I
mentioned the other day that we'd have a look at the sub-scale astronauts, and
while this probably isn't the Post I had planned in my head - because the complete-sets
are still buried in the garage somewhere - here are a few of them, loose for
now.
I
only have one of these and he's a stand-alone for another reason, as the rest
are PVC-alike, while he is a hollow, two-piece, glued polystyrene construct.
ID'd with the help of Bill B's catalogue we can add another brand to the cannon
- Kin Ming.
As
you can see he has two holes in his base, there is a further oblong slot in his
backpack; which I forgot to shoot, but between them they suggest he was
possibly fixed to something (perhaps temporarily, pluged-in) and/or tethered to
the same or something else! So possibly an accessory for a larger Kin Ming plastic, or die-cast toy, maybe
a Space Shuttle?
We
looked at these K&M (aka Wild Republic) astronauts as a set in a
Post a while ago, but three samples have now been combined and here's an
assortment of base-colour and visor-colour variations, while the sharp-eyed
among you will also notice that some have had their red and blue highlights
hand-painted (typically; the paler-based ones) others are all-stenciled, however
the flag is stenciled on both types.
The
more interesting of the four samples here; the storage-sample has a note on the
card saying (in my handwriting!) 'Probably
Wing Mau Trading', now I'm pretty thorough - you won't find me running
about the Internet making things up as I go along and x all else, so there will
be a reason both for the attribution, and the 'Probably', which is with the
lost sets.
I
suspect Wing Mau are somehow
associated with one or more of the sets but not one of the others with the same
figures (sounds like a vast sub-set, but I think there are only two or three
sets!), and further, as Wing Mau are
actually John Wong & Co., that
they may end up being tied in to either Pioneer
or Realtoy, or both!
'Trading'
is not factory, manufacturing or engineering, and I think J Wong's Wing Mau were
middle-men passing stuff through from the Hing Kong manufacturers to the
European, US and other end-uses, and that these will end up being associated
with several brands, brand-marks or phantoms. As I said the other day; I think
one of the missing sets may be Galaxy
International, aother possibly Ocean,
or Pioneer but don't write it down
yet, I'm not putting it in the tags - thorough see!
As
to the 'Pioneer and/or Realtoy' thought; although all a PVC
type material, some of these are as hard as the Dacron/Sky Line armymen, some are as soft as the Pioneer stuff, and they are cavity-(?)-numbered
on the base in the same alternate-codes' way as the very crude SP Toys small scale soldiers from Supreme thus;
1A
/1B - Cordless Scewdriver
2A
/ 2B - Ring [metal?] Detector
3A
/ 3B - EVA Suit
They
all have an additional 'Made in China', the base of the flag (in which it swivels
freely) having only the national identifier.
Finally is this little orphan, marked Made
in China and with a numeral '2' and in a dense PVC-type polymer he's quite Realtoy but smaller than the soldiers,
he's also ticking some Pioneer, Smart and Supreme boxes, and might be one of a group in the storage sets?!
