H is for How They Come In - Recent Purchases

Just a Picasa clearer; a few things I've managed to snaffle in the last few months, which were shot and sitting in Picasa waiting for a job, and this is it!

These were two or three lots/sources I think and we may have see some of them already in show reports, but here they've all been cleaned, some of them were very dirty. I just love 'em and will always grab them when I see them going cheap (£€$12 or £€$24 per figure on eBay gets ignored - they're not rare!), as there are a lot to find.

Here we have three of the late phenolic/early - less than stable - 'styrene ones in bright colours, with, upper left, three similar-aged silver ones, so probably all original Lido or Winco Condar, while the rave-dancer, top right, is a more modern lightweight polystyrene one with a better finish.

The blue one had black spots on, which might have been a past-owner's paint, or a slow-growing mould eating something in the polymer, I couldn't tell, but it hasn't fully removed despite some serious chemicals, so the now pale-purple staining seems permanent?

Going un-bid-on on evilBay, this was Jecsan or Reamsa, I can't remember, the former I think, to go with those over-sized nativity figures I bought in a charity shop a few Christmases ago? And it's big, about 8 or ten inches, gone to storage now, so I can't give you a definitive size, but more Palm-tree comparisons (we did some of the flats a while ago) are in this Blogs future!

I got a eMail from Chris Smith with a link to this lot and one bid secured it! I have some of most or most of some, but as grist-to-the-mill it was worth a speculative bid, and the highlights were the two musicians and the four Wild West, which I think are 1970's French bazaar copies of Dom-Heinerle, Siku or similar, earlier, German premiums?

The pile of pastel Cowboys and Indians are also interesting as they are late, sub-piracies of Giant's own Britains copies, while there are a few plug-in US Marines from rack-toy rubber-boats, a lovely little dog, two Thomas paddling Indians which may be the Giant-copy size, but later production than them (so French copies of Manurba's version?), a Chinese Villager and . . . the rest - cheers to Chris for the heads-up!

M is for Matters Arising

A few things which got a closer shot or a comparison of one sort or another as this year's show plunder was being put away . . .

A quickie comparison between the unknown cloaked fantasy figure on the left and a Dimensions for Children (DFC) cloak wearer on the right. The unknown one is more sci-fi than swords & sorcery though and I wonder if it might be from the large Toyco set which contains the solid copies of the Colourform space alien figures?

The pilots in close-up, the larger one is a patch above Zang to be honest, and like the better versions of the standing infantryman, has a much neater base, so I think definitely another maker, or a later second version?

Cleaned-up the Airfix bikes; but they're shot to bits! I needed two riders and I didn't have the cap-wearer, so they are useful, and two pairs of blue wheels will prove equally useful at some point in the future I'm sure. I suspect the 'cutter' was trying to make them look more like scramblers, and I may clean them-up by removing the stunted remains of the mud-guards and guard supports

Because they were both to hand as I was putting-away; comparison between the Cavendish (etc.) on the left, and the KT/Shackman et al, novelty plinth/pencil sharpener figure on the right. Cavendish is a stiff 'At Ease', the other is 'easy'!

I thought he'd gone up here already, but I got the left-hand figure a while ago, the one on the right - last Saturday (Sandown tomorrow!), they are the fourth Airfix non-beagle dog, so I now have all four which will go on the Airfix Blog's Bergan/Beton page shortly! I think it's meant to be a Springer Spaniel, which means they are all working/hunting dogs - Setter/Lurcher-Greyhound /Alsatian . . . or; farm dogs.

Three of these are from forthcoming posts on the latest donation from Chris Smith, one was here and five came-in on Saturday. Colour, shade, base marks, copies - the more we find, the more we discover we still had to find! Mostly ABC (or their tool) but there are others!

Two of the figures from PW's show needed the old hot water treatment to get them standing up, one also wasn't shot clearly the other day so I've re shot him here, I suspect another Argentinian figure (silver paint) but more original in the sculpt than the other five which were added to the pile last weekend.

