B is for Brief Board-game Bonanza!

Another box which got shifted from the garage back to storage was this one, but it was jammed at the bottom, and while I like to carry-on like I'm still 25, the simple fact is - I'm not! So I had to break the tape and temporarily empty-out the horizontal games laying on the top, to make it light enough to jiggle about while lifting, 'cos it's a big box; it had a boiler in originally!

A mixed bunch, the Star Trek only has large 54/60mm card flats, and I think I picked-up a lose set a while ago, so this will probably go at some point, but there's a few treasures in here too, we saw the Formula 1 game ages ago, and the Belagerung with Marx figures (I can't remember if it was here or One Inch Warrior magazine though?) and we've seen the 3M Feudal figures, loose.

Tri-Tactics (Gibsons) is also card flats; beautiful old litho'd ones, we've seen the Show Jumping plastic flats once or twice I think and the Keys to the Kingdom figures? While there's so much on Axis and Allies now on-line I may never bother with a full post, but they're there for comparison shots and the A-Z!

I photographed the contents of the other box back in the summer of 2020, and a couple of those posts are still in the queue (although I don't think Shogun has turned up yet?), but I'm going to quickly look at three of these, which have already been sealed back-up again and gone-on to the store.

Waddington's Camelot, we have seen the pieces here already, they have been in one or two mixed lots, but we may return to them here, to compare with some black & white ones I think I have somewhere.

Dean's second - bi-lingual - version of the Peter Rabbit Race Game, original sets had hollow-cast lead figures, fully painted and supplied by Timpo, the tool for which these polyethylene plastic ones were moulded from, a third 'heritage' version was issued a few years ago with 'antiqued' chrome-finished mazak-alloy pieces. I think the lead ones have been seen here? Squirrel Nutkin is the odd one out, with a full/all-over coat of paint, on cream-white plastic.

This came from Matt Thier of White Tower Miniatures, who saw it and saved it for me nearly 20 years ago, and he let me have it at his cost, which was car-booty pennies I seem to recall, so many thanks to Matt, for that!

An Italian-language (Noris toys or games) one or two-player game, you are Ivanhoe (or Roger Moore; even if he looks like Tony Curtis!), fighting the baddies of King Prince John!

Figures are semi-flat, in the European premium style, about 25mm and hard polystyrene. The TV series was actually an early ITV joint UK/US co-production and Roger Moore hated doing it apparently!

H is for How They Come In - Two Months Three Parcels!

When I started catching-up with these in the Autumn, we were over a year behind, but with this post we get closer to only six-months behind, and with the ongoing Historex stuff and a couple of other things, I'll try to get fully up-to-date soon . . . ish!

This lovely little lot was sent to the Blog by Peter Evans last August, and you can see the forth colour of robot/transformer - in a cereal premium style - which I mentioned when we looked at Peter's latest donation a few weeks ago, the bags include the Chinese Army-funded Jeunow-Vi!Kondo stuff who've had their own post already (October, they missed RTM!), Russians and medievals from Hing Fat; white with bases, silver - stand on their own two feet! The orangy bag has the Hing Fat Egyptian stuff, which I will compare with the K&S/Safari sets when they come back out of storage.

Peter sent another parcel in September of which the main sample was also added to that Jeunow and Vi!Kondo post linked to above, while various other bits and pieces were included, both vintage (Monogram copies, mini's) and modern - 70mm 'armymen' and vehicle/ships.

Brian also sent a donation to the blog in September*, a couple of the main pieces from the lot having been removed for the canoe project before this shot was taken, but still very useful stuff including a set of the TSR 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century' board game character figures, I know I've got them because we've seen them here before, but these will get a decent painting once I'm settled at the other end - wherever and whenever that is! And because I have plenty of the 'counter' figures, I'll paint-up a few of them at the same time.

* Err . . . email conversation says August, and in time for RTM, where we saw the missing items . . . I'll leave it like this as it gives you some idea of the chaos at SSW Towers, this is the chronological order of the photographs, I must have put Brians to one side for a few weeks before sorting/shooting them?!!

