F is for Follow-up - 'Guerreos Medievales'

As I mentioned when showing the donated image back in Rack Toy Month, Peter Evans had put one of these aside for the blog, and this is it, although I'm keeping it intact for now, so it's a case of a few suitably angled shots and some close-ups to tell a better story than last time!

A reminder of the set, imported into Spain as Guerreos Medievales (Medieval Warriors), by Arty & Mell S.L., however ,clues to older branding are found upon the contents, which are: copies of Britains Deetail knights and Crossbows & Catapults accessories, it's a lovely example of  'rack toy' fayre!

 

The 'H' mark previously seen on Hong Kong issued Deetail Saracen figures in packaging which looked 1970's but wasn't necessarily so (remember the anonymised Accoutrements/McFee reissues of earlier YF sets), but these are from whatever set of tools they were . . . Qwong Wah also producing Deetail copies with chromium spray coatings!

 

Unscrupulous dealers/sellers WILL use these to enhance lots of genuine Britains online, or even at shows, few have a jeweller's loupe to hand while rushing round a dimly-lit village hall! Just enough weapons for the figures, and in the case of this set, the distribution of the weapons is pretty-much determined by the available poses?

 

Close-up of the four H-marked foot figures

Mounted figure.

And a Britains Deetail horse clone, in all cases the die-cast bases of the originals are here rendered in the same polyethylene as the figures/weapons.

Here a China mark dates this to the 1990's or later, and you can see where the Hong Kong has been removed from the tool. The full history of these is still not clear, nor whether there was any connection between Kwong Wah and H, nor which (if different|) tool these later ones come from, but they seem to have been available for may years in various forms from Chromium-finished 1970's Kwong Wah, 1980's-'90's H, and these Arty & Mell-carried China troops from the 1990's!

The accessories seem to be polystyrene or 'propylene, and are copied from the game-playing pieces from Crossbows and Catapults, something mentioned in passing here several times over the years, but missing a proper post to date, primarily because it's a tedious chore I've been putting off indefinitely!

And many thanks to Peter for both the original image, and for donating this set to the Blog.

Q is for Question Time - Spanish . . . ?

These are a bit of fun, as they seem to be copies of the more common terracotta figures, of which a small collection has been growing slowly in these pages, or on this slowly scrolling page?! 60mm, polyethylene, civilian caricatures?

 

They seem to be cake decorations, something I've never considered - do other countries have their own cake decorations? The British and US ones are well documented and easy to find on evilBay, while I've had some luck with Argentinian sets (divers, fairy tales and 'Beatles'), but who else had locally produced, or national-referencing cake decorations, and why are they not annotated on the collecting sites? So, if anyone can add to/explain these two flamenco dancers, I'd be grateful!

T is for Toro, Toro, Torres!

We first looked at these 15 years ago, here at Small Scale World, and while I've reused the main image in this post (brightened and cropped slightly for a better user experience!), it's still worth a link for the oddments, in the lower image of that older post, before we get into the subsequent developments.

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/t-is-for-torres.html

 

And by developments, I mean that in addition to the ones we looked at earlier today, in the show-plunder post (below this post), which although similar in execution, probably have no real, direct connection with the Torres ones at all; I have also obtained the second series, a colour variation, and a few other bits which deserve a second look!

 

So, first to compare with the ones we saw in the post below, they are similar, but only for being the same sized models of the same thing; a male, fighting bull. Just as the British art world is known for its renditions and sculptures of horses, I would imagine Spanish artists know their 'bullflesh'.

 

I don't think it's the same sculptor, nor the same manufacturing source, and with comparisons to the older Torres (lower image), and newer one (upper image), both as close, pose-wise as I could get it, the touristy ones are rougher sculpting.

 

They are moulded in black or white plastic with horns in the same white for both animal types, the white ones painted with black splodge-patches, black examples overpainted with white, and the horns differ from the Torres set in being two identical-parts glued into small holes in the sides of the head, rather than Torres' one-part unit, slipped through a tube in the skull, and you can see from the size of the sample in the background, I'm pretty sure there's only the three poses, two with sash-collars, painted red or red.black.

The older shot, cleaned-up, there are four poses here, and I may have had a few more come in, but not to be seen here right now, and it's become clear that they weren't always on all the wines from Torres, nor where they always on any given brand or vintage, but have been used as promotional freebies/collectables, just like ice-cream, bubble-gum or cereal premiums, from time to time.

This has also been found, and would likely have been something given away by salesmen, or included in a whole box/crate/order, or something like that, rather than an item you could buy seperately, It's interesting for a second reason as it's 'TORRES' moniker has been picked-out/highlighted in white paint, maybe a whole tranche of them was on some bottles too? If so, I would imagine an earlier iteration?