The Jecsan circus (clairvoyant/soothsayer?) figure didn't really respond to the hot water, despite two pouring, straight from the kettle! She stands better, but not flat, the infantry man did much better but needed a jiggit pared-off first.

Well, the blue one didn't clean-up as well as I'd hoped, the black marks seem to be some kind of bituminous splashes which have stained the substrate, so I'm stuck with the 'new' faint ones but he is an improvement on a week-ago!

While the silver one did need a clean, it was only the flash than made him look cleaner, the two other colour ones however have cleaned-up to the point where the flash has rather washed them out! On the left a 5th which was hanging out in the 'TBS Space' tray, from Chris as well I think.

Not quite as nice as the other one, and more Romanesque than Greek (I've seen them online as 'guerrier Grec/Romain', so it's an acknowledged factor of the set), but still a lovely figure, this one has had his replacement weapon blobbed to his hand with glue, at the 'other end' I will drill the hand out as with the previous find.

M is for More of a Ramble than a Return!

We looked at these a while ago here, when I got my main sample, both carded and loose, but since then a few more have joined the 'legion' and more details have emerged which change the narrative slightly, so we'll have a meander through  them . . .

. . . starting with the most recent additions, which are two of the original (except they aren't 'original' anymore!) Legione Spaziale (Space Legion) figures from the previous post; an orange one and a fleck-marbled yellow one, along with two much better versions - in the 'proper' pulp-era metallics!

New ones added (orange asterisks) to the rest I already had, along with a bronze one kicking about and with a helmeted bronze version in the poorer sculpt-finish of the [not] originals, gives me six poses and three generations; poor, not-so-poor with helmet (1) and good (2).

But what we saw previously is only half the story, the better moulded ones are the originals, the poor ones are complete piracies, even down to . . .

. . . the packaging! They are a little bigger and it's a tighter-cropped image, so they appear even bigger, but basically one set - on the left - is a pulp-era set (1950/60's), the other is a cheaper fake (and that's the correct term when you're copying the product and the artwork), designed to look like the original, possibly as late as the mid-late 1970's?

That was sort of 'it', as while I had these two images and was pretty sure that they were mine and that they were the small copies (they are a mix of old Archer and Premier/Tudor Rose poses) I couldn't find them, so I didn't know for sure!

The blue guy is the Premier/Tudor Rose pose; also covered by a company in Australia - if memory serves - in the larger scale.

Then - looking for them - I managed to find two lots, which with the new pair and the bronze 'kicker' gave me twelve, or a small shed-load! Which I haven't photographed as they are only the three poses and the information is in the other images above and below, but I'll show them in the future when I've found all the poses in the better sculpts.

I also found the Christmas cracker prize ones, and another oddity, so thought 'fuck it' and grabbed the Lido (et al) box while I was at it . . .

. . . to get this comparison of smaller 'pulp' spacemen done! We'll look at the helmeted one (unknown I) in a second, while the blue one with an added base (unknown II; ee's 'armless! Or; it's der Milo from Venus!) will be back in the next post, the rest are - hopefully - annotated with clarity?

The Post premiums are the smallest, while the cracker giveaways are heading toward a standard size, the rest are less than half the size of the Archer and Glencoe (Archer re-issues) sets - which we will look at another day, with the originals (a) slightly taller than the copies (b and unknown I).

I saw another of these the other day, same colour, same helmet foxed with a tub of glue-fumes, different pose (but from the six), so I suspect (guess, assume, presume, imagine!) that A) he was/they were possibly a single thing, bubble-gum, cereal, pasta? Something like that, and probably Italy (as per the other two versions) or France, and B) is the original of the multicoloured copies, being ever-so-slightly better detailed, but much worse that the true originals, i.e.; the chronologically second of the three versions, and the first of the two generations of piracies.

