M is for Motormax, from Redbox

Sort of running out of time tonight, despite finishing early, I've been deep in the contents of a parcel from Peter Evans (next post, brilliant bendy band babes!), so I'm throwing this up before midnight!

Various treatments of camouflage/paint on-, and plastic colours of- the 20mm copies of Matchbox US Infantry, as inherited by Redbox from Zylmex/Zee Toys a decade or so ago, and sold with the larger boxes of military Motormax sets.

UFO is for UAP - Introduction

For reasons known only to them, the US Government have stopped calling UFO's 'UFO's' (for Unidentified Flying Objects), and started calling them UAP's (for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena), given the number of fuckwits who will struggle to spell the last two words of the definition (including me!), it's hardly a beneficial change, and people are already starting to use Aerial or Airborne for the middle letter, yet, due to the hegemony of US culture on the English-speaking press, it is a fact that everyone else is stepping into line behind the Pentagon, and UFO's are sliding into the history of 1950's hysteria, where some might argue they belong?!!

I picked this up a while ago, going cheap in Esdevium Games I think, as an end-of-line/discontinued item? It looks distorted, but that’s just the Reaper Miniatures packaging refracting the viewable image of the contents! It's quite a simple kit of six parts, I think there are three legs and a clear-yellow canopy, and is presumably a one-man UFO in 28mm, but could be a bigger machine in a smaller scale.

 

eBay I think? It's been in the folder for a while, seems to be a take-off, or partial take-off (styling) of the Marx Mystery Spaceship, we saw here, but this is a push-and-go friction toy with sparking action! Seems to be copied from the Zee Toys version: Space Saucer, or a re-boxing? And like Lincoln's clockwork, sparking Jeeps, both could be taken from a Japanese toy, or even produced under licence from someone like Yonezawa?

 

Seen before here, but there's not a lot you can do with a carded generic except photograph it against a different background from time to time! Fixed-key clockwork, I keep hoping to find a loose one going cheap, but may de-card this one day?

 

This was a recent modelling show piece, although when I say recent, I think maybe three or four years ago, and I can't remember if the picture was online, or eMailed, but I think it was a forthcoming show-dates thing, so the model may be older still? I thought it was fun though, lifting a cow for weird experiments and/or visceral mutilation!

 

Clearly other people think it's fun becuse there's quite a few around now, this one is credited to a Matt Smiriglio and issued by Running Press Mini Editions, usually to be found around the 10- or 12-quid mark, with free postage (or £20+ if you click on one of the US listings by accident!), and as well as lights, sounds and a magnetic cow-abductor, there is a booklet on the cow-abduction phenomena! It's Christmas soon, hint-hint!

 

While these band-wagon products are cow abduction table-lamps! The one on the left being £150-odd, and a generic? The right hand 'Area 51' piece can be found from between £50 and £180, and is claimed to be from a Wan Tai, in some ad's.

 

While the real reason for this post, is some forthcoming posts, on the three sets of UFO minis in the style of Polly Pocket or Mighty Max, which graced our cheapie stores and corner shops a few years ago, Three sets; Aliens, Robots and miscellaneous Sci-Fi 'stuff', each line had three toys, and most had more than one final branding/packaging type.

Here we see two carded cheap sets, two robot sets and one Alien set (green), and the three set-specific posts will be interspersed with the Jon Attwood donation-posts over the next few days.

Zee is for Zylmex is for Motormax is for Redbox!

I can't remember if the takeover of the Zylmex factory and tool-bank came out in the initial rebuttal of the nonsense from TJF and his onanistic monkey-lizard back in 2016, or if it had already come out, but suffice to say the demise of the Z's was good for Tai Sang!

I'm fairly sure this is an Argos code but it could have been Index? Not that it maters particularly; these sets were available elsewhere at the time (early 2000's? I'll probably have the date in the old book manuscript, or the Argos pages to scan sometime), and an outer liner is A) not pretty and B) hard to get a paragraph out of, which I seem to've done . . . phew!

