F is for Follow-up, R is for Return - Glow-in-the-Dark Aliens

Oh, we love a glow-in-the-dark Alien here! This post was originally a shot of the Toy Major's which had been kicking around for some time, along with a comparison we may have seen here already, but then I snaffled a Soma set, and it was 'Aliens are Go'!

That hanging-around image - I DID have notes on them somewhere - see glowing alien posts passim! It's not very good, and I've reshot them below, so it's just to get us started, Toy Major, glow-in-the dark 'UFO *Glow Power* Aliens', six poses and large'ish at around 70mm, a rigid polyethylene or polypropylene, which glows in the dark!

 

We saw a set of three figures when I ID'd a previously unknown group, and I was well chuffed to find a six-figure version, which obviously had more poses as I knew I'd only shown four or five in total, previously!

 

So I grabbed it while it was available, but have had to use the sales image on the left, as the shot I took was out of focus, and as you can tell from the scan on the right, I committed the mortal sin of opening the set, so I can't re-shoot it!

When I first showed these, I said I loved them, and that hasn't changed, I guess they date from the late 1980's or 1990's, possibly even closer to now, but they have an indefinable quality to them which reeks of the 1970's despite them not resembling anything from that time? I think it's the colour palette used, they are all sort of dirty, off-pastel shades of fruit-jelly or something!

 

We've seen these poses before, but glove-guy and three-fingers are new colourways, and I think even the grey is a different shade to the previous, paler one?

 

Here, the twin-armed one is a new, sixth sculpt, which will probably prove to be the extent of the sculpting, while the reaching-guy is a new colour, I think the other glove-guy is a duplicate of my original loose sample.

 

And the reason I committed the mortal sin of de-carding them is simply that I have a nice mint threesome, and the card was a bit tatty, while I will probably obtain more of these in the future, as I like them so much, and there are so many variations, a larger sample, whether carded or loose won't hurt!

Two colourways of the same pose, one I had here loose, the other from the set, so I now have five of this sculpt, in four different colours, and re. my previous comments on that, it looks like they will all eventually turn-up in all . . . ten (?) shades - light-glow, dark glow, greenish-glow, blue, light pink, dark pink, orangey-pink, orange, light grey and dark grey . . . that's eleven? We'll see, there may be more!

 

The upper-shot, which we did see a while ago, I've found it, but I think this was another from the sequence, shows the Toy Major, the modern/current pencil-top (yeah, even I think he's had too much publicity!), then a Soma, Imperial, US Toy (Brenner) and an unknown Chian-type novelty, not that they aren't all 'novelties'!

 

The lower shot shows the two sizes of Imperial, the Toy Major and the Soma, with one (also Toy Major - ID post forthcoming) who looks like he should glow in the dark, but is just screaming green!

Re-shot! You still can't really make out the faces, that's just the polymer-material/lighting/flash combining to thwart my efforts! They have large almond eyes orientated at about 45º, giving them a more sinister look than Manga-babes, whose almond-eyes are deliberately puppyish! The aliens' facial features/heads are also quite insectoid, a bit praying-mantis like?

An earlier shot of the Soma figurines was not so successful, I think my camera is starting to die, it will be the third or forth, this Blog has killed, but nothing lasts forever, and there are two to fall back-on, however they are both in storage, so I hope this one will go awhile yet, but it is starting to lose its edge, and it's not the constant reusing of the SD card, as there's a new 32GB one, put in there recently!

 

I should add that the two Nikon Coolpix have performed immeasurably better than the earlier pair of Fuji Finepix, there may have been a fifth, between the two pairs? While the two in storage are a cheap generic, and a minor make (Sony or AGFA?), so we'll see how they do, but they are all the same generation ('ish) and may see the Blog out . . . Although I do keep promising myself a digital SLR type, which can go on a stand and do the heavy-lifting, once I have a dedicated photo-bay/station?

It's an invasion!

Triple set - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/02/f-is-for-follow-up-glow-in-dark-bug.html

Loose sample - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/10/b-is-for-bug-eyed-aliens.html

B is for Brenner?

