C is for Captain Gallant (Comic)

These images tie in with the Captain Gallant figures I posted on the Small Scale World blog the other day [12/10/2012 - now the same blog, if scrolling - should be a post or two below this, otherwise use tags Marx or FFL to find it below this post], anybody who wants one should try pts52 on eBay.

The cover, there is no issue number so I'm guessing it was published purely to increase interest in the forthcoming TV serial. From the fact that the only ad. is the Heinz ad. on the back page, and that Heinz are mentioned by a character, one suspects that Heinz Foods had something to do with the production of this issue - perhaps as a mail-away offer? - and were the main advertiser during the commercial breaks on US T.V.?

It's copyright'ed to 'Frantel' NY,NY and was published by U.S. Pictorial inc. (whoever they were? There is a Frantel Communications in Rochester NY, and a Pictorial Inc. in Indianapolis)

There were five separate stories, a feature on the grave of Georges Bohnert and the Heinz stuff, plus a Junior Legionnaires membership card on the back cover.

Buster Crabbe was the lead; 'Captain Gallant', while 'Cuffy' the horrid little boy was played by err...a horrid little boy! And one of the characters seems to have had a questionable relationship with a camel....it's very lonely in the desert!

News, views etc...Plastic Warrior 137 (April 2010)

New Plastic Warrior magazine is now out, those who haven't subscribed are missing;

* Australian Made Toy Soldiers - Part 3, Les Collier.
* Cherilea Swoppet Indians - Part 2, Matt Thair.
* Andy Patridge's paean for the lost charm of 'Toy' soldiers.
* Book Review on Barry Ford's Better Dioramas.
* Carriers by TAT.
* Steve Weston's review of the 2009 toy soldier year.
* Conversions by Arthur Belshaw.
* More on the Kleeware Fort I published a while ago.
* A poser on Marx Swansea by Eric Johns and other 'What the !&*$ ?'s.
* Kilty's/Bonnie Bilt by Brad DeSantis

Not to mention two cover images, readers letters, small ad's and more...

L is for La Legion Etranger by Marx, Marksmen, Rado-Ri Toys.

One of the problems of having over a million figures in 12,000 click-shut bags, and a thousand plus boxes, packs and larger crates is that from time-to-time I confuse myself! Case in point, the other day answering a question over at the Airfix Collecting Forum on the following figures, the answer I gave was - while not inaccurate - not as comprehensive as it could have been, in that; I gave the impression that there was only one set of Foreign Legion, and that the Arabs had been given a similar release pattern to the FFL, the truth is that there are two mouldings of FFL, and the Arabs were only carried by one source...certainly in the UK, at least!

So - I threw the whole lot on the kitchen floor last night and sorted them into what I hope is a definitive history...for now at least, if you know different, comment!

These are Arabs/Bedouin, based on the Marx Arabs, issued in the US in large scale with the Captain Gallant play-set. In small scale they were sold in factory painted styrene as Indians/Afghans, for the Marx Miniature Masterpiece play-set; Charge of the Bengal Lancers.

Now, this set poses a sort of mystery, The first three and the sixth poses were not issued in the large scale sets and a quick study of them reveals that the four 'unique' poses, are based on existing figures. 'Man waving rifle over his head' is based on the (inset) advancing pose, The first figure is based on the standing firing pose, with the 'waving dagger' mans upper torso and he also provides the body for the other two figures; 'Carrying rifle' and waving dagger' and the 'Advancing with rifle across waist'.

These were supplied in the two colours shown to Marksmen by Ri-Toys (Rado Industries) a company with close links to Blue Box, or at least Blue Box moulds!

To fight them they got copies of the Captain Gallant TV show tie-in French Foreign Legion; the Grass-green and Navy-blue figures above. The paler figures are the later pocket-money carded/bagged rack-toys, and are a smaller size. They also didn't come with Arabs to fight, but rather the good old piracy's of Airfix (pictured below). Again these figures were available originally in Marx Miniature Masterpiece play-sets and again we seem to have a unique figure in the small scale; the sixth guy in the row with his rifle accross his waist. This time however we loose a large scale figure, the 'Lying firing' pose.

Captain Gallant is the forth figure from the left (and provides the bulk of the extra pose) and 'Cuffy' is the little boy/cadet. They are a right old mix of summer and greatcoat uniforms with Gallant and his doppelganger wearing a tie, but all have that 'Toy' charm.

[I have posted the Captain Gallant Comic on my other blog; Everything Collectable ] 12/10/2012 - Now integrated with this blog and appearing a post or two above this one in a 'Marx' search or immediately above this one in an 'FFL' search.