So, someone made the original Legione Spaziale and may have given them helmets (which have been lost?) but I've never seen them, then someone-else copied them, with badly or heavily glued-on helmets (which do survive!) and issued them singly (?) as some kind of premium/giveaway or capsule/pocket-money toy? Then a while later; they (or a third party) found (or obtained) the tool (of the copies) and re-released them in candy-colours without helmets (there were no helmets in the big stock-bags from which my previously-seen sample came from) on a copy card of the original Space Legion. But . . . that is all, mostly conjecture?

Ghosts in the machine!

S is for Short & Sweet!

Cobbling the Torgano post together reminded me these had come in a while ago and while we've seen the sculpts before, and only five poses have turned-up so far, they are unusual in being apparently newish, unmarked and soft polyethylene.

The old Lido sculpts variously known as Captain Video, Winco Condar, Patrulla Saturno, Moon Shot, Exploradoes Del Espacio, Missile Patrol, Lunatics, Interplanetary Spacemen &etc.

It's clear there were several tools in various scales and on at least two continents over the years, and clearly some survive as we've had shiny re-issues from Reamsa here at Small Scale World already, but these have the larger bases of the old Lido/'Winco' figures and are - as I said - blank.

Also they may just be a near-mint but vintage shop-stock (they are a bit dusty in close-up) rather than quite as current as they look?

R is for Return to Captain Video et al.

Not exactly a follow-up as the other days post was adequate enough for what it was, but I said at the time that I would re-visit these when I got the rest out of storage, as there are more of the smaller premium sized ones there and a few of the human/spaceman sculpts (I think . . . it's a while since I saw them!), but then I picked these up the other day . . .

 . . . so we might as well have another look at them now! The rest of the Reamsa tinny-ethylene re-issues at the bottom, a duplicate bird-man in rubber, also from Reamsa (top left) next to a totally new one on me, a Heudebert European food premium based-on but reversed from the Lido robot and five of the clunky-styrene or phenolic ones from the anonymous maker of 'Winco Condar's Interplanetary Spacemen!'

So ♪♫♩♬ Meet the gang, 'cos the boys are here, the boys to entertain you . . . with robots an' ail'iee'ens to help you on your way...♩♫♪♬ The 'gang' may be bigger than the storage sample now, but I don't think so and there's still a shortage of the smaller versions and the humans here.

The ray-gun guy in green I 'restored' with a coat of plumbers sealant a while ago can now be seen to be one of the smaller ones though, as he's considerably smaller then the Reamsa, who's brothers are all the same as the Lido/British versions.

The blue cat-man/gasmask guy has his weapons intact as does the new green trident guy (or should that be bident!) unlike their twins.

The above image was originally just the picture on the left, but I think I got one (or two) of my colour-matched cube's wrong last time, so I've added a legend to the right (don't temp me!) which is correct, bearing in mind that those marked Lido could be from any one of several sources (Dumont, Rex, Techniplast), the four Reamsa's may have been issued by one or two other brand-marks (Alca Capell, Puchol) in recent years, and - indeed - the silver robot is so clean he may be a more recent 'pressing'?

As I said last time, without the base marks of the Reamsa or Trovador examples "It's very hard to say with any degree of definitiveness which figure is by which company".

The spare rubber Reamsa is available for a straight-up swap for any of the other three poses if you have one of them duplicated and need this bird-man - eMail me on maverickatlarge [at] hotmail [dot] com. Compared to the re-issue there's nothing in it, they are from the same mould and all four are numbered under the base as per the catalogue listing.

The Heudebert as I say; was unknown to me, and there doesn't seem to be much on that there inter'mah'web-thinggy, he can be seen - or said - to have either had his arms reversed or had his face put on the back of his head, he's also a lot smaller, so rather a 'son of robot'. He's a sharp, 'kit' type, polystyrene like Heudebert flats, in a slightly washy, metallic-gold polymer.