I'm also not sure where I've got the idea (die-cast site somewhere?) but I believe Zyll produced some of these (or the Motormax brand), right at the end, and Redbox took over the stock as well as the tools etc . . . certainly the logo bottom-right would appear to be a generic's 'phantom' sub-brand, bearing no relation to Zee and not much to Redbox, although it is an R, while the only thing tying this to Redbox is a small, white, paper sticker on the back.

Figures were rubbery PVC copies of Matchbox American Infantry; 2-each of five poses, these have a very muted camouflage, others [in the collection] have more obvious contrast between paint and plastic, we may have seen a few here in the past, but I also think a second marque has been associated with them at some point - bought in?

The lorry has hardly changed in 40/50 years, the wheels have had a redesign and the markings/decoration are sharper!

We looked at the various half-tracks once or twice here at Small Scale World (most notably in this overview) with both Zylmex-marked and blanked-off belly-pans. The tanks are for another day, but those of a certain age will remember them butterfly-clipped to a piece of sloping landscape in their window-boxes, I have several AMX30's somewhere, which had obviously gone-cheap at some point! But there are others in a tub with the knock-off mini-mites (Cragstone or Kresege?) and Tomy minis. The helicopter is an improvement on some of the earlier Zee Toys stuff!

These are still out there in various configurations depending on the contract and Redbox are better labelled on this exact set, or were a while ago in TKMaxx. Now; there are too many question marks in this post, but I shot it because I happened to have it in front of me the other day as everything is in a bit of turmoil here at the moment (boiler died yesterday!), and there is one more question mark - I mentioned in the previous post they might be Macau not HK production . . .

There is somewhere, some data tying Tai Sang and Zylmex to die-casting factories, or a factory in Macau, yet you never find that mark on any products by any of the marques (Tai Sang-Blue Box-Redbox or Zee-Zyll-Zylmex), so I'm not sure about any of it; however they (or some of them) may have originated in the Portuguese colony rather than Hong Kong? As all marks are now 'China' and most of the tools still in production; I guess it's a moot point!

MASH is for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital

4077^th is for a lot of fun! If any service-based comedy (and there are lots, it's the perfect set-up for a situation comedy) comes close to Dad's Army in my heart, or pokes the nostalgia-button quite like Mainwaring, Wilson, Pike, Jones & co., it's MASH, and there have been several sets/toys over the years based on the long-running TV series and Movie, this is one of them . . .

. . . the Hong Kong (or Macau? See next post) maker Zee Toys (Zyll, Zylmex)'s sets, nominally 1:87^th, the figures are a reasonable 1:76^th while some of the vehicles scrape in at under 1:100^th! This set contains the latrine vignette and some of the more common Zylmex vehicles, and was found and saved for me by Peter Bergner many years ago, in fact; the year I started the Blog!

We saw the Jeep recently when I was putting them on the Airfix page, but here's another! The truck is a sub-scale thing, but which goes quite well - size-wise - with the Indiana Jones German lorry from Galoob! It's red-crosses are looking a bit tired! The figures have been home-painted and consist of two guys emptying 'thunder-boxes' and two guys running, who double-up as a stretcher-bearer in one of the other sets.

Peter actually found the missing, folding-propeller unit a while later and brought it to the last show I did before the move here, sadly it never got married to the helicopter and they went into storage separately, and while I know where they are, this has already gone away again and they'll have to wait for a future Chinook round-up - they weren't in service for Korea, but we'll ignore that!

The little Bell 47 / UH-13h Sioux is a delight, one of the first convertions I ever attempted (with some success) was a pair of - rather crude - outboard stretcher-beds on the Airfix Westland Scout which I made from stretched-runner and loo-paper when I was about eleven-years old! This, too, is a bit small, but it does the job; so long as you make the "chugga-chugga" noise as you swing it into the valley and line-it up with the little hillock!

The latrine!

