I is for Imperial - and Offshoots

We start this look at rack-toys with a couple of Imperial sets sent in by Brain Berke the other day, so these are current in the 'States if you have an inkling.

This wild west set is a bit of a disappointment, a two-horse team and wagon with three foot figures, two ex-Airfix Indians of sub-sub-piracy quality and a cowboy who seems to have his DNA taken in part from Comansi and part from Hing Fat's robot BraveStarr Galaxy Rangers' westerners!

The wagon however does seem to have a nice wood-grain look to panels and draw-bar which is an slight improvement on some of the smoother-modelled 1990's-2000's versions?

The Army men set for the summer of '17 (also shelfied by Brian Berke), is equally bereft of contents! We looked at the figures last year twice so I won't bother with them here, but there's five or six figures in the bag with a sand-bag sanger, two standard 'Hong Kong' flags with their little mole-hill stands, barbed-wire strand and a sub-piracy of the Tim-Mee Patton tank which accompanied the original figures. Note how you have to 'do' you own flags these days!

The Imperial tank, this one from Peter Evans and in the greener shade of one-half of the figures we looked at last year. The size-comparison shot is also taken with tanks from Peter's 'Big Bag' and is just a guide; I will do a better post on all the tanks, but probably not this year - we have looked at both the smaller ones illustrated here I think, but there are dozens and dozens of them!

Cropped-out of and cleaned-up from an eBay auction, on the left is a boxed set imported by Rex International for the dotcomgiftshop shows the Imperial take on Tim-Mee figures, sandbag emplacement and barbed-wire entanglements, but with a completely different tank and large jeep.

With a quick reminder of last year's Imperial offering on the right.

Both of which were in the big bag too! The hull is about 70% Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger, the turret about 60% Soviet T62! To be honest, with a scale size of about 1:48th, this would be better employed as a Space Marine fire-support vehicle, in a fetching Russian-blue with yellow go-faster stripes and a bunch of Games Workshop's waterslide transfers smeared over it!

You can see both it and the jeep's also in the same matted, chalky-ethylene as last year's Imperial figures and the Patton . . .

. . . unlike these two who are in a far superior polymer; a glossy HDPE or polypropylene. However, they are the same castings from the same mould as the Rex International version, with the same hull mark and the same wheel/axle sub-assemblies.

Also, as you can see, a quick turret swap gives us a 80%+ Tiger I (thanks Gisby - just the BTR50 running gear to worry-about) and something which is even more suited to Space Marines, despite bearing more than a passing resemblance to a Sheridan air-portable failed-experiment in rocket-projectiles!

Also note that again - for modern/current/near-current production - we have a stick-on label with consumer/tracking information, this is clearly a trend that's here to stay.

But the later - better material - AFV's don't come with the Imperial / Tim-Mee figures, but with a set of crappy new sculpts we will be looking at in a while (when we do - these are numbered 19) made of the new plastic to match the tanks.

Each importer/jobber (Greenbriar/DTSC in the case of both the Imperial sets above, despite Imperial being a long established name in its own right) or their agent (or shipper, shipping agent, middle-man, wholesaler, uncle Tom Cobbly or whoever) approaches the contract-manufacturer and selects from a menu of moulds, a menu of colours and a menu of materials/polymer types.

So Imperial choose the Tim-Mee stuff; maybe they originally turned-up with them, on the contract manufacturer's doorstep and said 'Eer'mate. Knock these up for us, will you?'. Rex/dotcom take the figures and some of the same accessories (possibly as off-the-shelf Imperial over-production), but chose a different tank, in the same cheap crumbly ethylene, with the unknown importer of the other figures choosing the second type AFV's, with new figures - the both in a more expensive material.

D is for Domestic Rack Toys!

Picked these up at PW's show in May, primarily because they were cheap! But also, they are new mouldings or sculpts, made in China and sold as rack-toys despite being branded as a domestic 'new toy soldier' maker, although when I say "sold as rack-toys", they also produced large US-style play-from-the-box, 100-piece+, play-sets of famous battles, and in that context these header-carded-bags can be seen as top-up sets.