But, even as I was posting them last time I'd found a newer set of sculpts, only one or two, on evilBay, so I've been quietly waiting for this post to build for a while! These are smoother, and have a slightly Art Deco look about them, with some quite stylised sculpting, particularly on some of the legs/hooves.

 

Note also, the first one on the far left, is a comedic sculpt, with his arms folded behind his head, and one leg crossed over the other, as if he's sunbathing or waiting for the bullfighter to get a grip of himself!

 

If you look at the upper middle pair you will immediately notice that while one has the TORRES mark, most of these are actually marked ST which is for Sangre De Toro, or Bulls Blood, which I understand is a 'first pressing' or new season wine, like France's Beaujolais?

All eight known sculpts of the newer ones, removed from all packaging and tags/tabs, the horns are the same as the older ones, a single piece which is slipped-through the hole running across the skull, and you can swivel them slightly to further vary a heard of these, although I'm not sure if you can keep fighting bulls together? Their 'wedding tackle' isn't obvious though, so maybe you could use them as a herd of long-horn chonkers, on a model railroad!

A few lose ends, I'm pretty sure I saw a blue version of the 'art deco' ones when I was looking 15-years ago, but might have imagined it, and I haven't found a gold one on the newer sculpts yet, but this red or burgundy one has turned-up, probably a Bulls Blood promotion, although not with the ST mark?

 

The tabs on the ST versions have what we used to call bogie-tape on the back, the same stuff they attach free-samples to magazines with, and, while there is no sign of the ribbons found with older versions, the tab for them is still at the base of the 'plant label'!

Who would have guessed you could get so much info' on one small set of freebies, but the Casa (House) Miguel Torres Carbó (established 1870) have been issuing these on-and-off for many years, certainly since before the 1960's, and with periods of hiatus between issues, changes were bound to creep in, leaving them as an interesting side-pursuit!

A nominal listing is;

 

1960's? [string]

- Celluloid (provisional)

 

Approximately1970-90's [ribbon]

- 1st version polyethylene (painted 'Torres', round tab, also/only key rings?)

- 1st version polyethylene (unpainted, round tab)

- 1st version polyethylene (gold, round tab)

- 1st version polyethylene (angular tab)

 

 2000's to recent time [plant label]

- 2nd version polyethylene 'Torres'

- 2nd version polyethylene 'Torres' (burgundy)

- 2nd version polyethylene 'ST'

- 2nd version polyethylene '?' (blue, provisional) 

Obviously all those above without tab, tags or tings have had them removed to imporve the lines of the animals as stand-along figurines.

T is for Timely Manner . . . No! Toy Show Report . . . No! Torres Maltas! Yes, T is for Torres Maltas!

I am back from Camden! Remembering the criticism of me from 2019, when we were burying Dad, by you know who;

 

"There are three items we can not delay reporting : new figure news, collectible toy shows, and toy trade fairs."

 

I thought I'd better get the reports of yesterday's Toy Soldier Show out, in a 'timely manner', I'd hate to delay the importance of the occasion!

 

I picked this up at the show yesterday, I thought I'd got a mega-bargain, and to be fair I sort of did get a bargain, as it's a rare and usual survivor of old Spanish toy soldiery, but once I'd got it home and had a good look at the damage to the box, and its repairs, I figure it was a fair price, but it WAS, not a lot.

 

We've seen the figures before here, they also did Air Force personal, and there is a definite relationship between these 40mm Torres Maltas ('Maltese Towers') and the larger 54/60mm stuff from Manuel Sotorres, in the styling, the movable arms and the subject matters, but I don't know the exact link, or if I do, it's on the dongles somewhere!

 

The tank is fascinating, filling both the 'space tank' role as a purely fictional vehicle, albeit with shades of M46/7-48-60 in the nose/front glacis-plate, and looking very Hong Kong'y - if you found it in a mixed lot of loose-stuff, you would happily assume it was Hong Kong. The body/hull a blow-mould, the turret, however, injection-moulded.

While the marbled-plastic gun is closer to 54mm-compatible (here posed with a Crescent GI gunner - I got the Joplin big-book out, to save TJF 'having' to make the effort), and has a matchstick-firing capacity with hidden-spring mechanism.

 

Obviously more to come . . . in a timely manner! Very, very important, that you get this stuff out in a timely manner, apparently?

T is for Two - Foreign Minor Makes - HO Railways Figures

Many thanks again to Jon Attwood, as these are all his images, I brightened them up a bit in Picasa, and can add a few points of note, but mostly, just eye candy as we box-tick a couple of the lesser makes, but, if you were a Spanish or Danish railway modeller in the 1960/70's, they wouldn't have been that 'minor' to you, as you feasted your eyes on the display at your local hobby shop, so these things are always relative!