Sorry, got a bit lazy after the Pirate-fest! It's always nice to add a new name to the tag-list, or sum-total of the hobby's knowledge, and to add two, unrelated lines in the same post is a bargain-bonus! Except there is a US Toy in the tag-list already

 

One of those situations where I sort of knew I knew, but couldn't remember where from. Turned-out it was an old dealer list from the 1990's which either Paul Morehead or John Begg gave me a very 'black' (no contrast whatsoever) photocopy of a copy, years ago.

 

Warrior Ants from US Toy (Brenner) is what I have, and of course, trying to Google US Toy just gets you a million US toys, same on evilBay and Etsy, so what was a patriotic company name back in the pre-internet days, is now a liability lost in a miasma of Adsense, Google-Ads, spam Ad's, hidden-Ad's. pop-up's and all the other marketing shite which has been tacked-on-to/embedded-in the Internet in the last 15-years!

 

However, they are still going and have a lot of novelty/party/rack toy stuff, including some of the figures featured in Plastic Warrior magazine (courtesy of Les White in the magazine, Brian Berke, here, the tag mentioned above - firefighters), a few years ago, but not, sadly, either of these sets, I don't know the significance of the Brenner in brackets, as annotated in the old dealer list, but will add it as a seperate tag?

Aren't they brilliant, probably taking-off the insect movies of the 1990's; such as Bugs Life  and Antz (both 1998, which may help date them) rather than the earlier Hasbro/GiG franchise Army Ants/Kombatini, there is also something of the Trigan Empire about their Greco-Roman get-up, but I accept it's a tenuous link, verging more on wishful thinking!

 

As is often the case, Shaun at Fantasy Toy Soldiers is the only other source of info' on them and he has had them as unknown, for some time, which I've just been over and solved, but a larger sample, with a better selection of colours.

 

Also credited to US Toy (Brenner) is this set of anything but grey 'Grey Aliens', in a palate of lovely metallic shades. A bit bigger that the Warrior Ants at around 54mm vs. 45mm, and both sets are supposed to have eight poses for a full set, ants in four pastel shades (I have no green ones, yet!) and hopefully each of the aliens available in all six of these shades?

 

Seen elsewhere only the other day, a quick alien comparison with, on the left an unknown 65mm, glow-in-the-dark figure (I may have a note on them somewhere?), the silver chap is a pencil-top, we saw the next two here (Soma on the left, Imperial on the right), then the US Toy (Brenner) and finally a counter-top/point-of-sale type, pick-tray/carton novelty, 45mm alien of unknown brand'age!

F is for Follow-up - Glow in the Dark Bug-eyed Aliens

Very much a follow-up to this post, which does itself link to the previous sighting here, so a third outing tonight! And far from just ID'ing them, I've managed to find and ID three lots under four monikers which is a pretty satisfying state of affairs, I can tell you!

They weren't capsule toys (I'm sure I've seen something similar on gum-ball machine insert-cards, so I'll keep an eye out for more on these!), they were Cosmo Explorer Glow in Dark Alien aliens, and imported or 'jobbed' into the 'States by Way Out Toys Inc., of New York (left hand card), however, under the Way Out sticker is the unmistakable Soma logo printed on the backing card!

So the ones we looked at last time were Soma, and in this pack we have a new three-finger pose (pink, right) and a new four-finger pose (greenish, left), and a colour variant - in the middle - of the pair I already had, with plastic-colour, pose and paint variations; who knows how many you can find? Soma pose-counts are often in sixes or twelve's, so it should be dozens, as a minimum . . .  oh goodie!

Meanwhile the card on the right shows what seems to be all four poses (some sources state six poses, but the blister say four - two pairs, two singles) of the Imperial Toys (another importer/jobber, but also a contracting one) Glow in the Dark Alien Invaders, in what seems to be all three colours.

Well, once you know what you're looking for, finding them (and inaccurate information about them! I'm talkin' to yooh - Pinterest and Wortpoint!) becomes easy, so I bought some . . . so you don't have to! But why wouldn't you want a glowing army of human-knapping cattle-botherers!

The Imperial ones are slightly less sophisticated in that they all [and only] have black eyes, with no other decoration and a lower pose-frequency count on the two with weapons, but then the Soma planet sends it's emissaries out with no weapons at all, so on that score these guys are better-off!

Close-ups; because I can, and because the Soma ones are good-enough in the link and now in storage, so I couldn't shoot them for this post and I didn't want to de-card the three newies. I would imagine Imperial commissioned theirs after they'd seen Soma's, but the factories in China may have spied on each other; bringing them out at roughly the same time - around 1992-94'ish, I believe?

