemen, but between them, in slightly marbled yellow plastic, too large for a Kinder egg, is a Res Plastic solid, of Speedy Gonzalez! And obviously punched for a key-ring or cord.

 

As I can never remember which of these Tinykins I have, I'll always buy them, if I see them going cheap, and these were reasonable, so I grabbed them. I think I have most of them, but the cousin-ducks are all different, and I don't know if I have all of them, and wasn't sure if any Thumper I have has both ears!
 

As before; thanks are due to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Many thanks to all.

O is for Oh, Go On Then . . . Have Some Merry Festive Disney!

A few Disney bits which aren't going to make stand-alone posts, or which have escaped previous posts or might have been seen already!

 

From the cannibalised show report from November 2021, I picked this little lot up for a tenner at the last Sandown Park show of that year, which, at less than 75p each, is a bargain, but intrinsically no more than such little pieces of plastic should ever be? Marx Disneykins, most from the general set, but a couple from the 101 Dalmatians set.

 

I shot this on a dealer's stall ages ago, he has a man who 'does' for him, mending lead, antimony or whitemetal parts and breakages, and occasionally he plays with the stuff in the bits bin, and this was the result of one such play!

 

Minutes after I took the shot someone jogged the table and the figure fell, with the head coming-off, so it's now with me, awaiting the magic of superglue, because mending lead is a skilled operation I wouldn't even attempt, slightly too much heat applied to the original piece, and it turns to liquid! Micky says;

"Be nice to the poor in 2024, or I'll re-slot yer' arse wi'me arrows, init!"

Somehow this escaped several posts and follow-ups on the Marx/Wilton cake decorations and similar 'toy town' figures, these are the two sizes of the Babes in Toyland guards, and are both by Marx.

And did we settle this a while ago? This is the commercial version of the pre-production stuff which turned-up in the Dave Pomeroy archive, as depicted on the Minimodels shop-stock boxes. Being Shere Khan from the Jungle Book.

D is for Dunby...Dunby-Combex-Marx

When I began collecting seriously (1980/81'ish) the first thing I realised was that information (accurate information) was key, hard to find and often misleading! At the time I was a specifically small-scale collector, and turned to Garratt's encyclopedia (available in public Libraries back in the day) which I read from cover to cover, taking notes on every mention of small scale and learning some of the 'trade shorthand' to find small scale that wasn't specifically mentioned as such by the author.

As a work, it leave a lot to be desired now, but then it was the only work of it's kind (in breadth it still is!), and while the historical/ metal entries were reasonably accurate, his own dislike of plastic and failure to keep on top of new production (something I'm guilty of...) meant the major errors were all in the new/plastic entries!

One of the entries was: Dunby Combex Marx Group. See Marx Miniatures. Turning to that cross-referenced entry brought you to one of his biggest mistakes, the MPC link one! It also suggested that the Swansea factory was the DCM connection and latterly (when he was writing) it was, but there had been a bumpy ride to get there. No matter, the point was I had added a page to my 'master list' along the lines of Dunby Combex Marx...may have made small scale figures, or copies of Miniature Masterpieces?

I then spent 35 years looking out for anything with Dunby Combex Marx on it! Earlier this year that wait was ended, but Dunby and Marx had nothing to do with it...the find was Combex only!

The box was pretty destroyed, so I've cropped out the usable bits, but basically it was a shop counter display box with a push-back lid with cut-out to make a half-oval backing display behind the open box's lose contents, and the contents were vinyl Disney figurines, probably shipped in from Heimo or one of the other European Marx concerns - despite stating the 'Manufactured in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong'.

The grubbier ones above have been added by me to show colour variation of the figures over time, and because now I have the box, all the similar figures can go in the one place!

So far so predictable, but the box also contained hard plastic (polystyrene) figures which were mercifully saved from the usual vinyl-to-styrene melting by dint of most items having full paint coverage. But it is an odd mix, with the duplicates I've not photographed there was about 50% Minnie, Daisy and nephews (all vinyl), 25% King John's (styrene) and 25% all other movie and short-film characters (mix of vinyl and styrene), with no Mickey figure as you might be expecting (sold first?).

As always with Marx, it further muddies the water rather than leaving it clearer. Were all the contents from HK, or maybe only the styrene polymer ones, were Marx (UK) shipping vinyl from HK while Heimo produced it over the channel?

The King John is a HK piece, he has 'Hong Kong  No 510' for a mark, but the Pecos Bill is a Charmore/Heimo piece - or known to be? Maybe the HK refers only to the box, rather than it's contents, or were the contents topped-up in-store by bags of similar figures - which were from Heimo? All the vinyl figures have the pin-release holes but no marks (Daisy, Minnie and Nephews) or only the 'Disney Productions'?

