L is for the Little Tramp

Couple of figures which have come in over the last few years, one possibly from Peter Evans, the other found by me or Chris? I give you Sir Charles Spencer 'Charlie' Chaplin KBE, actor, filmmaker, and composer.

One of the few who successfully transitioned from the silent era to the speakies, lived to a ripe old age, and is presented here as a resin caricature and a PVC figure around 60mm, which might be marked but I forgot to note any markings!
 

R is for Really, they WERE Rack Toys

Continuing with the theme of personalities from the previous Blue Box post, and incomplete sets, well it's about the collecting isn't it, and we can return to both subjects when they are complete!

 

And no apologies for plagiarism, this has been sandwiched between two Blue Box posts on the desktop for a week-and-a-half, and was always going to be here, just coincidence Moonbase dealt with some other Gilbert 007 stuff yesterday!

 

I picked this chap up last autumn, or at the start of the year, I have a Moneypenny already and possibly a Dr. No, so it's a question of slowly building the collection on the cheap, as these figures are hideously overhyped and over-priced! I thought it might be Q, showing bond some gadget which hasn't been painted, but it's M holding something?

But then, also at Plastic Warrior I think, I picked up another six, including all three Bonds, they are all from Sean Connery movies, and as mentioned above, an outfit called Gilbert, but out of Hong Kong, not the US or France who both had older and longer lasting Gilbert's, or Guilberts!

 

And three baddies! So I still need to find Domino and possibly Dr. No, then I can worry about replacing the tattier ones, that Trump'y chap in the red is a bit play worn! But, I'm absolutely, positively, in no hurry; . . . 

. . . there's a rack toy on ebay at the moment, doesn't matter what it is, someone posted it on Brian Heiler's Faceplant group the other day, something naff like a pair of handcuffs or a water-pistol, tied into an unrelated (to the toy)'s TV-series branded backing-card - the seller wants nearly $3,000 for it!

Now, NO rack toy is worth more than 20-quid in any currency, and their intrinsic value is no more than a fiver, and yes, we will all go 20, 35 even 50 maybe, for an aitch-tee-eff set, or something we've been looking for, for ages, or had as a kid; a 'grail' item, but really, they're not worth that. There's a set of these - in a fake carded bag - currently up for £90 . . . ninty-fucking-quid? That's nine-pounds per figure!

Added to which, these Gilbert figures, often MOC as above (minor auctioneers' lot from a few years ago - Potter Auctions I think?) aren't even rare, pretty-much every TV/Movie auction at Vectis has one or two sets, SAS general toy auctions have them as often as not, and there's always a few at Sandown Park or similar larger fairs,

 

So, I'm not going to pay the silly money people ask for them, when they will turn-up lose for a quid or two, if I'm patient, which is the point I'm making, as you can't ever have everything, you can afford to wait for the right things at the right price, and someone made a super-tanker's worth of these!

They were RACK TOYS! They aren't particularly animated, they aren't painted well enough to be display statuettes, they are in an odd scale (90mm) and there's only ten of them? Hold out for a couple-of-pounds each, is my advice, or less, they're often to be found in mixed junk-lots! But, yes, the ten-figure window box IS worth the premium, as it's rarer and easily damaged, so good ones are further between!

T is for There's Only 12, or 24!

And definitely not the 33 reported elsewhere by a couple of idiots who've never corrected, removed or apologised for their nonsense, being delivered as fact, and argued over! It's the Blue Box individual Famous Historical Characters tonight!

 

We did look at a couple of these right back at the beginning of the Blog, I picked-up a couple of painted ones in an early large-scale purchase, both duplicated here, along with a later damaged Duke of Marlborough, also duplicated here but in chrome, the damaged one is painted, all are hard polystyrene plastic.

 

But here are two new ones, Alexander the Great and Richard the Lionheart (or 'Lionhearted'), and the Alexander sculpt has since reappeared as a pawn in die-cast mazak/zamak chess sets, I believe. A straight lift from Blue Box, or are the chess sets a Tai Sang thing too, they did have die-casting works?

Two loose ones which I think were PW Show purchases? Did I hide them in those posts? They may have been evilBay or contributions/donation, I really can't remember, all these Blue Box posts have been in edit, slowly growing over a few years now. These are both new in this antiqued/chromium finish.

