N is for Nursery Rymes!

Whatsisname Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on a Tuesday,
Married on a Wednesday,
Took ill on a Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,

Still believing Stevens International (US importer/jobber) and Sunjade (wholesaler/shipper) were the names behind the output of Supreme - SP Toys, poor chap! How does such ignorance persevere in a hobby where the facts are known? Is it that a certain type feels they can only shout at the world for its unfairness, by being idiots within their own 'community'?

Buried on Sunday,
That was the end,
of Whatsisname Grundy

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.

H is for How They Come In - April II - Peter

Mr Evans has sent me quite a few red-cross parcels in the last 12-or-so months and I'm not sure I've shot all of them, but here is another that - I seem to remember - actually came the same day as the one from Chris Smith we looked at the other day, certainly I got the shots mixed-together at one point!

These are the newer items from Hing Fat, and Peter has definitely sent me more of these; Aussies, knights in two colours, most WWII nations, lots of French (who are in a separate post I think), all sorts, here we have Russians, Modern GI's and Scot's elements of the Eighth Army;s Dessert Rats on the left and the museum gift shop-intended Chinese terracotta army and ancient Egyptian themed sets - which got a brief mention on here a year or two ago - on the right.

Previously, Billy V (an Imex brand) carried Hing Fat, but I believe some of these are currently hiding under Stevens International branding on the other side of the pond, they carried the earlier version of the Russians (Italeri winter-uniform piracies) with factory paint about eight years ago, and are carrying the Afrika Korps from this range for definite - as I've downloaded the image at some point!

Odds & Sods; the two ACW are Billy V's Hing Fat's I think! A Manurba Bundeswehr in grey, Hong Kong swoppet copy and a nice Wilton/Culpitt scale-up of pne of the Washington's Army figures from Airfix, used as a cake decoration.

I never know with the orange chap what's an Airfix/Mattel (?) original, what's licensed in Spain and what's copied by Star Toys in Hong Kong, I can only tell the crude Montaplex 3rd generation Montaman knock-offs! I love the Smurf too; busy cycling!

Theo Van der Weerden confirmed that the orange chap is a Matchbox Mobile Action Command figure; cheers Theo!

The 'army-man' helicopter will join the rest for future comparisons, and hopefully be ID'd at one point, and while I'd love to ID the two space-paratroopers, there are many of them, and most are generics, but that is an on-going project in which I have had some success, however; it's currently in hiatus!

This is a nice little (near 'micro') novelty truck, loosely based on an old Bruder pocket-money toy (from long before there were 'Kinder eggs'!). Probably from a Spanish or Turkish capsule toy of some kind. Bruder didn't arm theirs with a large rocket; theirs was part of a construction range, not a destruction range!

Another bunch of the smaller vinyl animals, another ongoing ID project, and I think we've looked at these before, as I remember highlighting the confusion of paired hippopotamus and polar bear sculpts, this cleaner sample seems to rule one bear out of the set, but still the two hippo' designs!

Many thanks as always to Peter, for an interesting pile of polymer goodness, from which we've also had a couple of RTM posts I suspect, or will have!

T is for Those Hing Fat Divers Again!

This is the post I was trying (not very effectively) to get up yesterday; a follow-up from Brain B over the pond on Friday's diver posts, he had a newish tub of Hing Fat, who have lost their red/white Gemini-craft/rubber-boat, but gained a pose or two!

It's a big set, in a big tub! Imported by Stevens International but clearly also marked Hing Fat and obviously we're about to look at the divers, but you get equal quantities of (distinctly New York looking) police, Firefighter and Astronaut figures - all without the chunkier accessories they otherwise come with.

We saw the older versions of the swimming (prone) figures the other day, but I have neither of the standing poses, one of which is harking back to the Lone Star chiseler/mine-setter, but the other - holding a spear-gun across his chest - is all new. The underwater-camera-man is new too, and the chap with the motor thingy, has been issued with a newer, smaller model - reflecting real life?

Really, they are 'all new' as while they look like all three sizes of their predecessors (at least one of which was Hing Fat - I suspect the smaller ones), they are (unless I'm mistaken) larger figures, and newer-sculpts rather than pantographed copies? You can also see (as Brian mentioned) the scale between the four figure sets is not remotely constant!

Many thanks to Brian for a swift follow-up and I received a parcel from Peter Evans yesterday, which will be the subject of a future post, and which had a plastic diver in! But he's from the non-Lone Star origins ones with plug-ins, which I've held back for another day.

K is for Knights and Castle . . . . 's

We've visited these small-scale knights from or after Supreme before several times now, with both Brian and my carded fort sets and probably briefly in a larger round up, and I'm pretty sure I kept mentioning that I had a set is storage which I'd bought in Guildford back in the late 1990's/early 2000's, and it has now turned-up, which was lucky as I had a couple of images from Mr. Berke in need of a post!

Blackrock Castle

Blackrock Again

SP is for Supreme . . . Post!

More (N is for Noooooooooooooooooooooo!)

What I had forgotten was that it actually contained two model forts! Perfect scale-downs of Supreme's larger fort (a moot point because it comes in at least four sizes and can be found marked as Simba or Tempo, with Toy Major [Supreme] knights in the larger scales - the figures issued here (UK) in counter displays as Strawberry Group/Tiger), in two colourways and with a bunch on equally scaled-down figures.

The artwork shows 16 foot figures which is a swizz as you only get half that amount, but they are clearly visible to the buyer so no doubt it conforms to advertising standards! You also get four mounted figures on the 'Supreme' horses rather than the 'Jean' horses, some of which came with the larger-scale King Arthur sets.

However you will note that the figures included have what I always refer to as 'penny bases', that is; perfectly-circular flat-disc bases; rather than the ovoid bases shown in the artwork and commonly attributed to Supreme?

These - in fact! Thank you Brian! Also available in black, and bright-shiny gold and note that these are probably slightly larger (23/25mm) compared to the boxed-set's 18/20mm and are the figures used for the artwork/publicity shots. Indeed both Blackrock Castle's have these version in the artwork, and the smaller, penny-based figures in the packs.

This illustrates the point I was making the other week in a the Tobar/Schylling Toy Fair reports; all these companies (Shylling, Hawkin-Tobar, HGL, Simba, SP Toys, Strawberry Group, Tempo, Tiger, Toy Major and others - the boxed set are shipped by Stevens International - plus generic issues) were getting their 'product' from the Supreme Industrial Co., who also contributed generic issues.

There is a complication in that 2nd and 3rd generation copies exist of the later Supreme types (with added ex-Esci poses), but generally if they are PVC or a flexible PVC-substitute they are probably Supreme, if they are polyethylene (especially that crumbly, tinny, recycled type) they probably aren't Supreme! The forts are a modern styrene-hybrid or polypropylene.

Note also that the smallest (in the boxed set) seem to be limited to four foot poses, while the others run to six.

I'm not going to dig-out the ones we've seen previously, but these have come-in since I last sorted and put-away, with Peter Evans and Brain B to thank for . . . err . . . most of them, I think!

At the back are four 54mm, marked Toy Major, actually Strawberry Group/Tiger retailed, really Supreme manufactured, then a single Supreme 2nd Type chunky one in black, two of Brain's little ones along with an identically marked Ninja bowman and then a pair of the Greco-Roman odd-poses from the 3rd [relatively current] Type (Esci poses +), which are probably copies, and have clearly been sorted-out of a medieval set as anachronistic, coming together, very clean and without any knights!