Anyway, they're all in one place now with 'some' packaging and I'm not looking for a DCM piece any more! Below are a couple of comparisons we've seen before here, but re-shot, to make the post more worthwhile!

Pecos Bill, old chalky Swansea-produced, UK ethylene on the left, HK styrene Disneykin in the middle and a vinyl (Heimo?) on the right.

Again the UK version is on the top, the two Disneykins showing how some had stickers with the Marx mark, some didn't and the new polystyrene large size, previous versions of this in my collection are vinyl.

C is for Curiouser and Curiouser said Alice

Who is one of the characters in the Marx Disneykin range, indeed - Marx made her in various sizes. This little lot is a very oddball oddity, if ever there was one and deserving of a closer look, despite them being more of a curiosity than anything else.

I saw them on a dealers table a while ago, and wasn't in a position to buy them, but managed to secure them a few days later as they had gone unsold. The dealer is well respected and has some of the best sources/contacts for old plastics in the business, and on the day had a lot of shop-stock/factory-door product from Marx in the small scales, including a whole - mint - carton of the individually boxed Miniature Masterpiece Cowboys and Indians. I say this to establish the provenance of the lot as being pretty untouched stuff from the early 1960's.

This 'set' consists - at first glance - of nothing more exciting than four header-carded groups of Disneykins in little bags, numbered as No.1 Collection, No.2...(etc...), so far so good, however I'd already noticed that any two 'matching' bags had different contents, which was why I wanted all of them; usually in a situation like this I'd leave the other four for another collector.

Further investigation (I picked a couple up!) revealed that actually four of the cards had the "SET OF 4 UNPAINTED MINIATURES" tag-line stuck-on as little paper slips, a common occurrence at Swansea, where the 'Hong Kong' was often covered with an 'Empire Made' label. It then became immediately obvious that the four with the printed label (upper of each pair in above image) were copies of the four with the stuck-on label (lower of each pair).

Well, your first thought is that these are some modern dealer rip-off, destined for eBay that happened to end-up on a show table, but there are other anomalies; Miniature Masterpieces are usually painted. Why is there no capacity for the whole range in a 4x4 figure issue, why is there no order to the figures at all, half the 7-dwarfs are just not present, Huey, Duey and Louie and in different bags? Why are the contents to two 'seemingly' identical bags completely different? What's with the copies? Why the signs of a third 'missing' staple which is clear of most of the bags - so wouldn't have held them in?

And then a closer study of the cards, stated to make things a bit (and only a BIT) clearer...

 ...the two orange cards were the missing hankie Watson walked past.

Although the non paper-slip cards are copied from the paper-slipped ones, they were copied contemporaneously and printed on the same half-tone three-colour screen-printing machine back in 1950/60-something. We can tell this from two clues;

Firstly - although there is one mark or blemish copied from the original card (double arrow in lower image above) to  the 'clone'; it is an exception, all the other cards have unique wear-marks, and all the other wear-marks on the orange cards are different (that's not the clue!), yet it is clear form looking at all eight that they have roughly the same amount of wear (the first clue).

True - that if someone found them in mint condition (now'ish) he could then produce some pretty good copies which would all age together, but even the very best copies of Corgi boxes and the like are obvious to someone who knows what to look for, or to anyone comparing like for like, but we have the second clue...

...in the upper image the two arrows are pointing in the direction of the Moire Pattens caused by the resonance of Yellow and Magenta as layered by the printer.

If these were modern copies, the lines would go the same way, with the copy's being harder to define with the naked eye. So the copies were printed at the same time, on the same machine, but the artwork (screen masks) were loaded with a ninety-degree offset! Transferring the one blemish, and the exact boarders of the roughly-cut paper slips, and coming out looking identical, but with enough differences to 'do my head in'!!

The above is a comparison between the contents of two blue sets, a comparison between a painted mini 'kin' in a creamy-white, a paint-stripped pure-white (probably a Good Soldiers cast-off) and the rather neutral/grubby white of the eight bagged sets along with the reverse side of the header-cards.

So - to the truth...or my guesstimate of what was likely to have led to this mystery. The cards are probably from sets of painted Disneykins (which may well have had contents larger than four per bag - or card?), in order to produce a factory mock-up for a proposed future extension of the 'kins' range (which had many guises/formats), they then added the typical paper slip, took print-quality copies, ran them through the same printer, but with the artwork arranged differently on the sheets, stapled them to little bags with a few figures from a stillage of product waiting to go to out-painters (which is itself interesting as I'd always thought all the paining was done by ELM in Hong Kong). They were then probably attached (by the missing staple) to a hand-painted shop display card and presented to the product marketing people.