I don't recall now if it was a joke in the series (or the movie) but picture the scene, the camera reversing in front of them in a long panning shot, Radar and one of the officers are walking down from the main camp, deep in chat about that episode's plot-thread; they arrive at the enlisted-men's door and in goes Radar; the officer turns to his own door, mid-sentence . . . cut to aerial shot of interior; the conversation continuing from where they left off! Maybe there's also a chalk-line on the floor?

The doors are cut to hinge-open but it's an old, un-played-with toy and I didn't want to force them. The 'wriggly-tin' roof would make a useful scratch-building piece in any fixed-position/defense-work modelling, or a parasol on an Ork war-machine!

The pre-issue, publicity material all show the half-track in place of the latrine - more usually available as a smaller blister-carded set (as seen on the PSR page) - but it was dropped for something more connected with the tie-in branding by the time the set hit the retailers, note also: the 'group photo' shot is different between mock-up and finished artwork; often the way - catalogues and packaging are only ever a guide!

A is for Airfix Posting - Jeeps

A new recurring title, for a while at least; I must get the rest of the Airfix stuff up, or at least enough to get each page-post going! Then I can look at finishing the blurb on the existing posts!!

Jeeps today, the Airfix Attack Force Jeep, with comparisons of a bunch of others, there will be more to come, these were the ones in the 'Jeep Tub' which doesn't include a lot of the named stuff, nor most of the larger Hong Kong/China pieces, but it's a starter guide!

A few points beyond the Airfix aspect of the linked-post; I missed a small silver one (upper image) which comes somewhere between the Spear's Trek (left) and Kinder 'minis' (right) Jeeps; I've also shown the three colours of Kinder Jeep.

Below left image puts the two Marx mini's next to each other, the die-cast offering has the slightly more realistic windscreen position, but both are overall pretty poor sculpts, and copies of the larger-scaled one from the big playsets.

The bottom-right picture compares the two Zee/Zyl/Zylmex and/or Motormax/Redbox Jeeps, one of which has a MASH sticker. They are also different colours and have slightly different wheels.

The little silver Jeep seems to go with the two silver/gold cars we looked at a few Christmases ago, to which I've added blue and green ones which were in storage, although they are both cleaner sculpts with fatter tyres and an undercut on the wheel-arch and may be from an earlier/separate issue [wave]. They show all the 'hallmarks' (small, inexpensive, monoblock design) of being gum-ball machine capsule-prizes or Christmas cracker-novelties?

No Dulcop racing cars (or are they PRB or Crescent. . . heh-heh-heh-heh!), but - obviously - they're in the long queue. Too funny, their 'idea factory' now seems to be my 'forthcoming' posts, but I already knew that from the other day . . . all the stupidies sticking together like a pack of mangy dogs!

And now he's bleating he should be allowed to get things wrong, oblivious to the hypocrisy of correcting my Jecsan with the hysteria he did? Too funny, the loons are trying to run the asylum with the support of more loons!

C is for Chinacars!

There's no real point to this post other than things are hardly ever what they appear to be or claim to be when dealing with modern contract-manufactured rack toys, as while some of these are technically 'shelf-sale' items they are all priced at the pocket-money budget!

So we'll just ramble through them in no particular order, looking at the odd detail on the way...

I bought these a couple of years ago (in The Works), can't remember if I Blogged them at the time, but I suspect not as they became the kernel for this post, the folder for which I've been adding -to ever since. Both branded to High & Drive, you may recognise them as being otherwise the same as the previously Blogged Funtastic for Poundland vehicles.

Is it me or are there shades of the 'Stalone's Dredd' Land Rover in that Police SWAT vehicle? The other is VAB'ish, SAM-equipped and seems the commonest of these, being added to most of the 'ranges' below.

The aforementioned Funtastic in two packagings, same vehicle range though! When I say the same vehicle 'range', the 6x6 is probably an exception proving the rule, as it is in the same packaging as the little die-casts but A) we will see further down the page they have their 'own' 6x6 truck and B) this model is a larger scale, mostly plastic and of more complicated, multi-part construction.

Originally appearing on a blister card as part of a small line of three larger scale vehicles; we looked at the M48 Patton tank and the hovercraft at the time, but again see further down for how these are all part of the same 'whole'.