Modern issues of the FFL and Airfix copies, these should still be findable, as they were all bought within the last 10 years. Note they are not marked Ri-Toys, leaving one to suspect they are from another source, a feeling which is reinforced by their having a smaller size, however see below for my theory on this.

Loose-ends and packaging. Close up's of the combat infantry, size comparison with Airfix Bedouin, and my kitchen floor mid. photo-shoot! There were several boxes on the table behind me as well, yet I still managed to forget the green FFL officer in the main line up and the white Arab who is inset in the first photo! Also a shot to show how the blank base of the marksmen supplied figures was replaced with a 'CHINA' moniker for the HK issued versions.

All sets were approximately 30 figures, however Michael Ellis of Marksmen tells how these 'HO' figures came loose in huge boxes of thousands (if not; tens of thousands?) of figures and he had to sort them into the little cellophane bags he used with his header-cards. Obviously there is a big difference between an obsessive collector like me sorting loose Airfix into complete sets and a commercial operator getting stock together, so he tended to count loosely up to thirty of the same colour/type and bag them, consequently you don't always get every pose in every bag, or lots of one pose and one each of others. On the up-side however, you usually get more than 30 figures, Bargain!

These are earlier 1970's or early '80's sets by Ri-Toys, and you will notice that the vehicles and accessories are the same as those in the generic's marked Ackerman (UK) and Wentoys (Germany) above. I know there are lots of variations of the copies, but these are the same, so I'm confident they are Rado. I guess, they scaled them down to fit in with the existing Airfix copies, thinking that carded sets of Arabs and FFL wouldn't sell well?

The lack of a Ri-Toys logo on the modern packaging reflects the changes in the toy business since the '70's. Salesmen used to hawk these round the old independent newsagents and corner shops, now import companies do the selling over here and they want their logo/sticker on the packaging. Ackerman is a common rack-toy name and I have all sorts of cards/bags by them with figures from a half-a-dozen sources.

As a footnote, the mounted poses (two Arab and one FFL) were never issued to/by Marksmen/Rado but were in some of the old Miniature Masterpiece sets.

There are vagaries in the issuing of the large scale between the US and the UK, but anyone wanting to know them should get Plastic Warrior (link; top right) Volume's 130 and 132, where Debbie Stevens has covered them in depth.

O is for Orange Tip

Finally got some shots of the Orange Tipped butterfly, I've seen quite a few this spring, but this was the only one who'd sit still long enough to let me get a shot off.

He moved as I clicked the shutter, and I thought I'd missed him, he did let me get quite a few closed shots, and to be honest, after all the trouble I've had getting the wing uppers, I think he's more beautiful closed, with his green and white camouflage.

And - Yes, I think that's his tongue in the lower picture!

H is for Hummer, Humvee, HMMWV, HumBug

The Hummer, which for some reason turned into Humvee (a slightly longer abbreviation?!) was based on the Lamborghini Cheeta, which Tamiya made a motorized kit of many years ago.

It has now been in use for 20+ years, and has had time to become a common plaything, with various accurate and not so accurate versions available. I posted the Supreme/SP Toys examples here a while ago, so lets look at some of the others...

Top to bottom, left to right;

Simply marked 'China' this hard topped troop carrier version is covered in markings, and looks like the sort of thing you'd find in a military parade somewhere in the Far-East. Next we have the Johnny Lightning/Playing Mantis open pick-up 'GS' version and was issued with a nice GMC pick-up in the same colour scheme. Another 'China' model finishes this row, an M966 TOW launcher.

These three are all by the same Chinese company, are much smaller than the others at around 1:87/1:90 scale, they are also quite crude models.

The bottom row starts with another Chinese model, a soft-topped GS, again covered in markings, most imaginary! Finally the two variations of the Hornby Railways Hummer as issued in the Battle Zone play-set. They are the only all-plastic ones in this line-up. [They are to be re-issued this year (2010) in the same play-set but with a new name; 'CODENAME STRIKEFORCE']

Finally - a few versions of the modern - made in HK/China - Matchbox Hummers, one civilianized as an H1 Hummer (not called a Humvee? even though Mattel have called it so on the box!), although using the same moulding as the military versions, along with three paint variants of the M966 TOW vehicle. Two with quite good US desert camouflage, and one in a sort of Giraffe pattern! These all came from Tesco over a couple of years for about 99p each.

The figure used for scale, is a new Chinese piracy of recent Revell production, being a 30mm copy of a 23mm American soldier.

