UFO is for UAP - Hinstar / Avra / DAS / Dival / Eugene / Simba - Galaxy War Striker, Star Warriors

Chapter two of this particular story, and my first encounter with it, I'd picked up a few loose micro-mech's a few years before I got my dog-faced trio with their big, blue space-taxi! And one of the first to get a good write-up (as Hinstar) about 16-years ago, but I now can't find the site?

 

Marked on the underside as Hinstar without a date, each of the three machines (only one is strictly a saucer), comes with eight robots, which I assume are based on/cloned from commonly licensed 'Mechs', from Japanese or US Kid's TV output?

 

Imported into the UK by DAS, into Greece by Avra, and Germany and it's neighbours by Simba, they are all brand-marked Eugene, and I have a screen-cap which seems to indicate a Dival also imported them to somewhere, but Google won't search for Dival, defaulting to 'Devil' without the option to search for the asked phrase/task instead?

 

My original sample, shot in 2013, at the time they were in the Galoob boxes, as someone had authoritatively stated they were Micro-Machines, not an attribution I was ever happy with, they didn't have Galoob quality, they didn't have MM bases, they didn't have Action Fleet or Army Gear articulation, and they were both polyethylene and clear knock-offs?

 

But you can see they had three colourways, and more than eight sculpts (I still haven't tried to work out how many sculpts there are?!!), with metallics that vary from batch to batch and are best described as Brass/Gold, Copper/Bronze and Silver/Gunmetal/Aluminium. The one on his own at the bottom is mould-damaged, and quality on all is no better than rack-toy 'army men'.

My three, with the original 9 and others which have come in I should have enough to calculate the total number of poses, but simply haven't got round to it yet! Generally the colours of the robots tie-in with each ship, but there were larger space-station sets which may have got a larger mix of figures.

 

While one issue (Holland?) got human or humanoid figures in primary colours which I haven't tracked-down yet. Their vessels may all be different colours too, the pale blue 'arrow-head' is navy-blue plastic in the Dutch issue.

Two spaceships and a flying saucer, which has offset 'battleships guns' sticking out to be broken off! All these sets can be traced back to Polly Pocked, not the Mighty Max most websites suggest (for all three sets), as Max himself owes his existence to Polly, who predates him. Equally, Galoob, who had the most success with this stuff, were only exploiting an existing idea from Bluebird Toys.

A couple of interactive parts, with a moving radar dish and sliding 'elevator' capsule, mine all came together about 18-months ago, but then went straight to storage, so I can't remember offhand what details the other two had, the silver one may have had sliding seats, and the orange dome in the brown one may have done something?

 

The Greek Avra sets, they were issued as the above three designs as well, with an Avra sticker, but here have been given new ship designs (on the same Eugene cards, slipped into the Avra boxes) and you only get five robots per card/box.

R is for Roundup!

I haven't covered all the Supreme medievals in the last . . . errr . . . 9 posts; with this one, nor, indeed, on the whole blog's past posts (linked to individually below), but I have had a good crack at them, and will return to these in the future, for the missing items and a better version of this post which is not quite as polished as I would have it, had I had all the 'tools' in one place!

Supreme also produced a second set of the Crusaders in 54mm, but pirated from King & Country and Zvezda sculpts, while Zvezda also provided the donors for a set of Russian (Nevski'eque) knights in the same 54mm soft-vinyl line. The Vikings, Saracens, and Greeks also cross into this, if only by dint of the Greco-Roman poses they put in the cheaper 50mm line and the Silver Knight set.

And I've been doing it in a rather bitty fashion, a few shots here, a set-post there, some website images, an feeBay image, a scan or two, some more figures, a donated figure or few, another evilBay image, it's been a rather amorphous process, we will return to them in a year or two and re-do this post as a more complete listing, with everything brought together and re-shot, with other posts answering the more specific questions or filling the gaps.

So, we'll start this post with a return to the 'Supreme' (SP Toys Industrial Company Limited) Silver Knights, they are the biggest, and probably the oldest of the Medieval offerings from Supreme, come in many formats and are usually marked-up to the parent, whichever importer/jobber might have flung a sticker on the packaging somewhere.

