M is for Motormax, from Redbox

Sort of running out of time tonight, despite finishing early, I've been deep in the contents of a parcel from Peter Evans (next post, brilliant bendy band babes!), so I'm throwing this up before midnight!

Various treatments of camouflage/paint on-, and plastic colours of- the 20mm copies of Matchbox US Infantry, as inherited by Redbox from Zylmex/Zee Toys a decade or so ago, and sold with the larger boxes of military Motormax sets.

S is for Shop-full of Shelfies!

I've been building up a small stash of shelfies, with lots of help! And while they should have gone-up in August, there's no hard and fast rules here at Small Scale World, so we'll have a quick look now.

These are in Poundland at the moment . . . not unsurprisingly for a pa'nd! Three versions of Buddha on the left, a piratey type, a gardener who had nearly sold out and some white blob at the back which looks a bit Thai!

On the right a new collectable? She's probably already sold-out, more pirates and three ger'nomes, two are off to Pride, the third is a mermaid . . . how long before we have a limited-edition, chrome-plated, super-deform, angry-bird, Star Wars, gay-pride, Funko-mini mermaid-gnome with troll hair Tamagotchi? It's only a matter of time peeps!

Redbox under their Motor Max label, ID'ing a few of the many mechanics out there, this was in TKMaxx a while ago now, so will have gone, but it'll be out there somewhere if you need it, I'll wait for the loose figures to turn-up . . . thinks; might have a few already?

Couple more from TKMaxx, the Siku 8x8 swamp-hog is about 25/28mm compatible, and would seem to need a matt khaki re-spray and a recoilless rifle or ATGM mounting! The other Redbox has no figures either, but was interesting for being credited to the French Motormax Toy 'Factory' in Villepinte (my qoutes), via the 200 Horton Road, Middlesex office (UK) but 'manufactured' by RBI (Redbox International) in Rialto, California, yet "MADE IN CHINA"! Ultimately it's all Tai Sang!

These came from Brian Berke, our roving reporter in New York, rather at the infant end of the spectrum, the one on the left though has nice, realistic fire appliances (quite collectable) with deformed mini-vehicles you think must be from another line! While I'm strangely drawn to the three slightly deformed mini-AFV's on the otherwise aircraft card - just the sort of stuff which turns-up in mixed lots at car-boot sales or charity-shops!

Also from Brian came this Mexican, traditional style bagged rack-toy with header card and a collection of Marx 3" copy figures and various (non-Marx?) accessories. It might have a bit of age, but a lot of that Mexican stuff turns-up on evilBay, issued by KiKo or Ki-Ko (aren't they the people who did the licensed version of Arfix's Robin Hood play-set in the 1980's?). There's a yellow canoe in the Tee-Pee, which will return to the Blog soon . . . 'ish . . . I hope! It's my bad!

Peter Evans sent us this one at the beginning of September (where did that month go?), via Faceplant messages, so it would have missed RTM ayway, shot at the Gift and Promotional show in Birmingham the other month. A mix of stuff, some of which we've seen before.

Nothing special, but the stone towers with their industrial-looking doors might make a useful sci-fi accessory, suitably repainted, and there is a couple of new trucks and some M60's with ERA if I'm not mistaken? I don't know who's carrying it, but at two quid wholesale, it shouldn't be more than £3.50/£3.99 when you find it?

Thanks to both Brian and Peter for the contributions, shelfies sorted, still out there now!

Zee is for Zylmex is for Motormax is for Redbox!

I can't remember if the takeover of the Zylmex factory and tool-bank came out in the initial rebuttal of the nonsense from TJF and his onanistic monkey-lizard back in 2016, or if it had already come out, but suffice to say the demise of the Z's was good for Tai Sang!

I'm fairly sure this is an Argos code but it could have been Index? Not that it maters particularly; these sets were available elsewhere at the time (early 2000's? I'll probably have the date in the old book manuscript, or the Argos pages to scan sometime), and an outer liner is A) not pretty and B) hard to get a paragraph out of, which I seem to've done . . . phew!

I'm also not sure where I've got the idea (die-cast site somewhere?) but I believe Zyll produced some of these (or the Motormax brand), right at the end, and Redbox took over the stock as well as the tools etc . . . certainly the logo bottom-right would appear to be a generic's 'phantom' sub-brand, bearing no relation to Zee and not much to Redbox, although it is an R, while the only thing tying this to Redbox is a small, white, paper sticker on the back.

Figures were rubbery PVC copies of Matchbox American Infantry; 2-each of five poses, these have a very muted camouflage, others [in the collection] have more obvious contrast between paint and plastic, we may have seen a few here in the past, but I also think a second marque has been associated with them at some point - bought in?