The play-sets were designed for bulk-orders with the Toysaurus, and when they pulled the plug the series rather petered-out as Mr. McMasters (the M in BMC - Bill McMasters' Company) had used the low-costs of large-unit contracts to over-produce so he could sell-on the 'overspill' to smaller retail outlets; a good reason - I'd suggest - for the Toysaurus pulling the plug?

Now, over a year ago a press release from Victory Buy stated that they were hoping to get the whole BMC range back into production and keep them branded to BMC, but as a lot of the output had been re-branded to Americana for most of the last decade, with some items only being issued by Americana, it remains to be seen how that's going to work!

A feature of BMC is the variance in quality, which can be very good or extremely poor and this is as true for the artwork on cards and boxes as it is for the figures. I'm glad to say this is one of the better ones for both sculpting and artwork . . .

. . . with the terrorist-insurgents giving the Brit's a thorough taste of cold steel down the right-hand side, while Washington chivies his men on, however the artillery in the background seem remarkably unconcerned by the number of air-busts incoming and appear to be in no hurry to organise any counter-battery fire!

The contents of the bag, 'Upstarts' in blue, 'Imperialists' in red, cheese-eating surrender-parasites in white and mercenaries in black (like their panzer corps!). I would put these in the middle of the figure quality - not up to the standards of the Iwo Jima sets (copied from King & Country metal figures), but not as bad as the cartoonish characters from the Alamo sets.

The 50-count seems to ignore the horse, and the figures are mostly realistically posed with plenty of animation, the real criticism is that the legs seem to be too short on some figures, while on others the short torso makes the legs look too long!

What I've kept; one of each which is around 66% of the bag's content excluding the 'free' horse! The rest go to charity from time to time, mixed in with all the spare 'Army Men' who come in.

Some Links

BMC's old but still updated  Blog
Victory Buy's still rather empty BMC page

Old BMC Page

Americana at Hobby Bunker

C is for Creatures / Créatures and Croissante

Some other Greenbriar/DTSC imports, all with no other branding; carded bags of insects, both courtesy of Brian Berke in New York, so available in the US (Greenbriar) and Canada (DTSC) and grow-animals.

There are at least two assortments, the left hand one being the better of the two, although these are at the bottom-end of rack-toy sculpting/quality - if you know what I mean.

Nevertheless; they make excellent 'Giant Insect' monsters with all scales of toy figures and can be painted-up.

Centipede, mantis, grasshopper/locust and fly, two of each with a minimal paint-job sprayed through stencils. You can never have too many flies!

Brian also sent shelfies of these un-ascribed cards of a crocodile and lizard. Now, there's a lot of these grow-toys around, mostly small (30/40mm) figures which grow to 60/70mm size; I'm sure you've all seen them: 'grow your own nun, girlfriend, hit-man' &etc. But these are huge! Judging by the holes in the hanging-hook plate behind they are about 12-inches to start with, if they're going to grow 600% they'll fill the bath and shove the kids out onto the floor-mat!

And they don't taste like croissants!

MTC might be for 'that' MTC?

A quick fillip to make-up for the insubstantial post, this-AM. I don't know whether to thank Peter Evan's or Brain Carrick for these, but I'm sure they were in one of two similar bags from both men at Plastic Warrior's show two years ago, so thanks to both!

Last year we had a fair bit sent-in from Brian Berke concerning a US importer MTC, and I noticed the other day that these figures have a feint MTC stamped into the tool's base, not as clear as the 'China', it would appear to be an afterthought, possibly for a contract, so it'll be worth looking-out for unmarked 'generic' versions.

Copies of old Marx WWII German Infantry poses, reduced to a sub 54mm (I didn't measure them but they're on the small side; 45/50mm'ish) - I don't believe anyone in Italy had anything to do with any part of them, ever!