Shades of Britains Detail in the chain-mace and moulded-in sword guys, and note the catapult is the one which was issued by Halsall with the 50mm Italeri knock-offs.

On the left here is a larger version of the set we looked at a week ago, this having all the accessories and more horses, with the same wagon traces/harness as the Wild West sets. This set branded to Supreme was imported by Express Gifts, whether direct from Supreme who had their own trade page, or through someone like Toy Major is a moot point.

The set on the right is a little more problematical, it comes-up in a Supreme search, but has no obvious Supreme link, so the 'Supreme' must be hidden in legacy/metadata behind the image, however Shaun of the Fantasy Toy Soldier Blog, has included it in his listing.

And the castle is a very close copy of the known Supreme one in the other sets, above and below it in Shaun's linked post, but it's not quite the same, neither do the figures look exactly the same as other Supreme figures, but the horses, especially the two with the lager bases, are identical, so the weight of circumstantial evidence suggests an SP Toys product

Two other connections are the very yellow gold used in both sets and the fact that - that side of the Pond at least - they were both imported by Stevens International, who also carried the Silver Knights sets in the US (still are?). In fact comparing the two forts, the door is the same, the walls/towers differ, so another 'clue'?

Then you realise the paint (antiqued washes in black over gold and silver) is hiding the fact that they are the Toy Major 'Deetail' knights! It IS another Supreme set, but smaller figures and less accessories as a budget 'Dragon & Troops' against the more prestigious 'Dragon & Knights'?

Back to the Silver Knights for a second, they have also featured in a couple of the previous round-ups' comparison shots (links below/through this post), with the next most common set of Supreme knights, which I call the 'Tiger' or 'Deetail' knights, because I first encountered them with Tiger Hobbies stickers/labels around 1997/98 and bought them for someone else (I didn't collect the larger scales then) in a shop in West Sussex, since when I've only found them (several times) with Strawberry Group tags!

They are usually fully marked-up underneath with the TM moniker for Toy Major, but I think smooth based ones also exist, and you can find them in silver, black or the same bright yellow-gold which runs through Supreme's output from the 20mm mini-knights to the current/near-current Saracen camel-troops.

The gold ones are not as common as the other two, but siege engines (in the pack on the left) tie in with other Supreme output, and they have the common horses. I think this set is almost as old as the Silver Knights (1990's) and has guided the poses of some of the subsequent sets. Mounted Silver and 'Deetail' compared on the right.

Now, the four on the right are Strawberry Group tagged, but TM marked, and I think we have seen them before, but they may be another four, however they are not the ones I bought about a year ago, for this post/series of posts, which has/have been a while in the gestation! I don't even know what happened to those, nor one or two which came in with other lots (except the  mounted figure above), so I think we're getting these guys again?!! I'll do them properly another day . . . with the mounted chaps!

On the left though are a couple of Simba blisters, which show a variation of the aubergine (or avocado?) shaped-base horse, of import as it reappears in a set which - originally - I had no idea was Supreme, as it's so utterly shit . . .

. . . what I call the 'Construction Worker' set (lower image), as they look like 1950/60's American construction or rig-workers with their tin/aluminium safety helmets! And - they're painted like cheap play set road-workers!

Above are some more of the 'Deetail' knights, these seem to have thinner bases than the TM ones, which would figure if they are the smooth-based versions, because you remove the TM tool and replace it with a blanking set which can be deeper, but all Supreme I'm sure. Also the fantasy set above seems to have an archer, he would seem to be rarer that the gold versions!

The 'Construction Worker' set, actually appeared in several sets from Simba (as a command element or sienge-engine crew?) alongside either the 'Deetail' knights (Kings Castle sets), or the ones we'll look at in a minute, usually as one each, three foot and a mounted, with a couple of dozen of the better figures.

Remember that wall section I suggested you mentally to hold-on to last week, well, here is the replacement, this is basically my set, with two standard Supreme siege engines, and no assault-tower, in Hamleys packaging. The knights however are smaller versions of the 'Deetail' ones, with uneven cloud or kidney bases (like the Supreme Pirates and Skeletons).

But the wall sections have wider buttresses; my set's walls are from the smaller castles sold by Simba as Kings Castle (now below) with only four  round towers and the different figures as noted above - because it's loose I don't know what Toy Major called it, but it may originally have been 'Knights Adventure'?