But I got a half-decent image through the blister and shone a torch on them for the de rigueur glowing in the dark shot! On the eight I have now we can see gold, blue, green and orange paint with a distinct four polymer colours. And while Imperial have gone with one 'species', Soma's are - so far - all different.

They are all a nice 54/60mm with the Imperial Toys set having a constant, slightly cone-headed physiology (for people who follow all that 'greys', 'nordics', 'talls' and 'midgets' LGM stuff), with the cone/bulge at the rear. They are also all marked 'Imperial-[over]-CHINA' faintly, across their shoulders.

All the searching which resulted from knowing what they all were actually threw-up a third lot, another novelty importer; Amscan, their's sold as an eight in North America and a twelve here (but the spelling suggests they were both available for order in all sales-territories?), but only one pose/colour-way, with orange eyes. I haven't got any yet (they are findable), but in those multiples, too-many, so I'll wait until I see one or two in a loose/mixed lot.

I can't work out if the picture bottom-right is a mock-up or an artist-enhanced photograph, nor is it clear whether they have been and gone or are yet to arrive, but the image comes up when Googling them, so it (the picture) has been released somewhere (might have been the Amscan website), for some reason . . . something to look for!

I kept forgetting to turn the light off and/or turn-off the flash (the cat thought I was mad!), and so several similar shots resulted in an obvious .gif presenting itself!

It's like a 1970's disco' floor . . . "OOOOoooooo'Ifeellove-Ifeellove-Ifeellove-Ifeellove . . . Iyyyyy Feeel Luuuurve . . . I FEEL Luuurve, Luuurve, Luuurve Luuurve . . . I feel luuurve . . . piew-piew-dugaduga-whang-whang piew-piew-dugaduga-whang-whang Phessheewwww! Cheers Donna; the ultimate bangin' choon - and a nice spacey soundtrack for little rubber aliens!

And many thanks to 'Patti' in the US-of-A who sent me extra figures!

G is for Groping in the Garage!

Nothing exciting, I was pulling stuff out of the garage earlier in the year and found the multi-drawer cabinets I keep all the odds and sods in, by which I mean sewing, boot-polishing, kitchen, plumbing and hardware stuff, but there happen to be six drawers of mostly Micro Machines (in a minute) and a couple with keys and key-rings, which we will look at another day.

Spaceships, mostly Galoob Star Wars stuff, but some Aliens, Star Trek and Soma found their way in as well! AFV's also contain some knock-offs (Kenner Microverse etc.) and I think here I have most of them but one day will consult the Micro Machine Meusuem to identify my gaps and then find them on evilBay (none of them are rare) so I can do complete lines-ups for year/wave, when I do the A-Z entries.

Helicopters, not many, a feature of the hobby refelceted in the few newsprint images I could find to paste on the drawer-front, although the same was true for the spaceships! Civil cars, trucks and buses, the motorcycles - being closer to 20/25mm - were in their own box in the main collection, as were the ATV's, speeder bikes &etc. The lid of the really useful box limited the opening of the drawers!

Ships and 'planes, quite a few planes, not so many ships, but they didn't make many and I think they are all there? There's about three versions of the ICBM-sub, and a rather natty bright-green mini-submersible (visible).

The drawers need work; when I glued the little cuttings on, so I knew which drawer was which, the PVA/wood-glue dried invisible, but time (20+ years) and storage have not been kind to my efforts! The cuttings came from Collector's Gazette back when it was newsprint.

That's it, just . . . an image-clear of stuff to come, sometime!

H is for How They Come In - December 2020 - II Chris - Military

Obviously, a lot of you are Toy Soldier collectors, only deigning to touch other genres if they happen to fit your collection's parameters, vis-à-vis scale, maker, period or whatever! So this portion of Chris's donation is probably the best one for you!

We'll start with 'the rest' as I tried to alternate the green and pale backgrounds, needed to separate the medievals and wanted to finish with the Trojan, and for no other reason!

Top left we have five kit-figures, some ex-Monogram and a chap who looks a lot like some of the larger R/C tank crew in the master collection, he also has a locating spigot between his knee and foot, and may-well have been attached to such an item?

