W is for Who's Got The Shoot'ahs?!

I have! A couple of thematically linked purchases on the 5th of the month, and I think they came from two tables next to each other, in that Isaak had one, which he brought over to me, and his friend at the next table had the other when I managed to get over the other side of the hall!

 

Parashoot . . . geddit! Already added to the parachute page, this is one of the common blow-mould parachutists, given a bit of a prosthetic, up the jacksie! There was already a shot there, and this is a bit sun-faded, but it'll help with future comparisons or overviews elsewhere!

 

While this has no parachute, but neither does it have targets or an obvious scoring system, so it sits halfway between the other shooting sets. The tip of the blow-moulded rocket comes off, but there was no obvious place for "harmless caps", so I'm guessing the cap goes at the other end, and is fired by the launching plunger, but I didn't think to look, and it's now up an the storage unit.

 

The polystyrene gun is damaged and will need glueing one day, but it perfectly illustrates how frangible, and ephemeral some of this stuff was, and why Mum banned us from having it . . . 'No, why don't you get some more Airfix soldiers, not that rubbish!'

P is for Premier's Plastic Pulp-fiction!

I mentioned the other day that these were on their way from the land across The Pond, and they arrived a few days later, it took me a week or two to photograph them, then I managed to delete one lot of images while they were still in the camera, then reshoot them without noticing the alert that there was no SD card in the dratted thing, anyway, they're here now!

 

Group shot, I'll use Ed's ID list as a guide to these again;

 

https://toyconnect.blogspot.com/2013/08/premier-plastics-knock-off-flash-gordon_4270.html

 

So this is the five inch 'Dart', version 1, as made by Premier Plastics, presumably as dime-store bin toys, but they were also branded to Flash Gordon on multiple-element, tied-in cards.

 

Two of the smaller three inch darts, the red one I think equates to his version 1, while the silver one with an inverted '2' is probably the same as his version 1 also? I suspect, if enough are amassed, or compared, more numbers will surface, normal and inverted, and will be grouped in one version 2, as opposed to the unnumbered version 1?

 

Three inch 'Wide Bodies', these are all pretty identical, and with no numbers, are equivalent to Ed's version version 2 (five windows), but without the inverted '4', so again, will get a separate version under Ed's numbering system, one day?

 

Comparison between the three silver bods shows that the 3" Dart is that subtle pinkish-silver you sometimes find their (Premier's) figures in, like some shimmering-mauve 1960's eye-shadow!

 

That's it, a quick post on 1950's pulp eye-candy, joining the fleet, which now has the two dodgy-painted ones, a soft plastic blue one and whatever has been hiding in storage-garage-storage all these years!

A is for Arch of Minor Victory!

Now, I think the seller told me who these were, but I'll be fecked if I can remember what he said, and we have seen them before;

 

With the larger hard 'styrene from Flan Imperial on the left, in this archive-shot, a smaller painted one in the middle (which I previously mused might be Starlux and nobody corrected me, but I wonder if it's actually Rene Fisher (RF) or Jem, which would make the identifying of the below a bit easier, as they'd be Norev?), also polystyrene, and a Beverly aperitif premium in polyethylene to the right.

 

But it's not that easy, as Cofalu did them, also in a soft plastic, in red and blue, but not the same shades as the Beverly ones, and sans Beverly mark, while another set in the same cream-white as the Flan Imperial, is also out there, in the smaller size and softer ethylene, while the below recently came in.

 

I've posed them against a rather diminutive Arc de Triomphe, I picked up at the show, last weekend, hence the title of the post! Which is presumable a touristy memento/craft thing - make your own triumphal arch? I could send it to the orange loon, he wants one!

 

Although, as an afterthought, it also has the simple properties of a cheap, easy-construction 'prop', maybe for window dressing, jewellers' windows, something like that maybe? There is some wood-strip reinforcing in the interior corners, though, so home-craft from a printed stamping, is more likely.

 

There are only ten of the twelve poses known to be from the set, seen here. The other two may just be missing from this ample, or not part of this version of set at all? And painting is as simplistic as the later Norev issues of the Rene Fisher (RF)/Jem medievals, so that would be neat and leave me with only two unknown issues, instead of the current four?

 

However, I can't find any as RF or Jem, and if Flan Imperial are the original/donor sculpts? And going on the base design/shape, of all the samples, Starlux or someone connected with them remains in the periphery of the picture? Anyway, I've tagged all of them in case someone passing knows the truth!