Comparison between the two Lord Nelson's, you can see how the 'chrome' is just sprayed on, people banging-on about vacuum-plating are talking about something completely different, which is the thick, sharp (when it flakes) layer added to larger, smoother, plastic components, or die-cast toys . . . think those huge robots in the 1980's and 90's. this stuff is a separating substrate, where the 'shine' layers-out or films on the surface of a carrier/holding medium.

I've yet to find the packaging for the painted ones, but suspect it's the same cards, either run alongside, or issued a year or two earlier or later, these would have been aimed at museums and gift shops who might have ordered one or other of the two types, or only a few of the 12 different figures, which were;

 

Painted on Cream Styrene (chronological listing)
- Alexander the Great
- Julius Caesar
- Richard the Lionheart
- Robin Hood
- Henry VIII
- Sir Francis Drake
- Duke of Marlborough
- Napoleon
- Admiral Lord Nelson
- Davy Crockett
- Geronimo
- Buffalo Bill
 
Silver-Chromium Finish (Alphabetical listing)
- Admiral Lord Nelson
- Alexander the Great
- Buffalo Bill
- Davy Crockett
- Duke of Marlborough
- Geronimo
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- Napoleon
- Richard the Lionheart
- Robin Hood
- Sir Francis Drake
 

So with Buffalo Bill I now have half the sculpts, but even with other-finish duplicates am no more than a quarter of the way to full sets of both! Another reason for suspecting the same cards for both types - they only ever come in ones or twos! I may have the Nappy Blowapart somewhere, too?

 

And thanks to whoever corrected me on a couple of the titles a while back!

C is for Composition Civilian Contribution

You may recall from previous posts on them that I have a bit of a soft-spot for these craft-oriented plaster (today's examples) or terracotta (previously seen) figures from India (which, after 43-years of 'Free Market' Tory policy which "will provide" has just overtaken us in the wealthy country register! Go Brwreakshit!), and these from Brian Berke are a particularly nice example.

I can't add much to the pictures, but they are all annotated on the base, probably by the owner rather than the maker, as they are a tad confusing, I will go through them, two at a time, as much for fun as anything else!

Starting from the left we have a chap described as a clerk, on the base he is further marked Momarir, which seems to have no meaning, Clerk is Kalaraka in Punjabi, Kērāni in Bangla, Kārakuna in Gujarati or Marathi, Klerk in Hindu or Lipikaru in Sinhalese, yet Google wouldn't suggest it as a personal name either? It (momarir) is however 'Architects' in Arabic?

The figure next to him is described as a water-carrier, with Pan-Harin or Pan-Harim in brackets, both of which claim to be Indonesian (under 'detect language') but with no further translation of meaning, pan-harim with an 'm' further claims Turkish as it's mother-tongue! However, water, oil or gee is clearly being carried!

The third from the left is described as a begger-woman (Binka-Rin?), but looks more like a musician or entertainer of some kind, she seems to be holding a form of drum or percussive instrument? Also while plainly-dressed,  her shawl is egde-decorated, qite colourfully ad her undershiry is a bright red, so hardly giving-off an aura of destitution?

The chap in scarlet is annotated as Peon (Chipras-si?), which comes up as a Marathi word, but again no translation and Google's desperate to make it Alexis Tsipras of the current Greek opposition party!

A peon is a lowly peasant in South America, but this guy is dressed as a minor prince from one of the semi-autonomous states, or a palace flunky / senior member of the native-recruited civil or military service in his Delhi Durbar finery - with all that scarlet and gold?

The last two are straightforward and make perfect sense; she is described as Queen (Rani) and a Queen is a Rani in Hindi, while the last chap is titled Washer Man (Dhobi), and you should all be familiar with dhobi wallahs being the laundry staff of the British in India (and elsewhere once the word was assimilated and carried throughout the Empire by the Army) via 1970's comedies, if nothing else, along with punka-wallahs who operated the big sheet-fans!

The fact that the last two are correctly titled/identified and the few other clues suggest to me they might be the cast-name characters in a post-colonial, Indian-written play of the 1950's or '60's which was popular enough at the time to produce a set or two of plaster figurines, but not lasting enough to leave a footprint on Google sixty or seventy years later?

