C is for Christmas Cracker Cosmonauts

These were first identified in Plastic Warrior magazine a while ago now, with the presentation of the original ad' in a trade publication, I think, there is another one kicking around, but that's for the Thomas (or more likely Poplar ethylene's) spacemen, issued in Tom Smith crackers, if I recall correctly these were in a more generic advertisement, but I've forgotten the issue number!

 

Equally, I can't remember which of these images were taken on Adrian's stall, which came from evilBay and which are mine, and some of Adrian's eventually came home with me, so may have been shot twice!

 

The thing is, they used to share space with the Lido (previous post), although marked-up 'Rex Depose' which I now know they aren't (but I'll put Rex in the Tags, to correct past musings), so they've also been sharing the same folder here since at least 2012, when I started collecting the images for both posts!

 

You can see from the Ajax/Archer type helmet that they are smallish, compared to some of the 'pulp' stuff, but still come-in at a reasonable 54mm each, and sculpted to slide into Christmas crackers, and fly out again without doing themselves, Granny's eyes or the Christmas spread too much damage!

Basically they come in three colours, metallic silver, petrol-blue and jade green'ish, the pink ones here are purely a trick of the light and I can assure you they are as silver as the other two, because two of them ARE the other two, and I just got them out to measure them!

Four poses, two command-types with their legs apart delivering sterling speeches of an ordering-about, sacrifice, for-the-flag/glory/humanity's future variety, and two trooper types, at attention, preparing to eat-dirt - again, on someone else's shitty home-world - again! And like the previous post's Lido Space Rangers, each has a groovy logo on his suit, which is unique to that figure.

This, captured in the wild from feebleBay, is an abomination, and almost certainly started its public life at Vectis Auctions in the North East, where a lot of similar 'carded' stuff has appeared over the last fifteen or twenty-odd years or so, often pretending to be Zang/Herald for Britains half-moon cards. Which isn't necessarily Vectis's fault, they sell what the clients bring them, and they do tend to caveat the listing, to alert, but they must know who keeps turning-up with these Dr. Moreau creations!

 

What we have here, are, top-left and bottom right; Cracker spacemen, in the middle; a Texas/Isas alien, and top-right/bottom-left; the rockets from Triang's Battle Space launcher, which are probably worth more, being sold separately, than on this cobbled-together stale-confection!

So we have two polyethylene & rubber model-train accessories, two polystyrene cracker novelties and an Italian plug-based, 'ethylene toy soldier, the figures material-colour matched, and further given a splash of casually painted (as out-painters would have) silver highlights to further 'unite' them, all on a card which is one of the relatively common cards (see Tags) from Italy, which has had the legend cut-off!

It's a fake, a phony, a curates-egg, designed to deceive, and many of us know who's behind them, but Western law is designed to protect landowners, Politicians, capitalists and yes, liars and fraudsters, from the truth, and if I named him, I'd leave myself open to a charge of defamation! If you bought it, sorry, but you were sold a parvo' pup!

In its natural habitat!

PW6 is for Best of Show - Space, Civilian and Other Stuff

So this is the rest, not of the PW show's plunder pile, but of those items I think you may be interested in, or which I - in my arrogance (all Blogs are by their nature at least slightly narcissistic!) - just want to show you! Seriously though, I hope they are all of interest!

These were in the bag from Brian Carrick, and are all new to the collection. The most interesting is the GI type at the back; he could a be Gum-ball/Sobre/Lucky-bag/Capsule-toy of some type, but equally he may be from a board-game? LP astronaut-copy is a new colour addition to the existing sample while the girl with skis and Bergan-rucksack may turn-out to be Kibri or Kibri supplied, but I need to dig on that one . . .

. . . she's like similar flesh-coloured ones I have which resemble artists renditions in a Kibri catalogue, and also seem to be the donors of the semi-flats from Hong Kong we've seen here a couple of times (with cartoony faces), but the same catalogue has renditions of two other types of figures, over two pages, some of which are definitely the Roco-Minitrains ones, the others Noch (?) so Kibri - while being manufacturers - may also have done a bit of jobbing other people's stuff?