B is for Birdmen, Bots and Something Else Beginning with B!

Captain Video was a kid's TV show in the 'States in the 1950's, although as the brand seems to have 'travelled', particularly to France, it may have had a wider audience? Running against shows like Tom Corbett Space Cadet and Space Patrol, they were the equivalent of the previous era's movie-matinee Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers serials; or later era's Dr. Who, Star Trek and err . . . Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon again! That makes it about time - or even overdue - for someone to resurrect Captain Video!

I don't know if the figures bare any relationship to the TV series, but as they all look humanoid (and could have been 'worn', as costumes) I guess they are representative of some of the characters from some of the episodes? I'm sure TJF can correct me!

We have looked at them before here, but these are recent additions, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to have a closer look. It's very hard to say with any degree of definitiveness which figure is by which company, however it’s fair to say glossy polystyrene ones in primary colours (1 & 7) are probably from Lido's stable, or their French importer, however there may well be a UK source for these, Bell or Kleeware would fit nicely but I don't know. I'm sure TJF can correct me!

Reamsa (PVC; 6) and Trovadore (polyethylene) kindly mark theirs (if only Pech did!) but the mark carried over to a more recent re-issuer (2), phenolic/cellulose (5 & 8) types are (if found here) probably UK copies while the unmarked metallic's (2 & 3) prove more problematical.

The figures are also a rather amorphous group of poses which are from a set of twelve original or 'base' figures, but have been issued in different sizes and configurations, with Lido themselves seemingly not issuing the 'straight human' poses in the same numbers as the 'aliens' especially in the larger sizes, in the smaller size all 12 are as common as each other and the humans turn up more frequently compared to the more exotic creatures/robots.

They break down into four groups;

Humans - Four Poses (yellow figure, small scale premium, damaged)

Birdmen - Three Poses

Cat People with Respirators - Two Poses (metallic-green figure above)

Robots - Three Poses, although there are two similar 'pulp'-bots and one which looks more like a knight-in-armour (other two green figures above), with a ray gun!

The two Reamsa's in this current sample, although the grey one is in a modern-day tinny polyethylene and is almost certainly a re-issue probably from Capell? The earlier one is a PVC rubber as used by a few Spanish companies in the 1950's (Teixido and Pech y Hermanos spring to mind!) and the gold coating he (she, it?)'s been given has - over-time - reacted with the substrate to produce a sandy texture which makes it hard to clean, and you can see how while the figure photographs quite silver, the very bright light of the scanner has revealed a golden-brown residue of the factory finish, deeper in the surface.

Showing some base variation; there are also pod-foot and 'twin-baselett' types out there. I think the robot may be a re-issue as well, as he's impossibly clean, but he could be an unloved/un-played-with Lido survivor?

Some shots I took a while ago, the two on the left (now in my sample and also pictured above) have been cut-back to their footwear by a previous owner, on the right are a 'twin-baselett' Birdman and a whole version of the Lido marching robot.

Provisional listing

Known

Alca Capell (or 'Al-Ca' or 'Capell')

Were probably responsible for the more recent reissues of the four [still base-marked to-] Reamsa copies of Lido, having a history of purchasing other moulds - they also inherited some of Casanellas' metal moulds, I believe.

·         42 - 'Knight' with ray gun?

·         43 - Robot striding?

·         44 - Robot waving with syringe-tool?

·         45 - Bird-man with side-arm?

Shusssh . . . can you hear TJF and his cock-wakin' monkey-lizard rushing-off to see if it says Puchol on page 200-and-something in some tome? I don't care; they're tinny, soapy reissues!

Dumont Plastics

Licensed the Lido figures for a large gift-set which contained 18 figures; taken as twos or threes from three poses of the bird-men and two-each of the cat-men and robots.