Lovely figures, and from the bases (different design and plaster colour), two part sets? Scaler looks to be a Britains' hollow-cast from set 2095 French foreign Legion. Can anyone shed more light on the various names/titles? Many thanks to Brian - top feed for Small Scale World!

N is for New-Old Find!

I was moving stuff up to the storage unit yesterday and was looking for a couple of small boxes in the garage to make up a load when I spotted a rather crushed bankers box under something else and though "What the hell's in that?", dug it out and found it was a bunch of missing tubs, split between 'colonial era' and wild west . . . most of which I'd totally forgotten, and a lot of which has now been duplicated over the last few years!

Two of the tubs on the bottom had been deformed by the weight, which had pushed the end of the box over a hard edge, and there was some damage to the contents, but more due to age and three or four moves rather than what's happened to the box!

Anyway I shot a few for some box-ticking posts, and we'll look at a some in a sec', but you can see one of two tubs of Timpo Arabs (top left, the other - underneath - is the grey/white/pale blue poses), the Supreme (as supplied to various others) Wild West (middle bottom), which will make for an interesting comparison post at some point in the future, as it was only last year - I think - that I Blogged the newer versions and noted at the time there were colour variants out there.

We're about to look at two of the others, but bottom right is the 'early British' FFL and Arabs, something I know has been added-to over the years, and which requires a bit of research to get right, so only a glimpse today! Although we did look at some back at the start of the Blog I think.

Altogether there were 25 tubs, and I put them in a 35-litre Really Useful 'Euro' box last night, where there was room for five more, so for now, they got the Polish lollipop-figures (from Chris Smith) and three other's that were hanging around waiting for a home, but the Wild West and Colonial 'master' collections both have other boxes; already in storage, so this lot will be broken down in the near future and sorted into them.

Marx reissue generals (names and solid bases), and copy (? names removed, hollowed-bases) Wild West Characters, nothing special, they were common a while back, and you still see the odd lots' of them on evilBay, I think Marksmen imported the blue ones, not sure about the brown, but I have the WWII Generals/Admirals somewhere in green, blue and brown, so I guess it was all from Ri Toys?

Quick box-ticker of the Crescent Wild West, they are really quite nice figures, anatomically, somewhere between the quality of all the early Swoppets and the hyper-realistic late Timpo set, six of each pose and mounted versions available on the three standard Crescent horses, they fall down on the limited plastic-colour range.

A small lot of mixed Arabian/North African types with two French bazaar copies of Reamsa French (or Spanish) Foreign Legion, a colonial cavalryman (Pech/Reamsa) and two Marx Arabs, one of whom will require the superglue! The chap on his camel (and the camel) are a vulcanised rubber and may also be French, he looks a bit like Quiralu/Wend-Al FFL, could he be from a aluminium mould, anyone know? Next day - JIM or JIM-copy? See comments - following post.

Anyway, that's a taster, there's a few more quickies to come, and when they are all sorted back together we'll look at the rest one day!

I is for Intermediate Scales - 40mm Wild West; Ex-Waddington's 'Battle of the Little Big Horn'

Very similar to the next set (above; or click 'newer post' below) and equally unmarked and equally Hong Kong production-looking are these Battle of Little Big Horn clones of the old Rojas e Malaret sculps, except I suspect they aren't clones so much as a late running of the final tool of the two or three we saw here.

Whether the mould was in Hong Kong or was moved to Hong Kong is - currently - anybody's guess, just because some people have attributed HK without recourse to evidence or caviat is not really the point, the figures exist and while those late painted ones 'look' Hong Kong'y, there is nothing to say either way!

Indeed; these may be from a late version of the board game, paint is not necessary for 'playing counters' and while I've never seen a set with these, equally I've never seen a carded or bagged rack toy with them either?

They could just as easily have been run as cake decorations, the same as those very frangible Triang-Minimodels ones - who also have unpainted versions. Note: the second shade of brown.

There is a clear difference is in the horses where there are various horse colours (and I must thank Gareth from Morgan Miniatures for putting a few of these - foot & mounted - aside for the Blog recently), but I don't think there is any import by it, beyond a bit of variation.