We looked at them here, and again the other day here with the Toy Major for Simba packaging, but again these are the earlier, PVC-vinyl painted version.

These are from the current Toy Major website, but the graphics on the lower shot conforms to the recent Simba Dragon Knight Castle Playset! The upper one, clearly the budget version has another set of figures altogether, the Toy Major marked (not with TM, but the newer number/letter codes also found on their wild animals and mini-dinosaurs) Knights Adventure figures.

While the lower one has the 'question mark' figures we looked at last Wednesday, with the older wall section, which is why I'm tagging them Supreme and Toy Major! Note also Toy Major issued them painted or unpainted, Simba unpainted only, if - as some idiots would have you believe - these were Simba 'production', the opposite would be more likely.

They previously appeared a while ago as protagonists for the Toy Major Tomb Warrior skeletons, but only in blue-on-silver, none of the red-liveried figures found in my fort set.

Also from Toy Major's website, and now flagged Action World - Knight Collection, these were the Knights Adventure figures, long running, similar issues to the 'Livonian' knights, and available in a dull gold, bronzy brown and the black & silver.

Note standard Supreme siege weapons, but different archer's mantlets to the bigger Simba sets (which are six-plank with cruciform aperture - same sets Walmart issue with the 'Livonian' knights - now below), while the prison cage is from the old Silver Knights sets!

On the left, also from Toy Major's website in the last few days, on the right Wilco-badged versions from about six/seven years ago, on feebleBay the other day (I think the owner has separated them into Cowboys and Indians, they should both be mixed?), and I think we looked at the Wild West and GI's under another brand a few years ago?

And as I've mentioned what I'm calling the 'Livoniann' knights, here they are, from an anonymous seller on Alibaba, looking to be softer PVC-alike, similar to the Halsall-HTI sets of Italeri rip-offs we looked at here - Red on Black Set and here - Green on Silver Set, a few years ago.

Totally new siege weapons, of the simplistic, infant type, but, while not clear, the logo in the bottom-right of the header cards is the same as the unpainted ones we looked at last week here, it's the Ancient Wars logo.

And here they are in Starlux branding, with a new fort in two colours, both on Amazon right now! Simba bought the intellectual property of Starlux around 2010, but don't seem to have done much with it, and there's no sign of the old Starlux tools, so they are only using the brand to shift more Supreme product.

And while a few days ago I might have conceded they were big enough to be going to Supreme in their own right, the fact that they are sharing artwork with Toy Major suggests that's who they are getting it from/going through.

It was always Mr. Sell's biggest lie, that Simba made or designed any of this stuff and while I dealt quite well with all that, here, it's worth considering the following;

•          Everything in the various generations of Simba knights/castle sets is a mix and/or match of stuff previously/variously seen by/from Toy Major, Walmart, Hamleys, Halsall, Express Gifts, Tiger, Strawberry Group, Stevens International, and many others including dozens of phantom brands on Amazon, evilBay and Alibaba.
•          Most of them happily admit somewhere on the packaging it's all made in China - or earlier; Hong Kong
•          Several of them also handle other Supreme stuff (Tomb Warriors) which Simba hasn't
•          Simba sometimes take the simpler variant

And while it's true that since 2019 Simba have owned a factory in Hong Kong-China, it's the Jada factory they've bought, and Jada are an alloy die-caster, not a plastic injector! Now we've been covering Jada here since the first Nano-Metal mini came on the scene back in 2016/17, and I've covered them at London's annual Toy Fair including this year; I can assure you Jada's catalogues have not changed, they are not suddenly full of unique-sculpt, plastic figures, branded to Simba!

Simba (now of course Simba-Dickie Group) have only ever been a jobbing importer, and while they are growing and have the potential to become a major producer in the future, right now they are using Starlux as a brand-mark, and leaving Jada to do what they do best. They also own several other brands now, but the same points apply, one's a soft-toy maker, another does rotary-moulded play equipment, a third is a French die-caster.

The 'Livonians' have been around for a bit, and the gold ones here are older, polyethylene ones, marked as other Toy Major stuff, the two current-colour ones (Simba, Toy Major and dozens of phantom-brands) are bottom left.

