S is for Studio Cards & Gifts

I think they are still going, but as more of an online model, with bespoke 'personalised' stuff, but it could be another company, 20-years have gone by! But Studio Cards & Gifts used to be a mail-order firm of the type which fished for customers with ad's for Home Farms, Noah sets, and the like (we've seen one of their Nativities here), in women's magazines in the 1980's. Reeling you in with payment terms like the book clubs on the back of Sunday Supplements.

 

This catalogue from 2004's Christmas season includes possibly the earliest example of the Supreme sets I have in the archive, although the stuff itself is older? And the Western town is still kicking around, although I think you can only find the smaller Pirate sets these days?

Not sure if I've noticed the snakes before (and I have posted images of the town), but they do turn-up quite often, so it's nice to know they are Supreme Wild West and not from some zoo/jungle animal set!

Very different 'little jolly boat' to the bright reddy-orange or turquoise ones you can still find in the tourist-attraction type carded rack-toy sets, one of which we have seen here, not that long ago. Interesting that the two crews are identified by red or blue clothing, even if only a bandana, so next time I get the figures out I should be able to photograph them as early (painted bases with skeleton 'enemy'), mid-production (red and blue 'crews'), and - as 'late' - any, shiny variations or simpler paint-jobs?

M is for Mail Order

I picked this up on feebleBay the other day, it was going cheap and in searching I found several of the same set, some on silly 'buy-it-know's, others on 99p! It looks to be the sort of thing Studio Gifts carry (or carried - I haven't checked if they are still going![Google says they are!]), but the code label is similar to Argos of the now some-time-gone Index, so it could be anyone, or even a department store's seasonal Christmas stock?

The figures are big (we saw them in the Marx post on Tuesday) 100/110-mil; and I think they're based on Italian figure sculpts. Each is separately wrapped in a cellophane bag open at one end and ticked into the base hollow, which I though excessive until I realised it was doing the job of the tissue-paper we'll have to go back to in the near future.

Mary, Joseph and the Little Baby Jesus, he's an integrated moulding in one of the 'shoe-box' mouse-mangers I alluded to the other day! It is clearly marked Made In Hong Kong, which would date it to the late 1990's, but I suspect 'new-old' stock contemporary to the last five or ten years, no more?

At nine pieces it's around the average with three wise men (always three, the Bible gives no total, let have more, yadda-yadda!), two animals and a shepherd in addition to the Jesus's-family-surname family! The Arimathea's? That's it; box-ticker . . . box-ticked.