The real American [not a] Hero who gets to be massacred again and again and again and again and again and again and again . . . although when I say 'massacred' I mean taught a lesson by the locals "Never go south of the River if you're not properly tooled-up and ready for trouble" . . . . everybody knows that, ask a taxi-driver!

7th is for Cavalry!

Do they still have a 7th or was it quietly retired after . . . ahem . . . 'the event'?

Someone should have done that; back in the 1400-somethings when standing armies were first being organised, the Pope or someone filling the place of a UN should have dictated that units would be numbered in sequence from 1, within each country, with units suffering more than, say, 65% casualties in a single action or campaign being retired as jinxed or dishonoured or whatever. I mean - how can you have a 501st parachute unit five minutes after the invention of the parachute, or a 633rd squadron less than 40 years after the invention of the Airforce? Equally how can you have BB1 decades after the term battleship has been popularised!

I digress, and am in danger of getting up on my high-horse and riding off on one! I think we've looked at these briefly before, if we haven't they are in the queue (which I am totally losing track of!) and will turn-up at some point, in a lesser form!

Waddington's board game pieces from the battle of The Little Big Horn game. I do have the complete game somewhere and we will look at it as a briefer post when it turns up, but today we're looking purely at the playing-piece figures.

Bluster and his flag, unlike the other figures we're about to look at, there seems to be only two versions/mouldings of this figure, and the fact that some of them are in a white plastic suggests they may have had their own tool, and consequently, enough were manufactured initially to carry through one of the subsequent publishing tranches. But the blue ones are a tad poorer in sculpting and paint.

The flag also has at least two forms, and the difference between them is more marked than the other variations we'll look at! Late shots (below) reveal there probably are three different sculpts of this figure too.

The Adjutant/ADC/2IC . . . 'other officer' type! Here there seem to be three versions; the darker figure (second from the left) being - probably - the Spanish original, a Hong-Kong'y, stab-and-hope painted figure on the far right and two commoner intermediate figures - 1st and third.

Below the main line-up are two comparisons between the commoner one and the thin-based, in-house copy.

The troopers' consist of standing and kneeling firers, with - again - three variations of sculpt for each, and a second, rarer sculpting of the standing figure, leaning into the shot, which seems to have had a shorter existence, being issued 1-to-2 of the standard straight-legs in Spanish-figured sets? Elastolin-Hausser just had six kneeling cowboys in blue styrene, very boring!

The upper line-up shows, from the left; two commoner types in different plastic shades, a probably earlier Spanish one (larger hat, deeper base) and finally; a thin-based copy. Below them to the right are three kneeling firers, the larger one on the right being the - probably - earlier one, the other two being similar to the eye, but which are different.

With the Indians the main difference is that earlier versions have nicer paint, in various schemes, while later sets tend to contain simple painted-figures in the same scheme. On the left here is a sample of mostly earlier figures with a variety of loin-cloth colours, some enhanced with a second colour.

On the right are the three versions I've found so far, with a smooth-based (three-part tool) on the left, a two-part moulding with join-line in the middle and another thin-based, probably late copy, to the right. The third version came in a sample of all plain-red loin-cloths.

A similar situation occurs here with the advancing-menacingly pose - I think they go top four (Spanish originals, chalky plastic, three-part tool [no join-line], good painting), middle eleven (two-part tool [join-line], smaller base, poorer painting) and the bottom one; smaller, overall.

A closer look suggests the forth figure on the top belongs with the lone warrior at the bottom?

There are only two obvious horse types, three-part tool with a smooth base and two-part mould with a clear join-line running across the bottom.

The various shades of sea/azure-blue saddle-blankets only seem to occur with the better (three-part moulding) horses, probably from the earlier sets, with the glossy later (?) sets only having the red-fringed yellow blankets. Spanish-issued sets (see link below) also have red blankets.

The shot bottom left compares the (Spanish?) original on the left with the (right-hand) copy.

The riders are much harder to separate, but there are clues; better paint, fuller sculpts and I have tried to line up the bowmen by type, best at the top, while with the shooter, apart from three obviously better sculpts at the top, the rest are a bit of a free-for-all?

Somewhere I have true Hong Kong copies of the rifleman, unpainted on crappy horses, probably nothing to do with the game; rather, some capsule or Christmas cracker knock-offs?