On the right is a set being sold on Amazon by a Sunny days Entertainment, looking a bit Blue Box, but Toy Major was also doing those tubs with a terra-formed lid a few years ago . . . "Rapunzel, Rapaunzel" . . . I think we had that joke the other day, but; new tower!

These are probably not related to anything above, not Supreme, not Simba, maybe not even Toy Major (read on), but are copies of two sets above, combined. Some of the ex-Italeri set split onto two cards by Halsall / HTI (links below the 'Livonian' triple image above) and some of the Knights Adventure figures.

But . . . here in both Halsall and HTI packaging, now; the painted originals were also Halsall, so if HTI as a smaller end-user (smaller than Simba and the evidence is they - Simba - are still going through Toy Major) would probably have been using Toy Major, would Toy Major have allowed them to be carrying knock-offs at the same time? It suggests that actually Supreme may have sanctioned these, perhaps sub'ing from a minor maker if they didn't do them themselves, to cover, or allow Toy Major and its clients to cover, that $£€ 1.50/1.99 slot?

That's all pure speculation of course, but it's odd that they should be back-to-back or even side-by-side like that? The one on the right is a recent generic as currently carried by Kandy Toys, and the HTI are still out there too, the Haslall to HTI brand-mark change was only a few years ago.

We looked at them here.

And briefly the previous year when I didn't know so much about them.

And because the Black-rock castle is there;

We also looked at one here.

And a non-'Blackrock' generic here.

Interestingly, given what's come out since and above, I think they are all three Supreme now, the yellow-gold of the two Blackrock sets, and the fact that the other Stevens/generic set has the same 20/22mm figures in a different colour-way.

But, on the back of the window-box it actually shows the larger 25/28mm figures with the ovoid bases, again suggesting they are all coming from the same place, as I stated back then, indeed, while the knowledge improves, I don't feel a strong need to correct anything I've said in any of the earlier posts really!

This is a poor image from the now-gone Marshall's catalogue, and seems to show the same ethylene/knock-off set but with some in gold plastic, the siege machines being the same as the Halsall ones that came with the fully-painted vinyl's. Kandy Toys seem to have lifted the Marshall's crown, as can be seen by their carrying the cheapies now, sans ballista!

This is from a newer Simba set; Ritterburg [Knight's Mount] Blackmore Castle, and shows a nice Middle-Eastern fort, with all-new figures. They could be from another party/manufacturer, but the way everything above seems to lead back to Supreme (unless you're Erwin or his supporters), and given the colorways - red/blue and gold/silver - the similarity of the riders to other figures from other sets above and the previous weirdness of the 'construction worker' set, I'm leaning toward Supreme for these too! Even the horse painting follows the 'rules'?

While we're trying to find non-Supreme medievals, this is amusing, and I'll follow the outcome, should there be one. Among all the myriad phantom brands hawking the latest iteration of the 'Livoians', are these images.

If you look closely, the 'Livonian' riders have been photoshopped into the larger image and are a different resolution/lighting, the wall looks to be a picture cut out of a larger image and the two towers also look not quite right, like the floor's uneven?

However, the lines of figures look interesting, but I suspect they might turn-out to be small-scale board-game type figures? It'll be interesting to see if they start turning-up, but among all the genuine stuff on eBay, Alibaba and Amazon, there are some fraudulent entries/sellers and I don't trust this lot to turn-up matching the image much!

A couple of shelfies which Peter Evans took a few years ago, already on the blog somewhere, but I'm reusing it because it's 'lost' in a mixed post, looking very Supreme, but actually a mix of various donor-copies including Supreme sculpts, it's a generic 'big box' of the sort that get piled near the till-area of general stores at Christmas time. A solid foam or rubberised slot/stack-together fort and various copy figures including vintage French and British sculpts.

Mentioning Peter, he pointed out yesterday (Tuesday, this is taking a  while to edit!) that the unknown Romanesque set I published late Monday/early-hours of Tuesday, were also a Simba thing, and a search reveals they came in a specific line variously 'Superplay Falcon Castle', 'Hrad Falcon Castle', 'Falcon Castle II' &etc.

Their similarity to both the late Adventure Knights and the 'Livonians' (in polyethylene), along with the horse similarities suggest a connection, Halsall may get away with concurrent straight piracies, but if major players like Supreme, Toy Major and Simba were participating, one feels some kind of permission or license must have been involved?