There's also some nice knock-off's of the Mattel MUSCLE figurines, and Wild West from US makers including the earlier Tim-Mee stuff, which I was meaning to do a bigger post on, but managed to forget to take the pictures before they all went to storage, but there are some 'sorting Wild West' shots somewhere! I also got a Mickey Mouse firefighter to share with you!

Also and under the 'seen elsewhere' banner were these delightful Laurel and Hardy cartoon/caricature erasers, who went on the Friend of PW Faceplant group at the time!

Cheers Brain, cheers Peter, all good stuff; gratefully received, shared here and/or otherwise made use of!

F is for Follow-up - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

This post has a history almost as complicated as the bear's one yesterday, in that I noticed the main trope of the post a few days after the last post on the subject, which was a bit of a gap-filler itself, as I was working with a small sample. So I rounded up some new shots, but given how many there were in the previous effort, there was little else I could do with what I had.

Equally- the shots I took of the trope (the backs of the comics) were frankly kwarch, so at some point I borrowed them, scanned them, added then to the rather piss-pot poor folder's contents and forgot about them for a while. Then the other day I managed to pick a near-mint set up for £1.50p and it was all back-on!

So, the 'trope' of the post: The pre-production shots used by TSR for advertising the game contain some stuff which never made it to the game, That - in itself - is not uncommon, relying on catalogues for information is always fraught with the danger that the thing never saw the light of day, but I thought it would be fun to compare, in the hope that people might recognise one or two of the interlopers?

On the left is the earlier advert for the game, the later on the right, now I forgot to note the dates of the magazines, but they were only about four-months apart, and from 1988. Both were UK issues of 'American Comics'; DC's Superman I think?

The one on the left has several features not found in the final set, while the one on the right (also advertising Dragon Lance - Graham A . . . post coming soon now; thank you!) is accurate to the published sets, except in the colours of the six armies.

The most obvious anomaly is this chap, who stands in for the 'Gennies' (which I think should be pronounced Jean'eeze, rather than Jenny's), genetic engineered humans, larger than the standard humans.

Now, the question is - does anyone recognise the sculpt? There are that many of them in the publicity shot it seems they must have been either commercially available (probably whitemetal) stop-gaps for the PR studios photographer to work with, or - possibly - taken/borrowed from another boardgame, whether TSR or not?

They appear to be vaguely bird- or animal-faced (respirator?), with a 'blaster' held high in the right hand and the left holding a tapered shield. Do you recognise them, have you got some?

The figures eventually issued are the upper row of the lower shot here, firing two blasters back 'over their shoulder' as it were. I've also done an Airfix comparison, and you can see how the gold 'character' sculpts seem to have a hierarchy, with Buck and Black Barney larger (equal to the Gennies), Ardala and Doc Huer an intermediate size while Wilma and Killer Kane are as small as the human 'Troopers'.

The same conundrum is to be found in the space fleets, where the transports (left) are correct in the press-release image as for the game (as the Troopers were), but the other two craft are very different.

The 'Battler' (middle) is represented by something looking more like the Triang/LP 'Supply Force Mercury' married to the wings of an SR71 Blackbird! It's replacement in the actual game having more in common with a Klingon 'Bird of Pray'.

The fighter (right) too, varies between the image and the set, but by not so much, the issue one being similar to a Cutlass, the artwork using a sharper dart shape which looks familiar and may be from another game?

A shot with upper and lower surfaces and all colours, the transports look a bit like intergalactic ocean liners with their wide deck and lines of port-holes.

The factories are hardly changed, maybe the top right-hand corner tweaked/simplified to help the mould-release process. But the 'Satellite' is completely different with the PR model being more of a land-based radio-dish, while the game gets little killer-stations with a bloody-great ray-gun mounted on them.

As an aside; if you have a Galoob Micro Machine Star Wars collection, these satellites with their orange-segment, surface-detailing will make perfect heavy-machineguns for Snow Troopers on Hoth, matching the larger sphere-enclosed accessories that came with a couple of those sets, or the Action Fleet equivalents.