An excellent trio of curiosities here! The bear is a cake-decoration in bisque, but it's given 'fur' by being rolled in bisque crumbs before firing, while the little soldier (in a fairing style but only 45/50mm) is also bisque and I suspect a wartime piece, either a wedding-cake figurine (so many were getting married in uniform) or maybe more of a 'sweetheart' piece, left with a girlfriend by a beau, off to war? Equally - it could be a fundraiser like the German and US ones we've already seen here?

Between them is a rubber jiggler, with his/her/its tongue out! And why not?

Not 100% sure if the outer two are French Rex or British Christmas cracker novelties, but they are early, I suspect British, the Rex I've seen are slimmer figures. Between them are four LB derivatives; a chromium-plated polystyrene Tri-ang Spacex/MPC Golden Astronaut and three generations of copy/sub-piracy in polyethylene - the smallest on his second-outing in five minutes, what's that all about?!!

These were saved for me by Mike's friend Kevin (?), and they really are lovely, I know they can come in an ultramarine blue, and I know there is at least a fourth pose, so obviously I'm going to be looking for that other pose in the other colour, but this is a good start! Based on MPC sculpts, these are Hong Kong's finest, with faces in 'helioscopic'* print, behind clear visors.

* There's another word for them, but I can't remember it! Not 'fractal' but similar? Polyfractual, visirand, goottlefetchling? 2025 - lenticular!

Farm copies in HO/OO-gauge compatible Hong Kong polymer! They will be put on the Airfix Blog as a comparison, I think these are just a green run of the oxide-brown ones already seen over there, and, err . . . that's it!

Alan Shearer! Who knew? Probably lots of you, but he's new to me, some recent cereal premium, there's a set of them and I'll look out for them as they are nice figures, Weetabix or Wheetos I think (?) . . . because of everything else going on recently I've put some of this stuff away without taking proper notes and the attic's too hot to faff-about in 'till September now! Peter Evans had put the above to one side for me . . .

. . . while Adrian Little had saved this for me. Initial thought was that it's an NZ tourist trinket, but memory serves it may be from a European premium (Vitho of France?) set of native/aboriginal cultural art/iconography and masks (which might be in Jean Piffret's excellent book?), but it's very timely, for as we shall see have seen; 2019 is turning into 'New Zealand Year' here at Small Scale World, with forthcoming the recent posts from Brian Berke and the Jan/Feb stuff from Glenn.

Which closes 'my PW show' for this year, plenty-else still to come from the 'best show in the world' yet though,, but thanks to Adrain, Peter, Kevin, Nicolas, Brian for now, and . . .  it's only 9-months to the next one!

R is for Return to Captain Video et al.

Not exactly a follow-up as the other days post was adequate enough for what it was, but I said at the time that I would re-visit these when I got the rest out of storage, as there are more of the smaller premium sized ones there and a few of the human/spaceman sculpts (I think . . . it's a while since I saw them!), but then I picked these up the other day . . .

 . . . so we might as well have another look at them now! The rest of the Reamsa tinny-ethylene re-issues at the bottom, a duplicate bird-man in rubber, also from Reamsa (top left) next to a totally new one on me, a Heudebert European food premium based-on but reversed from the Lido robot and five of the clunky-styrene or phenolic ones from the anonymous maker of 'Winco Condar's Interplanetary Spacemen!'

So ♪♫♩♬ Meet the gang, 'cos the boys are here, the boys to entertain you . . . with robots an' ail'iee'ens to help you on your way...♩♫♪♬ The 'gang' may be bigger than the storage sample now, but I don't think so and there's still a shortage of the smaller versions and the humans here.

The ray-gun guy in green I 'restored' with a coat of plumbers sealant a while ago can now be seen to be one of the smaller ones though, as he's considerably smaller then the Reamsa, who's brothers are all the same as the Lido/British versions.

The blue cat-man/gasmask guy has his weapons intact as does the new green trident guy (or should that be bident!) unlike their twins.