Here they are claimed by Little Angel on the left with some more shots of the Poundland's on the right, Little Angel use the star option for vehicle graphics, Funtastic take a winged logo and throw a few out-of-scale accessories into the box for added play-value.

Little Angel clearly makes sports equipment or peripherals too!

Another publicity shot from Little Angel, a Jeep from The Works with different wheels (also a pound), the old Zylmex half-track now owned by Tai Sang's subsidiary; Red Box, and an Israeli Merkava tank I photographed in the shop as it is too small to get excited about, especially at two quid to everyone else's pound!

It's not that I don't have smaller tanks/vehicles (I have every size and material) but just that it will turn-up at a pound sometime, or in a mixed lot from a car boot sale or charity-shop's 20p rummage bin! And I was purchasing two other vehicles for this post as I took the photographs, but was too tight to go over the fiver!

Kids Car and Avitalk (probably both made-up-brands) are both on Alibaba claiming the same vehicles as their 'own'! The Kids Car image is particularly useful, as it extends the extent of the line or range and ties three (or four?) wheel-designs into the same set. It also claims 1:87 as the given scale, patently nonsense as the jeeps are bigger than the lorries!

The tank is an M1-looking thing; the Hummers are a different rivet-detailed design form the common one while the VAB'ish vehicle with a full turret would seem to be a copy of a 1990's Majorette model.

Both Red Box but the upper one still has Zylmex on the base-plate, although the original Hong Kong has been replaced with a heavily pronounced 'China', recent examples are now Zylmex-free!

Tucked away at the back is a random incomer, from some half-forgotten charity-shop purchase, it is another VAB-ish design but four-wheeled and is equipped with a water-cannon! In storage I have several of these with different markings and/or different plug-ins, we may have looked at them here - before I got a grip on tagging - or was it the Hummers?

A rather fuzzy shot from an old .pdf catalogue from the recently deceased Marshall's; importers into and suppliers to the West Country and wider holiday/sea-side novelty trade (prior to their demise), with several of the vehicles seen above, although unlike the Kids Car set, these mostly have the same wheels as the Poundland/Funtastic versions.

Also, although unclear, it's obvious that more civilian vehicles have been militarised with khaki/green and camouflage.

To the right is a publicity shot from XY / Xin Yu, who might actually be the source for some of these given that they are claiming to be an 'alloy toys factory', but I suspect not for several reasons, the first that they are calling themselves an 'alloy toys factory' rather than the more obvious die-caster's. Second they aren't showing much of the range/s-line/s and third they have included the mostly plastic hovercraft from that 8-9-year-old Poundland set.

Spare photo's from the folder!                          

Another probably made-up name for wholesale purposes on Alibaba; Wellye advertising four of the commoner casts in the upper shot, with a colour-change for the tank and a few 'lesser' casts in the lower shot, note two different Jeeps - not just the plastic accessories but the whole design - one a chunky-Willy's, the other more a sort of Wrangler.

The other two I bought when photographing the Merkava, imported by Kandytoys the truck having the same wheels as other vehicles seen here, the MLRS been seen as a blur in the Marshall's shot. The truck is - I think - a reasonable copy of a Chinese copy of the late/post-Cold War Russian Ural truck?

However; I'm trying not to get bogged-down in vehicle types here (hence VAB'ish!) as they are all cheap, simplified or fictional pocket-money toys, and as far as war-gamers might be concerned, are what you say they are or paint them to be!

Comparison between a High & Drive from Poundland, a Works 'Metal Car' and the Pioneer Pro-Engine (previous shot - Pioneer toys manufactory Ltd) boxes, it's pretty clear to me they all come from the same place, they even take the same Pantone red for their graphic-design's starting-point!

Now we have Sunny Kids (sounding a bit like Kids Car) claiming them as their own and adding a bus which looks like it's been stolen from a Brio set! They go with a Micro Machines style folding play set and more realistic street-furniture than the Funatastic 'big boxes'.