While the second set of magazine adverts had the correct set's artwork, the box itself gets the incorrect artwork from the pre-production publicity.

I have studied both sets of artwork, and as far as I can tell, the gold characters are in the correct sizes and poses, but there may be slight differences suggesting they were using masters or other production-phase sculpts, rather than the final issue mouldings, it's hard to tell.

And colours of all armies in both sets of artwork are different from the final production choice, the pale blue being closes in both pictures.

Finally; the near mint set that came in the other day had three damaged figures, two 'shot-shot' mouldings, caused by either the mould or the resin being too cool for proper production, causing the flow to stop before the tool cavity is filled, low pressure at the injection head in another cause of the same result!

I was going to replace the three with the ones I had here loose, but noticed that while the bases on all the figures in the set are smooth, the odds'n'sods are all marked with a reversed seven; so it would appear there are at least two tranches?

I have a set in storage, not quite complete and all the cards 'punched', but the box is better than the new one; I hope that between the two, I will cobble-together a really good one.

T is for Two - Dungeons and Dragons . . .

. . . from Comics Spain! Looking for something else the other day, I found the Bullyland folder, and thought "Ah! I must Blog those two", looking for them again a few days later I went instead to the Comics Spain folder and found these two - not for the first time; things Juan Angel sent me about nine-years ago! So firstly - ThanksGog!

It's two vinyl characters from the Dungeons & Dragons franchise/license held by [the recently demised] Comics Spain from TSR (Tactical Studies Rules), taken-out in 1985 and pertaining - I think - to a kid's cartoon of the early-evening/after-school TV type? The girl is supposed to have a staff or weapon of some kind (in green) but it has been removed by a previous owner . . .

. . . .and the catalogue managed to obstruct it too, so I still don't know what it should look like! Nevertheless an interesting pair and I think the Girl is called 'Diana', the short chap 'Master'? Scale is best described as 'Cartoon-size', but will be - nominally - 70mm?

The whole set; not quite what you expect from D&D, being all quite friendly-looking, even the obviously evil 'bad-guys'! Shades of Harry Potter in the boy wizard, years before the HP books as well; nothing new under the sun!

B is for Buck Bucks Ageing . . .

. . . by 400 years and finds a world pretty-much unchanged, but with very stupid robots and the odd spaceship! I didn't think much of the TV series back in the 1980's and the toys which sat on its coat-tails weren't much better, this one being TSR's effort: Buck Rogers: Battle for the 25th Century.

Also a bit of a box-ticker as it's got a big section in/on Boardgamegeek and has been Blogged elsewhere/elsewhen. It's a funny one for another reason; I have the whole set which when I was preparing a few board-game articles for One Inch Warrior (link below) years ago I realised was missing one of the character figures.

At a show in Birmingham (NEC) some chap had a set's-worth of figures in a tub for about 50p per figure, this was about 6/8 years ago, so I picked the gold character figures out, he too only had five, but I thought "Well, chances are!" only to find that actually Murphy dictates that sod's law trumps chances-are, and the missing figure was the same (it's one of the two women but as they are all in storage I can't report which one).

At probably the last Car Boot Sale I attended, also about 6 years ago, I got four in a bag of game pieces, still with the same missing figure, as one of the two absentees! Some time ago, maybe a couple of Plastic Warrior shows ago I picked up another five with one female missing but still didn't know which one, and with the other growing pile in storage, still couldn't blog the whole set!

Then last weekend Gareth brought me a small bag of stuff among which were the full set: 'Good things come to those who wait'! So I can now Blog them, but all the player characters, killer satellites and micro-rocket ships are still in storage, so you win's some you lose some . . . anyway I had fun taking the pictures!

So these are the six character figures (I think the names are with the right piece) each in charge of an army of a different colour in a game with a Risk-type look (the mechanism however, is much more convoluted), the first thing that become clear is that there are two sizes and what looks to be three sculptors across the set (including the two 'army' figures) and I believe there is a naughty reason for this . . .

. . . although I can't pin them down (yet), several of them look familiar, and I suspect they are all lifted from metal sets of the era (the game was issued in 1988), there were tons of companies around '78/82-onwards advertising regularly in the modelling press with this sort of stuff, and I think that's where they come from?