The above image was originally just the picture on the left, but I think I got one (or two) of my colour-matched cube's wrong last time, so I've added a legend to the right (don't temp me!) which is correct, bearing in mind that those marked Lido could be from any one of several sources (Dumont, Rex, Techniplast), the four Reamsa's may have been issued by one or two other brand-marks (Alca Capell, Puchol) in recent years, and - indeed - the silver robot is so clean he may be a more recent 'pressing'?

As I said last time, without the base marks of the Reamsa or Trovador examples "It's very hard to say with any degree of definitiveness which figure is by which company".

The spare rubber Reamsa is available for a straight-up swap for any of the other three poses if you have one of them duplicated and need this bird-man - eMail me on maverickatlarge [at] hotmail [dot] com. Compared to the re-issue there's nothing in it, they are from the same mould and all four are numbered under the base as per the catalogue listing.

The Heudebert as I say; was unknown to me, and there doesn't seem to be much on that there inter'mah'web-thinggy, he can be seen - or said - to have either had his arms reversed or had his face put on the back of his head, he's also a lot smaller, so rather a 'son of robot'. He's a sharp, 'kit' type, polystyrene like Heudebert flats, in a slightly washy, metallic-gold polymer.

B is for Birdmen, Bots and Something Else Beginning with B!

Captain Video was a kid's TV show in the 'States in the 1950's, although as the brand seems to have 'travelled', particularly to France, it may have had a wider audience? Running against shows like Tom Corbett Space Cadet and Space Patrol, they were the equivalent of the previous era's movie-matinee Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers serials; or later era's Dr. Who, Star Trek and err . . . Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon again! That makes it about time - or even overdue - for someone to resurrect Captain Video!

I don't know if the figures bare any relationship to the TV series, but as they all look humanoid (and could have been 'worn', as costumes) I guess they are representative of some of the characters from some of the episodes? I'm sure TJF can correct me!

We have looked at them before here, but these are recent additions, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to have a closer look. It's very hard to say with any degree of definitiveness which figure is by which company, however it’s fair to say glossy polystyrene ones in primary colours (1 & 7) are probably from Lido's stable, or their French importer, however there may well be a UK source for these, Bell or Kleeware would fit nicely but I don't know. I'm sure TJF can correct me!

Reamsa (PVC; 6) and Trovadore (polyethylene) kindly mark theirs (if only Pech did!) but the mark carried over to a more recent re-issuer (2), phenolic/cellulose (5 & 8) types are (if found here) probably UK copies while the unmarked metallic's (2 & 3) prove more problematical.

The figures are also a rather amorphous group of poses which are from a set of twelve original or 'base' figures, but have been issued in different sizes and configurations, with Lido themselves seemingly not issuing the 'straight human' poses in the same numbers as the 'aliens' especially in the larger sizes, in the smaller size all 12 are as common as each other and the humans turn up more frequently compared to the more exotic creatures/robots.

They break down into four groups;

Humans - Four Poses (yellow figure, small scale premium, damaged)

Birdmen - Three Poses

Cat People with Respirators - Two Poses (metallic-green figure above)

Robots - Three Poses, although there are two similar 'pulp'-bots and one which looks more like a knight-in-armour (other two green figures above), with a ray gun!

The two Reamsa's in this current sample, although the grey one is in a modern-day tinny polyethylene and is almost certainly a re-issue probably from Capell? The earlier one is a PVC rubber as used by a few Spanish companies in the 1950's (Teixido and Pech y Hermanos spring to mind!) and the gold coating he (she, it?)'s been given has - over-time - reacted with the substrate to produce a sandy texture which makes it hard to clean, and you can see how while the figure photographs quite silver, the very bright light of the scanner has revealed a golden-brown residue of the factory finish, deeper in the surface.

Showing some base variation; there are also pod-foot and 'twin-baselett' types out there. I think the robot may be a re-issue as well, as he's impossibly clean, but he could be an unloved/un-played-with Lido survivor?

Some shots I took a while ago, the two on the left (now in my sample and also pictured above) have been cut-back to their footwear by a previous owner, on the right are a 'twin-baselett' Birdman and a whole version of the Lido marching robot.