C is for Colección de Indios y Cow Boys Humorísticos

This is a weird one? Firstly, it was intended to be the fourth post in the sequence when we looked at the Lik Be / Gordy sets of Wild West kids and knock-off cake decorations, back in June (although I don't think these have any connection with LB, beyond the humerous and Wild West subject matter), and secondly, because I don't seem to have shown my trio on the blog, when they only came in recently, and were intended for this post, whenever I got round to posting it?

 

I've checked the recent show report posts, I've checked the donation stuff from Chris and Peter, and can't find them, so I suspect they may have been a private purchase, which got sorted into the collection, in the normal rhythm of things, and while I would have intended to shoot them, I must have sorted them into the 4x5½ bags I use, and sent them off to storage without shooting them?

 

Anyway, I found them last night, looking for something else, over at the storage site, and brought them back here, thinking maybe I'd posted it all, but 'just in case', and sure enough, no sign of them on the Blog, and the specific post, still in Picasa! So shots taken and we'll look at them and the Jecsan catalogue first, then a bunch of Internet scrapings found over the years.

 

Jecsan catalogue scan, the full set of figures goes to six foot and three mounted each for the two lots of protagonists, with one horse pose each; bareback for the Indians, and saddled for the Westerners. The card for the separate Tipi seems to be designed to make a lithographed 'paper flat' totem pole?

 

The toymen of Hong Kong took two of the foot Indians and one of the mounted cowboys for some revenue generation, probably at the request of a Western buyer, that's how it worked there, but gave the mounted cowboy the Indian horse - presumably because that's what the sample they were given, to pirate, contained?

 

A decent rear-shot

The hat of my cowboy is lacking the mark seen further down the page, he being marked on his back, instead, suggesting at least two lots/tranches of these, with either changes to the tool, or separate tools, a quandary not made easier by them all sticking to the same paint-scheme . . . multiple cavities maybe?

 

Paint, and markings have some similarities with Blue Box production of the era, think either set of Knights or the Jean-cloned Wild West, so these (or 'some' of these) may have come from one of the Tai Sang factories, but we'll probably never know?

 

Looking at these 'Comic Coyboy' cale decorations, from Carrousel, but not owning them, I can only suspect that A) they may be hard polystyrene, against the soft Polyethylene of all the others seen here, and B) might be smaller sub-piracies - a second/third lot/set.

 

The painting is simpler, and indeed, it appears one mounted cowboy/horse combo' is undecorated, but big may/mights here? They also look similar in general execution, to the HK copies of Ajax base-ballers, American footballers and other cake decorations in the same vein?

 

 

There seems to have been one of the many copies of the Britains Herald totem pole also associated with them, but paint differences and plastic colour might point to them just being 'chucked in' to online auction images?

 

A pair of Indians, presumably a similar card has the cowboy and horse in a different blister? The "Cowboy [singular] and Indians [plural] in that heliotrope/carmine-red 'ink stamp' effect font, is found on other Wild West rack toys, and may be another clue to producer, or more likely wholesale agent? But again we're unlikely to ever know!

 

Another pair.

 

The different mark of the possible second lot, I mentioned above. A separate tool or later change to the existing tool? Sadly the pictures in this auction lot (final five images), didn't include a decent rear-shot - as they hardly ever do!

 

The only paint variation with the commoner set, is this cowboy with a red shirt, suggesting a larger set, although a horse is absent, but it makes for a more balanced 2:2 fight in the icing around a chocolate-finger 'log' fort!

 

They aren't really compatible with the Lik Be sets, being more obviously caricature adults, than the cubby-cheeked kids of the LB set, but are cartoony enough to compliment a display of them, should someone want a display of infant-oriented cake decorations! And there's the Lucky Luke figures from Comansi and similar figures from Exin (which may have been sourced from Comansi too), to consider in this genre.

B is for Battle Figures

We've seen them before, but it was eight or so years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/01/s-is-for-shelfies-2-imperial-walmart.html 

 

And they are both carded, and several pages down the Tag results, so we'll look at these from Peter Evans, as an overview, Imperial's twin-set Battle Figures - proper rack toys!

 

Zombie Responders Vs Zombies, the zombies being unique sculpts only seen in the Imperial sets, while the responders are clones of those old favourites, Tim Mee's later 54mm Vietnam era GI sculpts. In their separate bags, the GI's look bigger, but it's because they are copied from more animated and gangly figures, and as you can see they are all the same height.