♦---------------------------------------♦

2nd photo-session

I have stuck with a plethora of 'probably's above and question-marked the few attributions to Spanish originals because I don't know the answers as to why there are at least three tranches of these, or why there's an extra standing rifleman in the cavalry - sometimes (!), or why the flags and horse only have two apparent types (both white plastic?) or even why there's two Bluster's of the 7th, in different colours?

And while I always post this link as to being the last word on all these sets originating in Spain, from Rojas y Malaret, and licensed to both Hausser (two games) and Waddington's (Little Big Horn) along with the French Capiepa, he doesn't have much on these differences either, probably because he's dealing with Spanish originals and the odd sample of British, German or French versions.

He does however highlight the differences, crediting the third (?) set to Hong Kong, but I don't know where the attribution comes from (they're not marked) and around a third of the Waddington's sets are Spanish-figure equipped anyway. The Spanish figures have Jecsan-like bases, but the horses are more Reamsa-like, but I don't know who supplied Rojas'' - I think Lafredo have been fingered as well? Elastolin used their own figures (shipping the Macedonian elephant over from Spain - a bit like the Hannibal originals!), and Waddington's had the top-ups!

My guess - for what it's worth, is that the set sold so extraordinarily well, so quickly, Waddington's were 'jumped' into finding tons more figures at short notice to supply demand from big and/or powerful clients; mail-order firms or department stores,  probably in the run-up to a Christmas?

Whether Waddington's sourced the copies in the UK or HK is a moot point. And any source trying to state Waddington's only used their own/Hong Kong figures is bullshitting (you know who, over at Vichy!), 'early' Waddington's sets contain Spanish figures; my own (when it turns up) has a set of mint, chalky, orangey-brown, well painted Spanish figures.

Anyone who's been collecting in the UK for any length of time, who's rocked-up at enough shows or who knows the odd dealer will know this set is not rare over here, with some dealers having a 'stock' stack of them, and most shows turning-up at least one, with loose figures seemingly in most rummage trays! And most donators to the collection/Blog have heaved a few this way over the years.

And the obvious thing is; the British boxes are all the same, whatever figures are in them, so while it would seem to go: 1 Spanish - 2 Spanish-like - 3 Honk Kong'y, and common-sense dictates such, there is no empirical evidence for either the order of issue, or the origin, Waddington's may even have had the Spanish tool - for a while?

The conclusion being; it was a very popular set - the year I was born!

They are still going strong!

O is for Odd Squad!

Some, but not all the National leaders (neither US President), a couple of famous Generals, but most missing and two Göring's ('Goering'), this was always a bit of an strange line-up for a set, but it's quite popular (although not particularly rare in either size), and is overdue for a box-tick here!

271 Army Leaders World War II, also issued in the larger 1:35th scale a few years later as set 450, itself an odd act, as while it made them compatible with the Italeri and Heller kits of the day, there was no history of 50mm stuff from Austria (or Germany), nor any forthcoming range of matching vehicles or other kits from Roco.

The 'data list' on the back of the card is in a different order to the presentation of the figures on the other side, who are each in a separate blister with their title below. I seem to recall the large scale set come similarly packed, but in one row?

Two Göring's; there are two Göring's for some reason, a hundred allied or axis generals missing, but two sculpts of a fat face-feeding Nazi airforce arsehole, when Roco only made a few aircraft and all of them post-war helicopters - did they do a Storch? Where's Himmler? It's a very odd choice of figures, no Monty or MacArthur? Patton's absence explained by already being in the early US figure-sets (seen earlier today).

If you're going to have even one Göring, where's the Dowding or 'Bomber' Harris? A De Gaulle, but no Vichy? Speer, Franco, any Jap, Manstein, Guderian, poor old Paulus . . . Zhukov? It's an eclectic line-up to say the least, but they are very well sculpted and all pretty recognisable as to whom they are meant to be!

While back to the Goering thing; I guess the sculptor played with a few alternative sculpts and two of them - for the one personality - were considered so good, they couldn't choose which one to run with, so ran them both? It's also worth noting that the two figures are to all purposes the same sculpt - from the waist down! But even then - you have to ask - why didn't they then make-up the set to a ten-figure count?