The smaller-scale hooded-girl on the left (Adarla?) for instance, looks very familiar as a role-play 'sneak thief', the equally small guy (Killer Kane?) on the other end of the line-up also seems familiar, while the guy next to him with the 'aytees' jumpsuit and notebook (Doc Huer, supposedly an older man?) looks likely to be based on the Guildford, Surrey dwelling alien - Ford Prefect - from the BBC's TV rendition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Again I seem to remember him from a Hitchhiker's set (not the Denizen Miniatures set) announced in Military Modelling's On Parade or G2?

The 'army builder' figures, I've only got the one big one here, but it's all you need for a post like this!

Again a massive difference in size and sculpting style, with the smaller one looking like he's been taken from a lead/whitemetal, post-apocalypse, Sci-Fi, war-games, street-gang, while the larger one looks like he's from a 28mm Role Play range, and possibly based on some cartoon figures from Heavy Metal, the graphic novel magazine, I also remember a set of space warriors called 'Doomguards' who looked a bit like this figure, is he a Drilliet or Mobius character?

If you followed the BBG link though, you'll know he's meant to be bigger...genetics!

The only contemporary plastics were the Matchbox Adventure 2000 figures (ironically copied by HG Games in their equally poor Buck Rogers set), one of whom has the same hussar-jacket buttoning (which has a special name I know, but: no Internet at home, library in storage!) as one of the Buck Rogers figures, they (the Matchbox) were also a bit bigger yet.

Although, giving it a moment's thought - as well as possible connections with the TV series and maybe lead figures, along with the Matchbox design similarities it must be said; both the main TV characters also bear more than a passing resemblance to the equivalent figures in the Airfix 54mm set, also contemporary with both the TSR and Matchbox issues, and containing other figures which paid homage more to both Dr. Who characters and members of Blakes 7's motley crew.

Playing on the plains of Planet Bhoringcova! Daleks with mind-slaves (why not - Cybermen seem to have them these days!) maneuver into attack formation, a mixed group of older (but much better) Daleks and Cybermen surround a last stand of the characters, and . . . "Can you tell me where I am . . . and when, please?"

Sometimes in Picasa you highlight say, two Merit shots, you want to collage, then, accidentally - or absentmindedly - hit the collage tool for the set of photo's in the folder above - the result was so abstract that I thought it suitable to subject you to!

I realised afterwards that the gold-backed character line-up has the look of Nigella Fáràgê (rymes with c**t) meeting The Trumpton (war with Iran now odds-on!) in that wholly overblown and tasteless vestibule last week!

A man who decorates his corporate HQ like a set on Dr. Who, circa 1983 has just been elected President of Oohessay, but then, I guess he has kept his hair-style from 1983! Mullets and war, with sexism and rusty pick-up trucks, there's your end-of-year predictions for what to look forward to in 2017, from the oracle at Waltii, get that tinned food in now.

If any of the metal guys recognise the sculpts let the rest of us know, if not I'll do a little digging myself in a couple of weeks (I happen to know I have four days of unlimited free Internet coming-up - whoohoo!) and see what I can come up with!

T is for TSR

Dungeons & Dragons, the first great 'system' for fantasy role-playing games, ultimately sort of lost out to Warhammer in Europe, but still holds it's own in the USA. And like their great rival - Games Workshop - the system supports a magazine, and various spin-offs. Also like GW they have from time to time produced a stand alone game to introduce new players/fans, of which this is one.

Strangely I've never seen one that didn't have the 6 extra figures or the 'limited edition' flash! It's a lot of box for not much content, this is due to the fact that there are a load card flats included and once they're made-up, storage becomes a problem.

Both sets of character figures, the metal set being provided by Ral Partha, who ironically have also worked with Games Workshop. Some of the figurines are straight copies of the plastic version, some are quite different, also there is a size differential between the two sets.

Sample of some of the hundred or so card stand-ups also included in the set. I think it's a 'live' side and a dead (but undead) or invisible (?) side.