Now Aneste Datank, and offering a basic range of Preiser in their own-brand, as a catalogue box-ticker, originally Dat Ank or Datank (?) are a Spanish railway model maker, who, for a while, under the semi-cold war conditions of being in Franco's Spain, were free to produce knock-off's to their hearts' content!

 

And they seem to have settled upon Walter Merten as the target of their plagiarism, although, the lower set may be old Preiser sculpts? Nevertheless, for metal copies of finely-detailed plastic figures, they aren't bad, quite colourful, and were clearly quite plentiful, as, since Jon sent me these images, I have seen quite a few on evilBay.

 

One is reminded of the efforts of Bermania, from Argentina, but these are a superior finish.

 

While up in the colder, wetter north of the continent, Reisler was producing these in an early Cellulose or glass-like polystyrene. We have actually seen these here before, or something similar, different sculpts, but at the time they were 'unknown' or 'maybe Märklin', now maybe Reisler or maybe Lego! They really only have the heavy bases in common.

While these have no bases, and the farm we also looked at previously here at Small Scale World, have very thin bases? So an odd range of sets, which may be bigger than listed on the Tohan site, until someone ID's those others, we won't know!

A is for Airgam Apollo Astro-Spacemen!

I'll stick to toys! That's OK, they're pretending they never visit the Blog! These would go very well with the Lik Be astronaut-spacemen, having similar suits and the same mostly unarmed, but with a few ray-guns vibe.

 

There seem to be about eight sculpts of which I only have the six, these four with the lab-tech' type (far right), who I have seen in a set I've downloaded somewhere, but I can't find it, and three more conventional figures, who may look familiar?

 

Because, as can be seen from the one on the left here, they were copied by Bonux, who's French soap-powder premium figures we looked at here. Which means there may be a full ten, but the Apollo sets (Apollo I, II and III) always have the same six?

 

I saved these in 2012, and I don't know if mine are earlier or later than these metallic plastic ones, but I suspect the former, with no good reason! Although I'd almost prefer the red and blue figures! They'll come, eventually, it's all mass-produced polymer!

There seem to be several of these around at the moment, I's II's and III's, with most of them equally 'mint' so one suspects they found a warehouse full, like with the Pryo Atomic Disintegrator knock-offs, which flooded the second-hand market a few years ago? It also means some of the BIN's are a little overoptimistic! The 'I' has less 'space city' pieces, the 'III' has two rocket-ships.

 

I'm not sure Airgam is actually the company name, Airgam Boys were a Playmobil licence (or rip-off, we're talking the Franco years here?) and are so common, searching for these can be a problem, however, it you search for Airgam Apollo, you'll find all you need. But it raises the question that Airgam, per se, may be a branding for someone else?

S is for Seen Elswhere - 40mm Comansi / Novalinea

These were not only seen elsewhere - on the intermawebby thing - recently, but are the shots (in colour) which illustrated my (black & white) article in One Inch Warrior magazine about . . . err . . . 20-years ago? I really don't know where the time goes, but I suspect Hell has played it's part in stealing the hours, days and years! Only scans, and lowish-res', so captions, rather than full blurb, they'll be looked at properly, again, another day.

 

Long boxes, I believe these were saved from a damp shed in Malta (?) or Cyprus, by that stalwart finder of nice things, Mike Harding, back in the early 1990's.

 

The box art from the three of them.

 

Loose figures as found in the sets, unpainted examples are from the later Novalinea branded sets, painted will be Comansi issued.

 

Horses, Indians get a quiver of arrows,

cowboys and cavalry get a sheathed rifle.

Accessories are the same as for the 54mm range.

Except the Teepee / Ti-Pi / Wigwam, which is downscaled.

 

Both sides of a flyer, which came in a larger set.

This was in the tub my loose samples came from, it went the way of all flesh, being very discoloured and brittle.

Comparison between the Novalinea box and one of Esci's classic red-box sets, a clear attempt to impersonate and (given the contents) mislead. And a bit naughty as Franco died in 1976, while Spain would join the EU in 1986, so there wasn't the 'Franco / dictatorship' excuse of being 'out in the cold' to justify such piracy against a near-neighbour?

Base marking of the 40mm figures.

I'll do a better job in the future with photography!

The Yolanda mark is the same 'Saloon' font, in the same 'TV' frame!

This was the label from a tub of 54mm figures, and the reverse of the sheet shows it to have been recycled from the Thunderbirds line, which included new character figures and some of the earlier Ovni ("UFO") space figures reconfigured as 'red-shirt' army-builders!