P is for Pressman's Pooch and 'Pesky Kids'

A quick box-ticker; it's  been a while since we looked at a board-game (although - we looked at one the other day without knowing it! More on that monkey-business later) so here's one from the archive.

US Company Pressman Toy Corp's board game 'Scoobie-Doo Cyber Chase'; as there are only five main characters (or at least; there were before the execrable 'Scrappy' turned-up to mawkishly lower the tone of the thing!) I'm assuming there are only five main players for these five plastic figurines, but there may have been a sixth 'banker' in charge of a bad guy or several bad-guys, who - if they existed - may have been card flats with slot-on bases, or just head-cards? I don't know . . . and I would have got away with it if it hadn't been for you pesky kids!

Velma Dinkley - now it's a fine post!

K is for Knotty Ash

It's only a real place, somewhere near Liverpool [and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!], home of the late, great Ken Dodd . . . that's Sir 'Doddy' to you! Who was also responsible for the Diddy Men, except, err . . . he wasn't! But he did give them form, and the form is the subject of this box-ticker.

Covered a while ago by Colin Penn in Plastic Warrior magazine (issue 147/2012), from who's article I discovered that they are actually a part of local folk-lore in the area, and that these figures (manufactured by Cherilea) don't represent any specific/named-character from TV or the stage shows . . . for more than that you'll have to read the mag'. As it happens - I think they are at least partly-based on the vinyl 6"-single's artwork?

What I would also add though, is that I don't think these are quite as rare as some prices would have you believe. Having seen a fair-few sets over the years, there's usually at least one full group being offered at the PW show - for instance; I feel they turn-up pretty often, usually as a full set of four.

 Mine were a cheapie (50p each I seem to recall) from a charity shop back in 2011, where they were for sale with the ornaments and nick-nacks, not the toys, presumably because they'd come into the shop with a job lot of such 'white elephant' stuff?  It's my suspicion that many survive in precisely that role? It's the same area of the shops I find my larger Fontanini's or Carrara statuettes when I see them.

Note also: they are quite dapper gentlemen, with each wearing some kind of neck apparel and a hat, along with either-and-or a waistcoat n' braces, and they are all in possession of a pair of spats, very-much 'the men about town'!

R is for Return - Figurines Historiques

I found the small collection of Polk's/Historex tie-up, the Figurines Historiques re-issues, in the garage/ex-storage stash the other day and have been trying to make sense of the sets from what I had in storage and those lovely painted (possibly by William J. Carman) and unpainted lose ones I picked-up at the London show a year or three ago now.

As a result we're going to look at them again briefly (but with lots of pictures) although it all raises more questions than it answers! Obviously the first thing is to ignore the line-ups in the previous post which were chronological by base-date, whereas [I hope!] today's are in the correct sets.

In storage I had some more of the semi-flats in their unpainted state; a white polystyrene of the same easy-glue type Historex used for their own products, with two sets still bagged which helped get the sets sorted, this is both sides of RB3 which I think is one half of 'Soldiers Through the Ages', however I'm not sure, as the small quantity of ephemera I have only fully lists the solids - Doh!

A comparison between one of the RB3 figures and a rather tatty example of a Mokarex original! Because the Figurines Historiques were issued over here they were quite common a decade or so ago, and while everyone else was ticking-off lists of 54mm British or European solids or 60mm US imports, I was ferreting around the shows hoovering-up the smaller stuff, and those of these, we didn't see last time, were among them.

However - I have hardly any Mokarex, and only these other three in semi-flat (and the gold one below), all three of which are from a set of Mokarex Napoleonic uniforms not re-issued by Figurines Historiques. You do see them occasionally, but often for silly money given that both Mokarex and Storme were among the bigger coffee brands and produced millions of these.

I have one or two larger solids (maybe 8 or 10 in total, some WWI and some Napoleonic cavalry in the smaller scale) but they will turn-up in thematic 54mm posts in the future.

Another comparison; musketeers! The gold one ('Buckingham', bottom-left) is another Mokarex original and then there are a selection of painted and unpainted for the two poses (the other is Porthos), along with (to the right) two smaller figures from another set, but of contemporary subjects, being another musketeer (above) and (below) one of Richelieu's goons! They are the smaller 50mm to the Three Musketeer's 54mm. The painted ones may have been painted by William J. Carman.