And if that's the case, the similar set of Silver Knight copies/scale-down solids which we looked at here, might also be sharing the story of the motor-cycle helmeted Romans above? They are a similar material and both the chocolate brown and black are parallels. However both sets can still be regarded as the bigger question-marks where Supreme's involvement is concerned

Mentioned in passing above, the Walmart set with the 'Livonian' sculpts, not showing in their catalogue (which may be down to my browser) but still findable on the 'web.

Another question-mark set is the half-Roman set we looked at a couple of months ago, I'm sure some of you noticed that nonsense the other day . . . really? A couple of fuzzy images, no weapons and some bullshit about rarity earns you brownie-points does it? In your eyes! And it's the way they pretend they can't possibly have seen an article on a Blog we all know they follow religiously!

They are not rare, or hard to find; they are new production; they are all over Amazon and Alibaba, I think mine came from evilBay (brand-new for less than a tenner?), they have been flagged Supreme, by a loyal reader and are being handled by Toy Major rival Liberty Imports, where they go to Creative Kids in the US, are unbranded generics here, and can be found as double figure sets (without separate weapons?) from ArtCreativity (looks like a phantom brand) on Amazon.

$20 for a set of everything, or $15 for double-x-half-armed figures? The choice is yours!
Fuzzy images and fake 'data' or all the above? The choice is yours!

Late addition! The King Castle with a mix of the early painted PVC Adventure Knights and the 'Construction Workers' in the same set.

Which leaves the other iteration of small-scale figures, which we covered here, also Toy Major so almost certainly Supreme, and the same sculpts as King/Adventure knights, the Black Rock and Blackrock's; the commonest used sculpts of all these sets connected to Supreme-Toy Major-Simba and probably in that order! The carry cases also mirroring the ones in the sets we looked at, at the start of this sequence, last week!

A subject we will return to as more becomes clear, and I will do a better pictorial comparison of them all at some point. What we have by way of a recap;

•          Silver Knights (60mm)
•          'Deetail' Knights / Knight's Castle / Dragon & Knights (54mm)
•          'Construction Workers (54mm)
•          Adventure Knights (20, 25 45, 50mm)
•          Livonian Knights (50mm)
•          'Italeri' Crusaders (50mm, see also below)
•          Mixed copies (45/50mm crumbly ethylene)?
•          Ritterburg Blackmore Knights
•          Multicoloured Oddities?
•          'Castle' copies (definite knock-offs)
•          Superplay Romanesque (40mm)
•          Silver Knight solid copies? (54mm)
•          Liberty Romans/Knights? (54/60mm)

And from the current/near current 54mm header-carded, bottle-bagged figure sets, as imported into the UK by Tiger Hobbies, direct from Supreme.

•         Saracens (sold as large set with camel cavalry, or as small sets; split)*¹
•         Alexander Nevski^*2 
•         'Italeri' Crusaders I & II (sold separately or together)*³
•         'Zvezda/King & Country' Crusaders

*1 - Italeri sculpts
*2 - Zvezda sculpts
*3 - Mounted figures are Zvezda sculpts

And many thanks for input/samples to Brian Berke, Chris Smith, John Begg and Peter Evans.

B is for Blackrock Castle . . . Again, Again!

Except that this one is Black (wait for it) Rock! The Blackrock's all having four walls and the larger one's; a Keep, this one is open, and more of a relief-structure, or a backdrop to the mêlée. Simba did actually carry several sizes of the other Blackrocks too. I'll tag it without the gap, just to keep the tag-list tight.

The box is very poor, which has rather curtailed the shots that are usable with this one, but with everything being pulled together in the last post in the sequence, it is enough for a box-ticker.

You can see the parallels with the previous Blackrocks in the spray-decoration, and the six figures give enough play value, but there's no hind of extra 'stuff' as there is with the Army Base play-set (previous / 'older post').

The other two sides which could be brought-back to something like their original colours with a  bit of tweeking in Picasa - five foot and one mounted, three and tree silver/black, two ladders and the fort, it is what it is; a cheap play-set for corner shops and service stations at Christmas-time!