The grey figure below him looks a bit like some Portuguese premium Jap's I recently got, but he's not as deeply sculpted and while they are unique sculpts, he's ex-Monogram and a bit Hong Kong'y in execution, but a first in the collection (very heavy base?), as is the damaged turquoise figure, one-place to his left?

Center of the bottom row are two more Special Forces types, these are becoming common, I guess because of their prevalence on both current affairs/news programs and their position in popular culture/gaming?

The white Timpo (et al) copy is interesting; I forgot to check his base, so while he may be HK/China, if unmarked he might be a French bazaar figure? below him, next to the SF figures is a figure which ought to be a Speedwell copy of a Timpo swoppet, but looks glossy enough to be a HK copy of Speedwell! And not a Star Toys pose?

The big boy (bottom right) is a Mattel 'Hero in Action' and I seem to be building a bag-of-bits of these, so one day I might try to get a couple of whole ones and cover them here, they are technically action-figures, but articulation is limited and if you like the Vietnamese summer 'Rambo' esthetic of them (flak-jacket, trousers, boots, helmet and not much else), then they are a fun thing, although they came out when I was a kid, so long before John Rambo started shooting-up his neighbourhood!

Three perennials in four sizes; Pioneer (for Realtoy et al), Smart Toys (new poses), and Soma (with ATV), the two Pioneer/Realtoy are hard to find undamaged, The Smart sample is getting a little lopsided with many more green than sand!

Chris sent me two of his new, probably first, unknown-brand versions of the ABC figures, I have Blogged them now, but here they are again!

Medievals, from the left; these are fun (and a bit funny) they came in various branded and more generic sets (so maybe handled by Toy Major?), and at first glance - or, depending on which ones you find first; closer inspection - appear to be US construction workers, but they are in fact medievals and this one is sneakily hiding his axe behind his back.

Then the All The King's Men board-game piece bowman, if I'd Blogged him earlier he would have come before March's 'reveal'! he's next to a Roman who we had also looked at, but he's definitely a darker shade than the shiny set I found - in liaison with Chris, at the time, I think?

One of the unpainted, mono-coloured Cherilea 50-mils, I wonder if they had a Lucky-Bag or ice cream premium contract for these, as they do turn-up quite often? Penultimate figure in the line-up is a Hong Kong copy of MPC's little 45mm figures and next to him on the end is an MPC original of one of the mounted ones!

I thought I'd put them on the Blog, back at the start but I'll be darned if I can find the images?

Don't know what this is, I'm guessing some kind of wall or gatehouse decoration from a larger-scale action-figure play-set? Pig's head visor, ornate crest and the reverse image is out of focus - sorry!

Chris is as intrigued by this as I am! He thought King, I thought Beefeater, and it clearly plugs into something? It is flat, and has some of the design elements you might find on a lollypop- or cocktail swizzle-stick?

I wonder if it's a long gone and pretty forgotten company logo, perhaps a steak-chain or a smaller chain of restaurants like (but not) London's Old Kentucky where we had several treat-trips as kids in the one opposite the Duke of York's barracks in Chelsea - which google informs me was at 54 King's Road from 1968, there was another in Tottenham Court Road. Beefeater Restaurants themselves did (do?) have a Beefeater mascot, but a bearded one in the current ceremonial uniform, this is an older style.

It's one of those things where if you know you know, so does anyone recognise him, or is he just one of a line of ice cream sticks or something? AND . . . he could be an Elizabethan jester?

At some point last autumn Chris and I either discussed an evilBay lot, or ended up bidding on the same lot, anyway at some point I dropped out before the under bidder, or never bid (I can't remember now) and Chris won it, kindly sending me the one figure I'd really been after as he already had a better one, which puts my Trojan Jap's up to five in four poses I think . . . slowly, slowly, catchee' raree!

I was chatting to someone today round at another toy soldier mate's house, and we were looking at his Wants List . . . now, I currently have five from friends on the laptop's desk-top and have only managed to fulfill one item so far - a bunch of Brent composition to one of the Russian supporters of the Blog, because - as I said in the conversation earlier today, all the wants lists have pretty much the same figures/makers on them, because the harder to find things are the same for everyone! But keep looking and you'll find them in the end - because they were all mass-produced!