To the right - more spare images!

Halsall's HTI have the Merkava and the two-axle VAB'ish in better paint (still with a water-cannon!), on a nice if civilian-looking tank transporter in their Teamsterz range (we looked at the firemen and policemen at the start of RTM). I did go back to buy this but they were sold-out!

Which is a good point to place a quick link to Uncle Brian's post the other day, a brace of lovely all-plastic transporters, which although modern Chinese designs, could be painted to look like Faun's rushing your Roco-minitanks Leopard's up to the Fulda gap from Putlos!

Following the link Brian provided - in the comments - leads to mention of Maisto in the product details but a quick Google for "Maisto Tank Transporter" fails to deliver the goods, so I think it's more of a click-bait thing?

To the right - another spare image!

The Army version from 8/10 years ago with the more recent (3 or 4 years back) boxed police one. The blister-carded vehicle has generic artwork front and rear with a consumer information sticker for Funtastic on the back - however if I recall correctly, the Patton and Hovercraft didn't, I bought them a year or two earlier and from a  different Poundland, so obviously the sticker came in with tighter legislation following the big lead-in-paint scandal of . . . err . . . 2010/2011 . . . later?

Although both trucks were a pound of your Earth-money the earlier blister-packed trio all had pull-back motors fitted while the later window-box truck is a free-wheeler, this is reflected in different wheel-hubs and tyres.

I guess, if there is to be a point to the post it is that while a dozen (or more - I haven’t looked that hard) or so brands can be associated with these vehicles, which seem to be from three main sub-sets, the fact is: that they all come from the same place (or three places?). There are fourteen lines/brands/issues above (ignoring the Zee Toys/Zyl half-track).

Whether you are a chain-store, an importer (jobber), an Alibaba-platform wholesaler, a shipper/marketer from Hong Kong or Shanghai or a middle-man running around the big toy-fairs in a shiny suit with a shiny brochure, you can 'pick & mix' your line/range/set/'offer', mix or match your packaging to previous efforts or rival's orders and the often faceless, usually nameless contract-manufacturers will do what they can to help you.

You can choose markings, colours, wheels, whether or not to have window-boxes or blister cards, white or clear trays. you can buy in a few accessories for the 'value added' factor, they can be cheap and nasty (Funtastic boxes) or more realistic (Sunny Kids), you can take the decoration from an off-the-shelf menu or stipulate something better (HTI's matt camouflage) and when the profit margin's been hit you will dump the remainder as clearance and move on to something else!

Or, you may wait a few months and come at them again from a different angle, Funtastic have tried three packagings/assortments in less than ten years now, The Works; two boxings, in five years.

Ghosts in the machine...

[tags have been heavily curtailed by the imposed limits on this post - so if this is 'your thing' bookmark it before it disappears down the page!]

C is for Chopper

And not a Triumph, Harley Davidson or an Indian 'Iron Horse' anywhere to be seen! Nor a hover-boarding graffiti-hooligan - one for the 2000AD fans there! Although; that might be a duplicate title; there's not many but - they are starting to sneak-in!

We've looked at some other shots from this photo-session in the past (probably when we last used the title!), here's another one . . . a line-up of vaguely 1:76th/72nd scale two or four-seater helicopters from various Far Eastern origins, from the left:

• ·         Modern Chinese generic, basically a Jet-Ranger/OH-58 Kiowa shape in military paint, all plastic (styrene body and bed, propylene rotor-blades) and pretty-much current.

• ·         Zee/Zyll/Zylmex (and others) M.A.S.H. Bell-13/-47/'Sioux' with a die-cast body and plastic detailing in ethylene (coloured pieces/details) and styrene (canopy).

• ·         Classic late-1970's - mid-80's rack-toy inclusion; a very simple moulding of a Bell Huey Cobra gunship, grandmother of all modern attack-helicopters - hence AH-1!

• ·         Die-cast and plastic OH-6 Cayuse type recce/liaison/observation-type, like the first; from 'China' rather than Hong Kong.