15 parts, plus stickers; in fact two of the flags are pre-stickered and part of the upper, figure display, as I've not opened the set I don't know if they've been taken off the sticker sheet, or if the sticker sheet is only laid-out for the others, a minor detail of little consequence, but I will do a box-opening on this one at some point in the future.

In checking the Supreme tag, for preparing these posts, I've found we looked at this set years ago, right back at the start of the blog, so I must have shot it before, ages ago!

Standard variations of the standard Supreme range with the 'standard' Greco-Roman archer! Enough for a little mêlée in front of the 'castle' back-drop, or to send a few guys up a ladder to take a wall, or die trying!

I is for Introduction - Rack Toy Knights

I used to prepare 'mini-seasons' and pile them up in reverse order so they'd read right down the page, but I don't do it anymore, it's a faff, and you should all have got used to the non-English way of publishing on most blogs . . . that Blog on the Belgian Congo (not updated much these days) did publish down the page, but the landing page was always the first-ever post and you then had to find page 21 or whatever and scroll down to find the new one! The vagaries of the limitations of digital publishing!

Also this is going to be five or six posts, and the last post will link back to both the immediately preceding posts of which this is the first, and previously published stuff here on Supreme (and everyone else)'s similar knights, and 'Black Rock' castles.

I bought these ages ago; like 15 or twenty years ago? They were sub-scale and quite small for full-on play sets, and they were cheap, can't remember if it was a toy show or a car-boot sale, but I suspect the later as one is hideously sun-faded and damp-effected and was clearly left in a shed-window or something similar for some time?

We will look at the Army Base one in the next post, it has its points of interest, then we will get stuck into the knights with a series of posts. Not obvious in this shot though, is the fact that . . .

. . . one is branded to Toy Major, the other to the German firm of Simba (now Simba-Dickie Group), but make no mistake these are the same line, just different treatments of the packaging. Back when Mr. E. Sell (he who makes it up as he goes along) was in full flood, and long before he started talking shite about my Blue Box Australians, he was wont to talk shite about Supreme, and indeed, Simba and others!

And while I think I've undone the worst of it over the years since, these next few posts (excepting the Army Base) will underline some of the rules around the stuff, while remaining a bit confusing and leaving a few question marks to be cleared-up at a later date!

As to the above shot; Toy Major are more commonly a middle-man, or shipper/jobber between the manufactures in Hong Kong (now China) and both Western retail chains and other end-chain wholesalers in the US, UK and Europe, so when you find stuff with their branding, it means the end-user took it without new packaging as a kind of generic, albeit in the TM branding, while Simba (also, back then, a jobbing wholesaler, now a manufacturer in their own right, but we'll get on to that in a later post), have gone with their own branding.

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Zimply Kids (Simba Group)

And so to the free sachet of 'stuff' I got at Toy Fair 2020, which I'm not going to experiment with; it looks like a prime way to piss-off the water utility!

This is Gelli Play from Zimply Kids, there is also Snoball Play (the above - colourless) and Slime Play (smooth consistency).Although, if you have kids or are looking to entertain the grandkid's on a sunny day, I recon a packet of wallpaper-paste (or bulk-gelatine for the slime) and some food dye is all you'll need, but god-help the goldfish!

But . . . the play-sets have figurines in them which may be of interest to some readers, although I think most of them are common'ish generics, but they may be unique sub-copies? For instance, here, the polar bears are an old sculpt from the 1960's and the penguin looks like either the Henbrandt one or the D&D Distributors one?

And - although I can only see one seal, it looks like you get two-each of four animals - these shots were taken at the end of the day and a lot of play had happened in my absence, the 'other' seal may have wandered off, or been wandered!

This is the slime gell, which as hinted at above, I suspect is a gelatine based product (which would therefore be unsuitable for vegetarians?) and again it looks like the items are paired although it's not so obvious from the pack's artwork, but artwork often differs from final contents and the pack is a Gelli pack not a slime pack!

Here we get an extra tree in the display, but not the artwork, so overall it would seem you get 2x4 items in each of some of the larger sets, and they are reasonable figures which even if you don' go looking for them, will soon start to turn-up in mixed lots on feebleBay or in charity/thrift shops?

Mucky stuff from Zimply Kids!