The real rarities are all the more ephemeral things like flat Beefeater hangers, that went to landfill years ago, and it's thanks to supporters like Chris that I can get to share them with you. Thank you Chris, we'll be looking at the equally interesting April lot soon!

F is for Follow-ups; Recent'ish Posts!

A trio of shots I've taken in the last few months which add a little to posts seen here in the second half of last year.

In August last year we looked at the Star Rider Space City play set by Soma, to which I have added a few of the missing green versions to the loose figure stash, giving the above line-up. There is - at time of publishing - another one on feeBay, which has the outer box-lining missing from mine, unfortunately the postage from Australia is a bit sheesh!

While in November 2020 a quick post on some Polish swaps and a Russian gun covered some plastic flats which I mentioned were from old home-casting moulds, probably Schneider, the above shows one of the plastics against a modern home-casting mould catalogue, to show they are still around!

Taken from the Shilham Miniatures catalogue, Google suggests they are no longer around, but they were about ten years ago and other suppliers still exist.

Finally, last November I did a quick post on 'what had come in' re. birds/poultry, and within weeks of posting it had found the above! Anti-clockwise from the top left; a resin owl (who's trying to escape the photograph?!!); a novelty kettle-whistle (possibly French); a Culpitt (et al) 'love-doves' wedding-cake decoration; a vinyl duck (possibly Macau-via-Portugal), and another PVC piece; a vulture of unknown origin, which could be Wild West toy related? It keeps coming in!

S is for Soma's Star Rider Space City

Picked this up a few weeks back going unloved and un-bid, on that there evilBay, a month or so ago, I had no idea it existed and was looking for something-else entirely when I found it. Not really a rack-toy in the traditional sense, but I bet that when it was originally retailed it would have been half the price of a Bluebird Mighty Max or Polly Pocket set, and a quarter of the price of a similar Galoob Star Wars toy?

Folding-up to very small (6"x4¼x1¾-deep - 150x100x44mm), there's enough play-value to keep any kid happy in a caravan on a wet week in Rhyl! These days - of course - it'll either be too-hot to play in a caravan without cooking yourself, or so wet there's a danger the caravan will float away!

Fully unfolded; the gun-tower has shades of 'Hoth', the rest is - dare I suggest - more Flash Gordon than Coruscant! It comes with four of the diminutive little HO-figures I think I've shown before (we'll look at them again in a second) and a small truck the seller (alkim96) kindly added to the lot before sending, but which hadn't been in the sales shots.

And this is it, I think it's based on one of the ex-Giogi/for-Kinder mini fire engines, dated to 1997 (the Soma set) that's quite possible, but only as a vague copy; the Kinder ones were clip-together while this is screwed, following the Micro-Machine principle.

"Plastic smalls" as those with little finesse refer to them! I think we have looked at these before, and I think I've only added the four new ones, all duplicates, this is one of each from my sample, spacemen in grey and 'pilots' in green, each numbered on the base from 1 (on the left, purple and orange) to 12 on the far right.

My whole sample, most of them came mint with their aircraft and or 'spaceships' all of which went to charity about 20-odd years ago, found in generic packaging (I think) in Woolworth's it was only the little Soma on the base, and I think I'm right in saying the fighters came with one figure, the spaceships with two, hence the imbalance.

Also I don't know why I'm missing grey-5, as I should have all of them? You can also see there are some minor colour variations within each sub-tranche, but schemes stay true. Hopefully, one day, I'll be able to show you all of them, but they are not a high priority, with only two found in addition to the new four, over the years.

I have joked (at length) on the assorted panoply of weapons, clothing, equipment and headdresses so won't bore you with all that again, you can see what an eclectic mix of 1990's 'straight-to-video' post-apocalyptic B-movie extras they are! And they make an excellent set of extra bounty-hunters for Galoob's Star Wars Micro-Machines!

B is for Booty-Box of Beautiful-Bounty for the Blog - Chris's Parcel I

Chris Smith has sent another fantastic bundle of goodies to the Blog but when I say 'another' it belies the quality of the contents which are arguably the best yet, the box was packed with stuff and none of it was unwelcomed, truly; a Christmas present . . . which I'd better quickly share with the rest of you!

Initial sorting into piles that seem to make sense as it's happening, numbered for this blurb, I'll start at one and work through; All vehicles, buildings, scenics or parts thereof are in 1, 2 is ancient medieval and prehistoric, although they joined the dino's at 7 after the photograph was taken!