S is for Sobres - Montaplex Wild West Sets

As I was looking at pocket-money Wild West stuff the other night I thought it'd be a good time to cover these; Spanish Sobres, sold - like Hong Kong carded stuff - from corner shops, tobacconists and the little street kiosks you still get in the wider boulevards of some European city's.

The main producer and certainly the first to get wider coverage outside Spain, with the fledgling internet (HaT in particular covered these in the early days of their website) and Plastic Warrior (have you subscribed yet?) was Montaplex. Among the many sets they produced were a bunch of Wild West Forts, one being this Fort Apache, clearly it's loosely based on the eponymous Airfix Fort, with the raised quarters in the top left-hand corner as you view the gates, the lookout tower has been omitted,but...see below!

One figure is missing from the figure sprue having been mis-moulded, well, not moulded at all, but his scalp is just about present on the end of the branch!

Two slightly different designs of Fort Cheyen (Spanish for Cheyenne), and Lo!..the tower from the Airfix Fort Apache!, otherwise these are basically copies of the Hong Kong Fort Cheyenne's, the raging battle on the packet artwork leads to great disappointment when you open it to find two small and rather wooden wagons, unless you have a soft spot for small wagons, like me!

In the upper shot, we are looking at - from left to right - a Hobby-plast wagon, the two Montaplex wagons from the above set, and a wagon from a 1990's release by BuM ('Boom' in English apparently, although the fact their racing car system is called BuM-Slot, leads one to suspect an British hand at the tiller somewhere?), it's obvious that all three in the front row are identical, so the suspicion's are that Hobby-plast and Montaplex were either the same company, or buying-in stock from an independent source, and that further; BuM started life clearing the old stock from these two, before getting into less ethical stuff...frowns! I see Pirates!

In the lower picture a Montaplex fire engine - loosely based on the old Matchbox design but with astronauts as crew (One crew member is missing). [The proper place for the astronaut; Moonbase ]

H is for Hobby-plast - Wild West

More Sobres, this time from Hobby-plast, they have a lot of items in common with Montaplex, but also seem to have some unique items. The addresses on the backs of the packets (which are generally - with these two companies - thin, A5, printed envelopes, sealed until bought) would suggest the same company parentage. However there may have been different sorces, or marketing stratagies for the two arms?

This set contains the common stage coach in HO'ish scale, but accompanies that with 54mm pirates of Airfix cowboys, these are reasonable as copies go, certainly as good as Hong Kong ever gets!

Three more sets from Hobby-plast, the right hand set in the upper picture comes with twice the contents as laid out, while the left hand set gets one of the same sprues and a wagon. These figures are copies of the Airfix Ho/00 High Chaparral/Cowboys and Indians

The bottom set has to be one of the most disappointing ever, once you open it! No bucking bronco's, no clowns in barrels, no bulls...just the worst copies of 54mm Cowboys and Indians I've ever seen, they make 99% of all Hong Kong production look 'well detailed', although the horses are quite good in comparison with most HK hollow horses.

A is for Alamo, Fort Alamo

And how nice to find a model fort from the 1960's/70's that's not called Apache or Cheyenne, pity it looks nothing like THE Alamo! Made by Muri, and bought in Naples, Italy in the Summer of '69 this is a simple clip-together hard styrene fort with soft plastic/ethylene flats of the sort the Spanish were putting in their 'sobres' at around the same time.

Various views of the fort, because this is a border-line 'lazy post' (late at night, nearest thing to hand I haven't already covered - but more images than a standard lazy post!), I had trouble with the photo's so had to do a collage, as all the whole-fort views were orange again.

It's these new 'green' bulbs, the light is very odd and hard to photograph under, it also creates colour variants among my Airfix figures which disappear in the morning! Try it? Get a bunch of the old 54mm Marines, from more than one source, and watch some of them go bright green under these new bulbs?!

The various soft plastic components and the card, this was a header-bagged rack-toy, the flag is a simple doubled up piece of insulation tape with that sticky white goo one remembers from printed Christmas parcel tape of the period! The number could be twentieth in a series, or the first of a range that only ran to one? anyone know if other Muri stuff exists?

Continuing tonight's themes - Flats, Wild West and untypical production for the nation concerned comes this little bag from Hong Kong, the Plastic Set No. 101 contains hard plastic flats (uncommon for HK) with splashes of gold and silver paint (more like it!), and hasn't been decanted in case I don't find another.

I used to decant/un-sprue/remove packaging, but now I only do so if I have a second one to keep mint, or if it's post the year 2000 in which case it's never going to be 'rare' in the old sense of the word.