 

Ninjas Vs Pirates! I guess they could have met, on the high seas at some point? Again we have unique sculpts in the Ninjas (possibly a pose missing?), while the pirates are taken from the Hing Fat set, but reduced slightly in size. When we saw these as shelfies from Brian Berke in New York, way back when, I tagged them 54mm, but they are closer to 50mm.

 

Army Men Vs Cavemen, again did they only get five poses, or is one missing? Their foe were more Tim Mee knock-offs, but they were in Khaki, and almost certainly seen in one or two posts here at Small Scale World, back in the twenty-teens. Worth noting that while the new sculpts are all marked Imperial China, the GI's only have the China mark.

 

Not from these sets, and not Imperial, but in the same lot from Peter, so I'll chuck them up here as a possible complete pose count! I think we saw them recently, from Chris Smith, also as a 9-count, so that would seem confirmatory, and as I said then, I think they may be ID'd elsewhere on the Blog?

 

That's it, rack toys in Rack Toy Month! Thanks to Peter for these, and Brian and Chris for previous help with the same subjects.

R is for Roveing Reporter's Rack-toy Round-up #3

Brian's third visit this year, was to Hobby Lobby (similar to our Hobbycraft, but ours carries less of the kind of stuff we're about to look at here), where he found some useful sets of classic rack-toys, which seem to tick all the boxes!

 

 

Cold-blooded critters; the amphibians hidden among the lizards again, and we now suspect some Dinosaurs were warm-blooded, because birds are, and they are the direct descendents!

 

Fantasy; and there are more poses here than with the set we saw the other day, including a prone one, I never know if it's lying down, or the equivalent of sitting? Also there's five colourways, not four, but perhaps a more assorted assortment, in fact it looks like each colour is a different pose, with about three in each colour/pose?

 

Farm . . .

 

 

. . . and Zoo!
 

With sets dedicated to temperate/woodland animals and arctic fauna. Sculpt-count is good with these sets as well, but, as Brian pointed out in the eMail, climbing, price-wise. Still cheaper than the European equivalents though (those Peterkins are closer to a tenner, with the cheaper ones £7.99), and I dare say a mix of new sculpts, older sculpts and the odd rip-off of Schleich, Papo, or similar modern brands.

 

The others; insects and marine/sea-life. As with all the above, some look familiar, some look all new, but the suspicion is that where similar, they will be copies, so are 'variants', as far as collecting goes? All the above seem to contain duplicates, possibly pairs of everything?

 

What some of you have been waiting for, the combat troops, sculpts we've seen before, but they appear to be clean, new sculpts, rather than pantographed sub-piracies, of 'Fritz' helmeted generic US/NATO types, with the daft ATGW firer! Vehicles are simple moulding we've also seen before, as are the interlocking wall sections.

 

But these are probably more interesting, ACW types, and I don't think they are the Billy-V/Americana ones from BMC, nor the Hing Fat chaps, so new sculpts? I don't know enough about them, but if they tickle the fancy, I suspect they'll need a purchase over there, to get them over here! In fact, they look like copies of Accurate/Revell? And there's some useful artillery in there, with metal axles?

 

Many thanks to Brian for his visits to Dollar General, Daiso and Hobby Lobby, this year, highlighting the inevitable inflation (resulting from Trumps tariffs), and covering current production in/for the US. I did manage a trip to B&M a couple of days ago and found little, and will also check the rest before the end of the holidays.

H is for Have Screwdriver, Will Travel, Interstellar!

This is all courtesy of Peter Evans, with the carded set coming last year around Christmastime, and the figure being in the latest donation, which I picked-up the other day!

 

Apropos the construction sets we saw in the shelfies from Brian the other day, and credited to a Huan Le Play of china, it's sub-branded, on the reverse, to 'Toys' and imported by Yelsa of Luton?

 

It's the figure we're interested here at the Command Centre, the shuttle's a bit naff, and he's a fully round, slightly juvenile sculpt, but, a useful, and cheerful looking, addition to the pile!

 

However, this almost identical chap has finer detail and a better finish, both in paint and overall sculpt (although the first guy's star-spangled visor is pretty neat!), so the suspicion has to be that the Huan Le set is a knock-off of whatever toy the second geezer came from? Cheers Peter!