Now, the mysteries - while the semi-flats (50 and 54mm) turn-up, they aren't listed on the various header-cards I have, while the solids are (as already mentioned) listed, but I can't remember seeing them, or if I have seen them, they were Mokarex silver/gunmetal, not Historex white? And I think I'm right in saying the shots used on the header-cards are old Mokarex publicity shots - not unexpected if the Brethiot family (owners of Mokarex) were helping Nathan Polk and Historex with the re-issue.

Consequently, apart from the two sets I still have on the runner, the other three set numbers are speculative 9along with all the set-titles), while the listing for the solids (toward the bottom) may be for stuff they never ran the tools for! Anyhoows . . . here's what I think it looks like at the moment, one day - hopefully - we'll return to them for a final time with a definitive listing!

I do have a bunch of Polk's catalogues in the archive, so when i find them I'll check if he ever advertised/listed the semi-flats, but I think mine are too early, they mostly date form the 1940/50's?

Listings (Preliminary)

Flat/Semi-Flat Range

RB1 (?) - Kings of France (12 figures, listed chronologically, Mokarex series 1a - Les Rois de France)

[King] Clovis 465-511

[King] Clotaire 1 558-563

[King/Emperor] Charlemagne [The Great] 768-814

S^• Louis 1226-1270 (St. Louis?)

[King] Louis XI 1461-1483

[King] Francois I^..1515-1547

[King] Charles IX 1560-1574

[King] Henri III 1574-1589

[King] Henri IV 1589-1610

[King] Louis XIV 1643-1715

[King] Louis XV1715-1774

[Corporal/Emperor] Napoleon I^.. 1804-1815

RB2 - French Historical Personalities (12 figures, listed reading around the runner, Mokarex series 1b - Grande Capitaines)

Du Guesclin1320-13-80

Jean D'Arc 1412-1431 (Joan of Arc, also Jeanne D'Arc)

Turenne 1611-1675

Conn^BLE  de Bourbon 1490-1527 (Connetable de Bourbon)

La Tour D'Auvergne 1743-1800

M^AL de Saxe 1696-1750

Hoche 1768-1797

Conde 1621-1686

Roland

Bayard 1473-1524

Vercingetorix 72·46·Av.JC.

Marceau 1769-1796

RB3 - Soldiers Through the Ages (12 figures, listed reading around the runner, Mokarex numbers in brackets, Mokarex series 2a - Les Costumes Militaires)

Piquier [of the period of] Louis XIII (Piquet/Night Watch?)

Carolingien 800 (Carolingian)

Merovingien 600 (Merovingian)

Fusillier [of the period of] Louis XIV 1667 (Fusilier)

Infanterie [of the period of] Louis XV 1745 (Infantryman, 33)

Infanterie [of the period of] Louis XVI (Infantryman)

Chevalier Croise (Knight Crusader 1100'ish?)

Capetien 1000 (Norman)

Fantassin 1792 (35)

Grenadier 1771 [of the period of] Louis XV 1745

Gaulois 300 (Gaul)

Franc 400 (Frank)

RB4 (?) - Soldiers Through the Ages (12 figures, second runner, listed chronologically, Mokarex numbers in brackets, also Mokarex series 2a - Les Costumes Militaires)

Archer 1520 1520 (date repeated, no bow, so; man-at-arms?)

Cent-Suisse de le Garde 1558 (Landsknecht - Papal Guard)

Lansquenet 1562 (Conquistador type)

Mousquetaire 1627 (Musketeer)

Garde C^al Richelieu 1628 (Cardinal Richelieu's Bodyguard)

Carabinier 1692 (Dragoon)

Garde Francaise 1724 (French Guard)

Colonel De Hussard 1804 (Colonel of Hussars)

Grenadier 1804

Tambour Major 1804 (Drum Major)

Chevau-Leger 1810 (Heavy Cavalry, lit. 'Heavy Horse')

Cuirassier 1810 (34)

RB5 (?) - The Three Musketeers (12 figures, 'unknown' or Figurines Historiques numbering, Mokarex numbers in brackets, Mokarex series 2b - Les Trois Mousquetaires)

