UFO is for UAP - Imperial / CEM / PMS / Titan - Sammy Steel Series, Micro Adventure, My Adventure Journey, Space Adventure, Space Explorer

So, the last trio, except as Sammy Steel it extends to nearly a dozen sets, and two or three of them were issued as generics in France by the looks of it, but for the purposes of this post we're looking at the non-Sammy Steel sets issued in the UK and Germany, which are a trio.

 

For the Imperial US/Australian Sammy Steel story (which seems to include Titan Toys here, but I've not seen them in packaging), this is the start page for a four-page explanation;

https://mikestoybox.net/2014/07/12/sammy-steel-series-1-mighty-max-knock-off/#jp-carousel-6429

 

So, my two are in the middle, both PMS (which - at the time - might have meant a 99p Stores exclusive?), with the card back to the left and a generic from feebleBay on the right, although decent shots of the rocky one have escaped this post, it may be in storage?

 

We get two identical flying saucers, but only on the outside, as even then, they are different colours, while the inner liner is very-different between them both. To go with them is a rocky 'meteorite' based on what is supposed to be a volcano sculpt!

I didn't really notice that the German one is another card, and while I did shoot it in its entirety for the group shot at the end of the first post in this sequence, I don't have a decent single card shot! This was imported by a CEM?

I haven't opened this PMS set, but you can see the 'rest of the world' generics have all the contents of the Sammy Steel sets, but in new colours and without the Sammy character figures, although, I'm pretty sure I have him, the sabre-toothed smilodon (on the Blog somewhere?) and a couple of the other pieces not found in this trio, so they will all turn-up eventually!

 

Note the plug-in dish/ariel and fold out ramp, scudding about loose in the blister!

I did open the PMS version of this one after I'd got the CEM one to keep whole! The lizard man looks better in green than the Sammy Steel orange, in my opinion, although the fliver/flyer/hover-bike is probably better in the original grey? And these are all - sort of - 20/25mm compatible.

So, six true UFO 'saucers' and three more esoteric designs . . . I hope these posts have helped some with the ID'ing of these which have confused for some time, and as I say, these posts are a bit half-cocked, and we will return to them when I get everything in one place, and find the few missing bits (I may have the meteorite/cave), maybe do it as a single page, with all the sets/links together in one place?

And this is only what I've found, there's probably more; more packagings, more importers, more brand-marks, and while I don't often address money here, I was going to have a long paragraph or two ranting about the money being asked/paid for the US/Aussie sets, only to find someone has one of these PMS cards up on evilBay right now for 50-smackers? WTF? These are recent, cheapo rack-toys, you should hope to get, or pay no-more than 15-quid for, and - intrinsically - they are a fiver's worth of tat!

A is for Archive - Titan Toys 'Fun Fings'

We're looking at a scan from a catalogue from the 2007 Toy Fair at Excel, London, here I think, although it could be a few years earlier, but with the next show on the 22nd of this month it seems like a good time to get it out there!

Originally I used to go on a PW ticket, that year I went in my capacity as head of toys at an Internet auction drop-shop outfit (I was head of fuck-all and least said - soonest forgotten, but I did manage to get the junior staff their holiday and sick benefits!), and a few years ago I went as someone else when they sent me the wrong pass (I hope he also went - as me!), last year I snuck in on Peter's pass again!

But this year I will be representing the Small Scale World's Press Office! Oh-yes . . . we have a press officer now - it's me, that's why your emails are never answered on time; Perhaps I should do a FUC's page; Frequently Un-answered Correspondence!

Titan Toys' corporate company hyperbole aside (they look like many other ranges of rack-toys going back to the sixties, even to the boy/girl/neutral colour-coding), they seem to be plugging a new display-rack (dollar tree) which has been grafted to an office-chair!

It's a low-res three-colour image, but we can see . . .

. . . clockwise from top left; mini trains (sans track, most of this type of rack toy give you a circle or oval of track?)*; The Supreme/SP Toys-supplied sets we looked at here; a substantial-looking (for a rack-toy) stunt cycle with jump and a set of those larger farm animals with their peculiar purple-browns and mauve-greys which are starting to become a common part of mixed-lots and charity-shop bags. I didn't crop-out the lizard as he's obvious in the previous image.