·         Captain Video and his Video Rangers (window gift box with pop-up display-back)

Lido

Invented the line, producing it in various configurations of carded and boxed set, and is credited with the smaller, scaled-down figures supplied to other sources. From O'brian (via Kent Specher) we know that Lido was created by brothers Effrem and Seymour Arenstein in 1947, and produced 'dime store' toys and novelties - quite prolifically - until 1964 when the company was sold to a Bala, who themselves ceased trading the following year, Gabriel Industries bought the rump but most of the moulds were sold for scrap, and given that the US figures all date from before this time we can be confident the Captain Video mould/s were among those lost at that time.

·         Atomic Cannon (boxed 'dragster')

·         Pursuit Ship (boxed 'A'-frame)

·         Rocket Tank (boxed twin-tailed spaceship)

·         Troop Transport (boxed 'zeppelin')

·         Missile Patrol with Rocket Launcher (assorted vehicles, figures and accessories, carded and bagged)

·         1403 - Moon Shot (four figures and cork-pistol, blister-carded)

Post Cereals

Issued the 12 Lido scale-downs in their Raisin Bran breakfast cereal, Kent Specher dates them to 1953.

·         Captain Video Space Man (one per pack of cereal)

Puchol

See Alca Capell (above) and Reamsa (below)

Reamsa

Issued four of the Lido poses (as copies) in their Saturn Patrol Interplanetary War (Patrulla Saturno Guerra Interplanetaria) sets, gold-decorated figures being named Marcianos (Martians) and the undecorated; Lunaticos ('Lunatics' - Moon Men) in a PVC rubber, the gold paint giving the Martians a sandy texture over time. Modern re-issues in bright gold and plain grey ethylene were issued a while ago, possibly by Alca Capell or Puchol, depending on whether Oliver inherited the mould first. Each figure is numbered on the base below the Reamsa lozenge.

·         42 - 'Knight' with ray gun

·         43 - Robot striding

·         44 - Robot waving/throwing with syringe/grenade-tool

·         45 - Bird-man with side-arm

Rex Jouets

Produced [probably pirated] copies of Pyro X-100 spaceships (with French-language wing titles Terre (Earth) and Mars) and helmeted spaceman of a derivative (ex-Bonux) style, none of Lido design, untitled, but all in the manner of the Techni-Plaste Captain Video carded sets.

·         [Two Figures] (bent-stand carded with spaceship)

·         [Three Figures] (bent-stand carded with spaceship)

·         [Four figures] (bent-stand carded with spaceship)

Techni-Plaste

A French company were supplied by Lido with bare mouldings for their lovely boxed set 'Captain Video and his Equipment' (Capitaine Video et ses Equipages), they also issued them on smaller cards with a vehicle and three figures in the Lido style.

·         M436 - Capitaine Video et ses Equipages (12 figures, 4 vehicles and other accessories in Dumont style gift box)

Trovador

An Argentinian company produced eponymous base-marked copies of Lido's figures titled Explorers of Space.

·         Exploradores del Espacio

Unknown

UK

Sets in a phenolic or cellulose resin, copied from Lido and branded to Winco (abbreviation for [Air-]Wing Commander) Condar; an obvious take on Captain Condor the Lion comic strip and a definite candidate for a Star Wars name!

·         Winco Condar's Interplanetary Spacemen (4 figures on card)

USA

The smaller figures (which may or may not be Lido-supplied) have been issued as premiums or gum-ball capsule prizes.

S is for Spacemen...by Various Makes via Lido; Captain Video...et al!

I'm not even going to try and attribute these, the sculpts were originally Lido, but they have been license-copied, supplied-to and pirated by dozens of firms as stand-alone carded toys, bagged rack-toys and give-aways or premiums in three (?) sizes over 30-odd years (1950's-1970's) in hard Polystyrene and soft polyethylene.

Also this is a couple of small samples - I seem to have photographed twice! But I have more in storage with some of the smaller-sized ones so we will return to them...for now; Lido Captain Video!