3 is ceremonials, ethnic and national dress and touristy things, 4 are the parachute-toy paratroopers and 5 is the Wild West. Back over to the left and 6 is animals (wild and domestic), 7 is the aforementioned dinosaurs (two nice rubber ones and another we'll be looking at again shortly), 8 are also to be Blogged, 9 were the novelty/cartoony stuff, 10 - cracker toys - are getting a second mention in these posts and a post to themselves and 11 are divers.

12 was footballers, but some ice-hockey players and cyclists were added to the pile later, making it 'sportsmen', 13 are fridge-magnets we'll look at closer 14 is all the space, sci-fi, fantasy and TV/movie-related character pieces while 15 is the last hundred years military (proper 'army men') although as I write I've spotted a cyclist in that pile - who did get sorted-on! Finally 16 is all the other civilian stuff

So working through some of the piles in numerical order for a few highlights (a hard choice as it was all so good)  we're back to pile 1, where we have an interesting Hong Kong army van, which one might expect to be from the old Matchbox range, but I don't recognise it, there was a municipal rubbish lorry with a similar cab but it had a arcing bin-store body with sliding doors, this looks more French . . . an early Majorette copy maybe?

To the right are two HK copies of - originally - US-made mini vehicles, which will join a larger sample sent to the blog by Brain Berke several years ago, and since joined by some storage ones, all of which have been photographed - with other stuff - for a series of articles which are still in the queue; novelties tend to get pushed back by everything else (all those Shopkins, Moshlings, Zomlings and 'Bones are a couple of years overdue now!), but it will all happen, eventually!

Another HK car might be Blue Box, but early with the windows blocked-in (?), or any one of a number of similar pirates, while the Jaguar in front is very interesting . . . I have one somewhere, either the same green or a pinky-colour, but mine is so crushed (I always hang-on to damaged stuff of it's the first/only sample) I never knew for certain if it was a Jaguar or a Citroen! I now know it's a Jag', but also it seems to be a very good copy of the Lone Star Treble-o Trains vehicle. but with a much thinner skin that the die-cast donor and in a polystyrene. Did Lone Star replace their metal ones with plastic at the end? Anyone know anything about this? Deck ornamentation for a ferry model-vessel kit?

The rocket is fun, the trees have been nailed in a forthcoming post and a Merit gas-lamp has been posed with three really useful Victorian street lights which would be ideal for 1:76/72 war-gaming or diorama-building. I suspect they are either accessories from something like those Silvercorn/LP suitcase sets, or a Mighty Max/Polly Pocket type thing?

Another bunch of parachute novelty paratroopers including a proper, marked, Imperial 'Poopatrooper' in snow-white, a 'space paratrooper' and the camouflaged one from carded sets we've seen here at Small Scale World before.

I needed a loose one to re-do the size comparisons of the three types of these Small Soldiers-like sculpts I've found now, some with help from Brian and Peter, so he's really useful despite being the newest in the line-up!

But with the previous - similar sized - bunch of these also from Chris, and another lot from Peter Evans (I think), I will have to re-do all (or most) of the images in the nascent paratrooper article/page? Not a hardship!

The Wild West lot are all interesting, or useful, or both! Royal fail and/or Parcel Farce managed to brake the black, two-part epoxy totem-pole, but as you can see it mended OK, and joins two similar tourist type poles in the collection, while the other (Jean copy) totem might be a variation of the one we looked at a while ago, necessitating a follow-up to the - at the time - follow-up!

Two more of the Lone Star shooting-game Indians, one a colour variant, I still have to locate the sixth figure a bison-head, but I know he is due to appear in PW at some point (with the sixth base points-value), so 'least said' and all that!

Among the HK efforts is a really nice Union cavalrymen copied from the Britains Swoppets who are getting so brittle now, they will soon be but a memory, their horses out-living them for a few more decades! But there's obviously some HK copies to replace them with! The two eagle-dancers are from separate sources (Royal Fail/Parcel Farce worked their magic on the red one . . . actually I think it was Hermes?), some Marx and Airfix piracies (one Italian) or re-issues are joined by two of the six-gunner's we've looked at in depth before and I'm not sure if the two painted ones (middle-right) are home-painted or comercial, but they are rather nice versions in a sub-scale.