All the above paragraph is only one possible explanation, but what I'm sure of is that these two very different sets of four cards make-up a contemporaneous group of eight. It should also be noted that around 15 or 20 years ago, there was a lot of pre-production 'prototype' stuff kicking around from Marx Swansea most of it using existing production. There were hand painted mini-sets with the Miniature Masterpiece knights; the hand-painted HO monkey/ape set which - I believe - then went into production; 40mm mechanics with a push-&-go dumper truck in a mocked-up box and others.

Anyone have a better idea?!!

D is for Disneykins

We looked at the Marx Disneykins not that long ago within the context of the European bubble-gum premiums taken from the Heimo moulds and one day I'll post more of the lose and individual boxed ones, but having been busy with other stuff today I thought I'd chuck this up as one of the old 'lazy posts'...

I think the date is 1971 (MCMLXXI?) which makes it quite a late set and interestingly states that it is made in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. Among others I have the resistance fighters with both markings, but had always assumed the mould had moved mid-production, this set would seem to be suggesting that there were several sets of moulds?

Not the complete set of Disneykins, but the main - and therefore; most popular - characters in a hard styrene plastic.

D is for Dunkin, Disney and Deutschland!

Reader/follower 'Gerhard' of Germany sent me some interesting shots the other day and although he's missed my return email and plea below somewhere, I've cobbled together a couple of posts round what he sent.

This is entirely collage'd from Gerhard's images, and is very interesting as it shows the Tito logo on an Americana gum envelope. It also states MADE IN SPAIN when the Americana company is centred near Aachen south of the Ardens (although Munich is stated on these packs), so I guess they were all part of a bigger multinational that also involved Dunkin, Tylers/Mundi and Jopar...all part of the Sanchez group????! - In the end it does your head in!

Anyway - nice shots of the envelope and a full set of the Disney figures, as Gerhard stated in his eMail; these were originally Marx Disneykins, manufactured in Hong kong in hard styrene. At some point the Marx arm in Europe; Heimo got sets of moulds for a fair few of the TV, Movie and cartoon character sets in various sizes and produced them in unpainted softer ethylene's, even shipping some back to the states.

Somehow they - the 'kin' moulds - seem to have gone to Tito (and/or Olá?) where they were supplied to all sorts of bubble-gum, ice-cream and other food companies as premiums from the mid-to-late 1960's until the early 1980's, after which some (Tin Tin) ended up in Mexico, others got as far as Taiwan (Asterix) where some of the original Marx Miniature Masterpieces had been made!

I meant to knock-up the notes for this post at home and forgot so I can't remember the name of the show from which the characters in the two lower left shots come from! It was an European TV cartoon though! Some kind person chuck the name in 'comments' if you know it, I won't be back here till next Wednesday! Added 24th Feb 2013 - Jan Koolen has let me know they are from the European TV cartoon Nils Holgersson, thanks Jan.

The other shots are either colour variations from Portugal (Olá) or Spain (Tito) or other characters from the old TV Tinykins range, taken from the oeuvres of Warner Brothers or Hanna Barberra.

Although distorted by my collageing them together these are pretty much all between 25/40mm. Again - because I didn't pre-load the article, I'm sitting here doing it off the top of my head in the Library and will NOT attempt to name half these critters!

Marx originals; Top is a Swansea large scale ethylene Panchito and two colour variants of the Disneykin.
Below him we have various Peter-pan characters, again all Disneykins. The last shot shows Hong Kong and Heimo treatments of Captain Hook in both Styrene (small) and PVC vinyl (Large) respectively.

Larger Vinyls at top, these are mostly unlicensed HK copies of Schlich, Bully (Heimo's modern trademark) or Papo, Daisy Duck is Heimo to the left and Marx to the right, Gerhard mentions getting the Schlich ones every time he went to the Dentist, any other German readers remember freebies. Also it wasn't clear if he was talking about the larger vinyls or the smaller ethylenes?

Below are some more old Marx figures to the right and a Heimo character who's name I've forgotten, but she was a US TV cartoon from the 50's (Little Orphan Annie, Dagwood? - something like that!)

Pecos Bill - one of the most pirated figures in the history of toy figures; Top row are all Marx/Heimo (Swansea ethylene is the unpainted yellow one on the left), bottom row are all Christmas Cracker/Lucky bag giveaways, with various stages of remoulding or decrepitude from 4 different sources!