* As their (Titan's) own, near contemporary, Cargo Express Train Set did!

S is for Supreme / SP Toys...and Titan...Ackerman et al.

We looked at the vehicles for these sets (or at least the military sets, some of which had militarised versions of the civilian or police vehicles) a while ago Here [I've linked the 'Supreme' tag, so this post will be at the top of the page after you click it], so it's about time we looked at the figures!

As this is a Toy soldier blog, we'll start with the military figures;

The very large '800' series sets that contained all the really quite nice vehicles found in the above link came with a number of figures, the contents of three of which are illustrated above, with a shot showing some of the colour variations. Camouflage blobs were a dark olive or dark chocolate brown going onto a yellow or tan field, weapons were black and flesh varies from a pale tone to a bright candy-pink.

There were only four poses though! And the figures are not award-winning sculpts, being generic 1970's infantrymen, who can presumably be marketed anywhere, including at home in China! As can be seen there was some variety between contents, but with each figure in a shaped coffin-section of the larger tray, the contents of each numbered set was always the same.

These sets were all either green vehicles or 50/50 green and 'desert'. As I stated in the original posts, I have seen desert versions of some of the vehicles I only have in green hinting at what the contents of some of the missing numbered sets were, the rest may have been civil versions - in the large size - of the smaller sets...

...which can be broken down into Police, Fire, Trucking ('Road') and Mechanics 'Speedway' as well as the military themed sets. All the above being '900' series; there are medical/ambulance sets as well, while the '600' series included space sets - in storage!

The truck set and the garage are both over-stuck with an Ackerman sticker, they are Still Going and are an import agent for cheap toys, household and other 'bargain' goods. As I recall the three large sets were all 'Ackerman' despite being bought in Wilkinson's two years running, where they were only made available at Christmas (mid/late-2000's), these smaller sets can still be found on the odd 'dollar tree' rack about the place - and not just under the Ackerman, Titan (see below) or standard Supreme labels.

Note the close-up, about 25% of the figures carry numbers; the numbered/not-numbered figures sharing space in the same sets.

On the left are the numbered figures, all poses can be either A or B, and each pose is then numbered 1-4, so the guy with binoculars is either un-numbered, or he has A1 or B1 on his base. All the civilians I have found so far are smooth-based, but numbered ones may be out there?

The smaller accessories from the larger sets are real gap-fillers in the insert tray (compare with the other vehicles we looked at way back when), but I guess the top three have some use, the semi-flat, detail-on-one-side-only motorcycle is however a complete disappointment!

So - the above were all 30mm, but there are also given 'HO'  (23mm) and '1:72' (25mm) figures from the same source (Supreme / SP Toys), while Titan also carried unpainted 35mm figures in other sets (yellow figures above). As can be seen in the top left image, Titan were/are another importer, but they prefer to have their sets printed-up as Titan, rather than accepting generic Supreme sets. Although, as we can see bottom left, so did/do Ackerman - sometimes!

Titan Toys International (one of at least four Titan's in toys!) seem to have ceased trading, while FunFings has been usurped by a craft jeweller's on Etsy!

Some of the small figures have a similarity with other Chinese makes like New Ray or Soma, but there are differences and in the larger scales Supreme have issued some interesting 'toobs' we can look at another day!

The various scales, with the exception of the yellow figures - probably not sourced from Supreme - and the numbered soldiers, all figures have smooth bases, no more than four colours and usually a glossy appearance, and there are a few more civilian poses in the 30mm range, and probably many more in the 23/25mm ranges.

The figures in the Cargo Express set from Titan have squared-off bases more in line with the 23 and 25mm ranges, not the ovoid ones of the other 30mm civilians illustrated loose above with the soldiers. Note how the 'Germanic' fireman, is a copy of the better detail - also Chinese production - figures with flesh-coloured bases issued in various sizes, in imported play-sets sold by Tesco's and others from the late 1990's through to today (Carama? Yat Ming?).