There are some purely coincidental similarity's between the Indian poses in the two sets, another reason I did them together and made a lazy-post into a proper post! [Just reviewing my past articles on flats and realised that not only is there a passing resemblance between the HK Indian poses and several of the Gibbs Indians, but at least one is a direct copy!]

D is for Dragon, on St George's Day

Or, it would have been St George's Day if Picasa hadn't mucked me about until after midnight!

Mc is for McSomebody-or-other?!

Looking for help with these. Marked LF Mc 1973 or 1974, for years I thought they were McEwan, only because the 'Mc' couldn't easily be applied to anyone else and I knew he'd done Sci-Fi figures in his Starguard series. Anyway the other day I thought I'd sort the question out once and for all and had a quick look on Google, well the first thing was the names don't match, the figures are marked LF and McEwan is J for John.

Left to right; Minifigs Mystical Earth; ME100 Cetaur, ME101 Pan;
Science Fiction; SF3 Aquila Death Angel, SF 4 Vertos Robotic, SF8 Aquila Starman.

So next thing was to contact Mr. McEwan and see if he knew anything about a similar range from the same period by a McSomebodyelse....He kindly replied that....he didn't! So next stop; Lost Minis Wiki where it was going to take a lifetime to find them, likewise The Miniatures Page (TMP) was going to take three-and-a-half lifetimes!

In the meantime I had gone through the other 'Unknown Metal' boxes, thinking I had some similar ACW, I didn't! But I did have some Ancients, Medievals and Colonial Zulu's, two of which had a better mark...

Clockwise from top left; Egyptian foot soldiers, Roman archers, Lombard style crossbowman, mounted Samurai archer and Zulu's.

The horse and the Roman in green tunic are both marked 'Leonard Frances McQuirk', so who was he? and for whom did he sculpt? The complete lack of info. leads one to assume they were released by a better known 'name'? There is a McQuirk who's working/worked for the dreaded Games Workshop, but this is not their style, however he might have started out making well-proportioned figures before taking the path of the 'Dark Side'. Some of these also have earlier dates, 1971 and 1972.

Most of the figures are between 22 and 23 millimeters, however the two taller SF figures are closer to 25mm.

Any help greatly appreciated, and if we can get a definitive I.D. on these I'll get them uploaded to the lost figures Wiki in order that they don't get lost again. One of the problems with both 'Lost' and 'TMP' is that they are listed by maker, someone with some time on their hands needs to start something for metals like PSR, that can be searched thematically as well as alphabetically? A mammoth task I'm not volunteering for!

PS - Can anyone suggest a source for the metallic pink/mauve used on the Sci-Fi 'Witch-doctor'? It's not Humbrol or GW, it's a gloss, and I suspect it's a colour-matched Railway livery by Gloy, Joy or Precision or some similar brand?

Xaltotun of Python from Kingdoms of Antiquity has identified the Egyptian as Minifigs 'S' range, but thinks they may have been marked by the owner?

And I've now found the SF stuff on Lost Minis as Minifigs, see designations above.

Y is for You Can't Play Without Them

P is for Parachute and Special Force Insignia

What to send to those idiots in Berkina Faso...

B is for Budgie Toys

Budgie were a maker of die-cast toy cars and the like in the 1950's and 60's, but they also produced a 'Wagon Train' boxed play-set, with three of these wagons and some outriders fixed into a large box.

Top are the three poses of wagon puller, they can have a receiving-hole for the draw-bar drilled into either flank, and come in the three browns shown and white. Bottom left are the outriders, one figure pose, two horses. Bottom right shows a complete wagon with rider. I think there was a female pose as well, sitting for the wagon, but don't have one.

These are beginning to suffer greatly from metal fatigue and usually have cracks in the body or tilt/cover/canopy, broken barrels, wheels etc and no locating-studs on the tilt, which can be found wedged in the wagon body. The figures were clearly designed by the same sculptor who did the Airfix Cowboys, Indians and other early sets (some argument whether it was Stadden or Nibblet, I veer toward Stadden), or someone copying his style closely, also the shades of brown are similar to Airfix and the Blue of the figures is the same blue Airfix was using around the same time for its soft-plastic (dime-store copy) motorcycle dispatch rider/motor mechanic, so maybe they supplied the plastic elements to Budgie...pure conjecture.

Went for a walk....

Well given the glorious spring weather and the beautifully quiet skies today (thank you 'Mount Unpronounceable'), I went for a quick walk at lunchtime, camera in hand.

Loved this twisted log, looks like it's fossilized already!

Another of my favorite Polyanthus, this is a hybrid gold-laced one which had been planted outside a back gate to the woods.

Closer to home, our Magnolia is bursting into life now.