The lorry has hardly changed in 40/50 years, the wheels have had a redesign and the markings/decoration are sharper!

We looked at the various half-tracks once or twice here at Small Scale World (most notably in this overview) with both Zylmex-marked and blanked-off belly-pans. The tanks are for another day, but those of a certain age will remember them butterfly-clipped to a piece of sloping landscape in their window-boxes, I have several AMX30's somewhere, which had obviously gone-cheap at some point! But there are others in a tub with the knock-off mini-mites (Cragstone or Kresege?) and Tomy minis. The helicopter is an improvement on some of the earlier Zee Toys stuff!

These are still out there in various configurations depending on the contract and Redbox are better labelled on this exact set, or were a while ago in TKMaxx. Now; there are too many question marks in this post, but I shot it because I happened to have it in front of me the other day as everything is in a bit of turmoil here at the moment (boiler died yesterday!), and there is one more question mark - I mentioned in the previous post they might be Macau not HK production . . .

There is somewhere, some data tying Tai Sang and Zylmex to die-casting factories, or a factory in Macau, yet you never find that mark on any products by any of the marques (Tai Sang-Blue Box-Redbox or Zee-Zyll-Zylmex), so I'm not sure about any of it; however they (or some of them) may have originated in the Portuguese colony rather than Hong Kong? As all marks are now 'China' and most of the tools still in production; I guess it's a moot point!

A is for Airfix Posting - Jeeps

A new recurring title, for a while at least; I must get the rest of the Airfix stuff up, or at least enough to get each page-post going! Then I can look at finishing the blurb on the existing posts!!

Jeeps today, the Airfix Attack Force Jeep, with comparisons of a bunch of others, there will be more to come, these were the ones in the 'Jeep Tub' which doesn't include a lot of the named stuff, nor most of the larger Hong Kong/China pieces, but it's a starter guide!

A few points beyond the Airfix aspect of the linked-post; I missed a small silver one (upper image) which comes somewhere between the Spear's Trek (left) and Kinder 'minis' (right) Jeeps; I've also shown the three colours of Kinder Jeep.

Below left image puts the two Marx mini's next to each other, the die-cast offering has the slightly more realistic windscreen position, but both are overall pretty poor sculpts, and copies of the larger-scaled one from the big playsets.

The bottom-right picture compares the two Zee/Zyl/Zylmex and/or Motormax/Redbox Jeeps, one of which has a MASH sticker. They are also different colours and have slightly different wheels.

The little silver Jeep seems to go with the two silver/gold cars we looked at a few Christmases ago, to which I've added blue and green ones which were in storage, although they are both cleaner sculpts with fatter tyres and an undercut on the wheel-arch and may be from an earlier/separate issue [wave]. They show all the 'hallmarks' (small, inexpensive, monoblock design) of being gum-ball machine capsule-prizes or Christmas cracker-novelties?

No Dulcop racing cars (or are they PRB or Crescent. . . heh-heh-heh-heh!), but - obviously - they're in the long queue. Too funny, their 'idea factory' now seems to be my 'forthcoming' posts, but I already knew that from the other day . . . all the stupidies sticking together like a pack of mangy dogs!

And now he's bleating he should be allowed to get things wrong, oblivious to the hypocrisy of correcting my Jecsan with the hysteria he did? Too funny, the loons are trying to run the asylum with the support of more loons!

T is for Those Pesky Astronauts

I don't know where your collection stands with regard to theme or 'purity' or scale, period or type, but some of you at least - I'm sure - will be as uncontrolled and esoteric as me when it comes to amassing plastic tat, and one of the things you will have accrued in the 'unknown zone' is an assortment of PVC figures between 25/30mm and and around the 60/70-mil mark depicting NASA Astronauts.

Some of them you may have ID'd over the years (maybe even these), I know I've pinned some small ones down to Matchbox's Mega-Rigs, others to Safari Toobs, these came into TKMaxx the other day and frankly; twelve-quid is too much for the contents, so 'shelfie-cam' came out!

Brand-marked to Motor Max the rump of Zylmex now owned by Tai Sang's offspring Red Box (sibling of Blue Box - as we discovered, sorry; RE-discovered, a year ago!), this NASA-influenced play-set definitely contains some of the 45/50mm'ish 'unknown' figures from my storage sample, does it help you with any of yours?

Close-ups of the window box shows four or five poses among the six figures, but for some of you the moon-buggy may well be the bigger draw. There's also a piece of ground equipment and a shuttle and 'big-rig' with booster rocket, all in different scales!