Provisional listing

Known

Alca Capell (or 'Al-Ca' or 'Capell')

Were probably responsible for the more recent reissues of the four [still base-marked to-] Reamsa copies of Lido, having a history of purchasing other moulds - they also inherited some of Casanellas' metal moulds, I believe.

·         42 - 'Knight' with ray gun?

·         43 - Robot striding?

·         44 - Robot waving with syringe-tool?

·         45 - Bird-man with side-arm?

Shusssh . . . can you hear TJF and his cock-wakin' monkey-lizard rushing-off to see if it says Puchol on page 200-and-something in some tome? I don't care; they're tinny, soapy reissues!

Dumont Plastics

Licensed the Lido figures for a large gift-set which contained 18 figures; taken as twos or threes from three poses of the bird-men and two-each of the cat-men and robots.

·         Captain Video and his Video Rangers (window gift box with pop-up display-back)

Lido

Invented the line, producing it in various configurations of carded and boxed set, and is credited with the smaller, scaled-down figures supplied to other sources. From O'brian (via Kent Specher) we know that Lido was created by brothers Effrem and Seymour Arenstein in 1947, and produced 'dime store' toys and novelties - quite prolifically - until 1964 when the company was sold to a Bala, who themselves ceased trading the following year, Gabriel Industries bought the rump but most of the moulds were sold for scrap, and given that the US figures all date from before this time we can be confident the Captain Video mould/s were among those lost at that time.

·         Atomic Cannon (boxed 'dragster')

·         Pursuit Ship (boxed 'A'-frame)

·         Rocket Tank (boxed twin-tailed spaceship)

·         Troop Transport (boxed 'zeppelin')

·         Missile Patrol with Rocket Launcher (assorted vehicles, figures and accessories, carded and bagged)

·         1403 - Moon Shot (four figures and cork-pistol, blister-carded)

Post Cereals

Issued the 12 Lido scale-downs in their Raisin Bran breakfast cereal, Kent Specher dates them to 1953.

·         Captain Video Space Man (one per pack of cereal)

Puchol

See Alca Capell (above) and Reamsa (below)

Reamsa

Issued four of the Lido poses (as copies) in their Saturn Patrol Interplanetary War (Patrulla Saturno Guerra Interplanetaria) sets, gold-decorated figures being named Marcianos (Martians) and the undecorated; Lunaticos ('Lunatics' - Moon Men) in a PVC rubber, the gold paint giving the Martians a sandy texture over time. Modern re-issues in bright gold and plain grey ethylene were issued a while ago, possibly by Alca Capell or Puchol, depending on whether Oliver inherited the mould first. Each figure is numbered on the base below the Reamsa lozenge.

·         42 - 'Knight' with ray gun

·         43 - Robot striding

·         44 - Robot waving/throwing with syringe/grenade-tool

·         45 - Bird-man with side-arm

Rex Jouets

Produced [probably pirated] copies of Pyro X-100 spaceships (with French-language wing titles Terre (Earth) and Mars) and helmeted spaceman of a derivative (ex-Bonux) style, none of Lido design, untitled, but all in the manner of the Techni-Plaste Captain Video carded sets.

·         [Two Figures] (bent-stand carded with spaceship)

·         [Three Figures] (bent-stand carded with spaceship)

·         [Four figures] (bent-stand carded with spaceship)

Techni-Plaste

A French company were supplied by Lido with bare mouldings for their lovely boxed set 'Captain Video and his Equipment' (Capitaine Video et ses Equipages), they also issued them on smaller cards with a vehicle and three figures in the Lido style.

·         M436 - Capitaine Video et ses Equipages (12 figures, 4 vehicles and other accessories in Dumont style gift box)

Trovador

An Argentinian company produced eponymous base-marked copies of Lido's figures titled Explorers of Space.

·         Exploradores del Espacio

Unknown

UK

Sets in a phenolic or cellulose resin, copied from Lido and branded to Winco (abbreviation for [Air-]Wing Commander) Condar; an obvious take on Captain Condor the Lion comic strip and a definite candidate for a Star Wars name!

·         Winco Condar's Interplanetary Spacemen (4 figures on card)

USA

The smaller figures (which may or may not be Lido-supplied) have been issued as premiums or gum-ball capsule prizes.