6085 - D'Artagnan 1611-1675 (28)

6086 - Athos (25)

6087 - Porthos (26)

6088 - Aramis (27)

6089 - Maitre Bonacieux (31)

6090 - Madame [Constance] Bonacieux (32)

6091 - Planchet (29)

6092 - Anne d'Autriche 1601-1666 (22)

6093 - [Earl of] Buckingham 1592-1628 (24)

6094 - [King] Louis XIII (21)

6095 - [Cardinal] Richelieu 1585-1642 (23)

6096 - Milady (30)

PS - if anyone has spare unpainted versions of the three I still need I'm sure I can find something nice for a swapsies!

Unknown publicity card

or set's backing-card (solids?)

Fully-round Range (listed as given on above flyer)

1 - French Revolutionary Figures 1^st Series (12 figures)

Roget de L'isle 1760-1836

Camille Desmoulins 1760-1794

Lazare Carnot 1753-1823

Madame Tallien 1773-1835

Marat 1743-1793

Laviosier 1743-1794

Joseph Bara 1779-1793

Hoche 1768-1797

Charette 1763-1796

Princess de Lamballe 1749-1792 (M^me...)

La Fayette 1757-1834

Axel de Fersen 1755-1810

2 - French Revolutionary Figures 2^nd Series (12 figures)

Napoleon 1769-1821

Danton 1750-1794

Marceau 1769-1796

Kellermann 1735-1820

Marie Antoinette with the Dauphin 1755-1793 & 1785-1795

Andre Chenier 1762-1794

Charlotte Corday 1768-1793

Fouquier-Tinville 1746-1795

Mirabeau 1749-1791

M^ME Royale 1778-1851 ('Princess Royal')

'Sans Culotte' 1792 (revolutionary)

M^ME Roland 1754-1795 (not on flyer/header-card)

3 - French 14-18 War Soldiers 1^st Series (10 figures)

Alpine Chasseur

Morrocan Tirailleur

Infantry Grenadier

Foot Chasseur (#1)

Artilleryman

Trumpeter

Engineer

African Chasseur

Soldier of the Marne

Tankiste

4 - French 14-18 War Soldiers 2^nd Series (12 figures)

Soldier at Present Arms

Drummer

Cyclist

Zouave

Legionaire

St. Cyrien

Senagalese

Communications Guard

Foot Chasseur (#2)

Machine Gunner

Marine

Supplyman

5 - French 14-18 War Personalities 1st Series (12 figures)

Foche

Gouraud

Mangin

Petain

Pointcare

Joffre

Lyautey

Guynemer

Clemanceau

Gallieni

Fayolle

Franchet D'Espercy

6 - Personalities of the 2^nd French Empire 1^st Series (8 figures)

Empress Eugenie

Princesse de Morny

Duchesse De Castiglione

La Paiva

Princesse de Metternich

Carpeaux

Prince Imperial

George Sand

7 - Personalities of the 2^nd French Empire 2^nd Series (12 figures)

[Ferdinand] De Lesseps

Thiers

Musset

Canrobert

Hausmann

Lamartine

Corot

Dumas pere

Cantiniere

Victor Hugo

Gambetta

Balzac

8 - French Revolutionary Figures 3^rd Series (6 figures)

Robespierre 1758-1794

Louis XVI 1754-1793

Louis David 1748-1825

Saint-Just 1767-1794

Condorcet 1743-1794

Joseph Viala 1780-1793

9 - Louis XIV and Personalities (12 figures, may have been discontinued early or not issued)

10 - Louis XV and Personalities (12 figures, may have been discontinued early or not issued)

11 - Men at Arms of Louis XI (8 figures, from chess set)

12 - Bergundian Men at Arms (8 figures, from chess set)

Other side of above card

 

Chess Set (no number, 32 figures)

Kings:

Louis XI

Charles le Temeraire [Charles the 'Rash' or 'Bold']

Queens:

Charlotte de Savoie

Duchesse de Bourgogne

Knights (Dukes):

Duc de Bretagne

Duc de Bourbon

Duc de Malines

Duc d'Uytherke)

I had help . . . if you can call it that!

And she always looks so pleased with herself - You don't fit in the small-sample boxes!