There's a lovely little Pocahontas (bottom right), who was glued to a larger base or plinth-display of some kind (McDonald's premium?) at some point, but is now perfect for all those camp-fire scenes.

While over to the left is a trio of figures we've looked at recently here (Waddington's, Britains Miniset and the lucky-bag flats), so they will go away for a while until a time when a return to the subject or an A-Z entry gets them out again! Finally the painted Indian next to them is Safari, but bigger that the 'small-scale' (actually mixed-scale) figures I remember from the 'Toob' covered by Plastic Warrior magazine a few years ago.

The Space-Sci-fi-TV-Movie pile is a right-old heap of pure eclecticism with a wotsit-cat, several doobries, a thingamabob and one or two of those what-a-names! There's even a Star Wars action-figure baddie, but 'es 'armless!

Highlights include three board-game Magic Roundabout Dougal-dogs, I have pictures of the game (off evilBay) somewhere as a 'wants list' item, so they were a real treat to find, I think it's a six-player game, so still three to find, but that's the fun of collecting.

Does anyone recognise the elfin chap in red shift and boots - middle-right?

I guess the large purple lady and the gent on steroids are from the same source, but I don't recognise either character? I also like the babe in blue . . . a sort of power-ranger, but helmetless? Another highlight is the 'evil santa' (top right) with what looks like a Russian Orthodox priest's hat, could he be a Technolog (or similar) Russian novelty?

The military section had lots of stuff, a lot of gap-filers, or one-offs and various things we've seen one way or another, so I haven't shot them all today, but there were enough PVC figures to produce this size comparison of most of the figures mentioned in that series of posts a month or so ago, which may be of use to some of you - so I shot them as they were. The Remco chap has an M16 so large he looks like a kid in a muscle suit - Don'pushmeeeee! 

If you pop-back up the page and study pile 15, you'll see all sorts of other interesting stuff in this lot, among which were the (capsule?) figures sometimes found with a separate belt and for whom I'm still looking for the weapons, Chris's lot contained three or four of them with new colours and a new pose I think. There was also stuff for the khaki infantry page and the next round-up/follow-up to the Tim Mee GI's, including new (to collection) Toy Story variants.

From the civilian lot is a similar sizer, including new firefighters from Remco and Soma, but there are more below, and Brian Berke let me know over Christmas he's getting his firefighters shot for the forthcoming page, so that will be a priority target for the spring I think, and there are more . . .

. . . in the main body of the civilian stuff.

Highlights include . . . well . . . pretty-much all of them! There's so much of this stuff, most of it rather anonymous accessories for die-cast or plastic vehicles or sets of one kind or another, from probably half of all toy makers, over seventy-plus years, that the fact that people like Chris, Peter Evans, Glenn, Jim, Adrian, Michal Melnyk, Trevor Rudkin and Co., save it for me and/or send it to the Blog is really humbling to me, and good news for you, loyal reader, as it's slowly getting to 'all going to be in one place' . . . one day!

A particularly interesting item is the green, child-like farmer (top right-hand corner) with spade, who from style (semi-flat), paint (basic) and material (dense ethylene or propylene polymer) is probably from the same source as those rather atrocious Chinese Warriors I picked-up at PW last May?

Also of note are the two kit figures, who look like they came form an early 1950's model kit of a US car, but are in a marbled plastic of maroon and blue, which might point to them having been either factory-painted at some point, or chromium-plated? The white girl above them to the right is a more standard kit figure in a single, neutral, white colour; all three are polystyrene. She looks like she's standing on the end of the caber-tosser's pole . . . ooh, missus! He's a metal 'mocherette'.

The motorcycle in HO is probably from the Merit Driving School game, he's better detailed that the normal cracker/capsule fare, while the chap falling to the ground (top-middle) is - I think - from the old Accoutrements/Archie McFee set of movie victims from about 20 years ago? I also like the two tampo-printed red-plastic F1 racing-crew figures that are new to me and the two sub-scale vinyl farmers with yolk and scythe.

The three bottom-center are all the same make, solid, polystyrene, but unmarked and the Russian dancer is a flat, soft polyethylene and possibly an addition one of the many sets referencing the old US comic-flat '100 Doll' set.

Thanks very-much to Chris - next we'll look at some of the novelties and juvenilia within the above.