Equally I don't know if it's the Blogged-last-year (mostly PVC importer) MTC or another MTC entirely and indeed I think MTC are the old Multi-Toy Corp, which would fit nicely, as these are a very similar shade of plastic as the Love Boat green figures!

On the subject of this new trend for consumer information on the bases, here Uni-Regent Holdings have hot-stamped their entire address into the base of one figure, in teeny-weeny impossible to photograph so that it's readable print! They are a similar 45/50mm as well.

HTI is for Halsall Toys International

And not Hallsal as it still is in the tag-list! But in storage I have stuff by them (with the same postcode) with packaging marked Haswell, so my dyslexia is no worse than their own copywriters!

Previously issued in grey-green and sand-yellow under Halsall's Time 4 Toys/My Toys labelling (Set: MT121), these appeared about a month ago in Martins/McColl's newsagents and must be from the DGN factory!

Look; they've got the same marking as Hasbro's Star Wars Command or Hing Fat's D&D's Jaru's Hing Fat's army-men! No, they have a base marking which is as far removed from either of the other two as they were from each-other!

Except this has an added EU CE-mark element. It's clear that there is a move by consumer legislation/legislators on both sides of the pond to aid QA/QC tracking of origin by marking one item in each pack with the relevant data, we'll be looking at a similar sticker on a tank in RTM and you may have notice a similar paper-label in one of the bags behind one of the shelfies in the last few days.

Meanwhile the rest of the set has almost as many base-marks as bases, with smooth, small and large 'CHINA's and a 'MADE IN CHINA', three different fonts being employed for the three marks.

Sorting by base-mark AND pose leaves no rhyme or reason to the sets make-up, yet there are 18 of each colour, so some design has been applied, I can only guess that either the mould-tool must be a conglomeration of usable cavities from several 1980/90's sources OR someone has to do a lot of counting-out (by hand?) from tubs of each colour, while ensuring one figure per bag has been printed with the consumer information panel!

Tired umpty-somthingth-generation, sub-piracies of Airfix British Paratroops converted to cold-war helmets with a couple of the same maker's German Infantry - similarly attired.

P is for Probably Jaru

Because this morning's post was pretty thin gruel here's an equally brief box-ticker of the same subject matter. Photo's from Brian Berke, and current'ish . . . a year ago.

I'm so sure these are Jaru (or supplied by Jaru) that I've listed them on the Jaru page with no more than my intuition to go on; such assumption, what am I like? Just call me big-headed Evilentity man! They are similar to several Jaru marked items in several ways and were photographed at the same time and in the same place as several Jaru-marked items we've already looked-at.

Slightly better than this morning's set, these are harking back to 1970/80's sculpts with a harder polyethylene plastic to the fore. Shades of Britains and Elastolin in the horses while the ostrich looks to be from a composition moulding?

A is for Ark . . . Toys?

A real box-ticker this one as it's a charity-shop purchase from last year of what was originally a very low-budget, or just very low-quality - rack-toy. From the graphics I'd say 1990's but this sort of stuff is around now; as with those farm-Boley's we looked at yesterday, and others?

Some good, some bad, some (the poultry) apparently based on old composition, or more likely little, novelty ceramic mouldings? Scale is all over the place (again like the Boley domestic animals) with a rabbit threatening to give the goat a run for its money . . . after smothering the ram to death!

But - as sculpts - the dog, cow, ram and antelope (South African farm, clearly) are all OK and while the goose is a bit lumpen, the similar duck works! Likewise the smaller hen is acceptable, the larger cockerel much cruder, and it's not all blameable on the paint! But WTF is that thing bottom-left?

Is it a cat, is it a monkey, is it a monkey-cat? Is it a lemur, a meercat, a mongoose? A meergoose; a monkay! A lemong'ucataymeer . . . ?

Imported into the UK by an Ark Toys, branded to the local public lavatory (a made-up brand if ever I saw one - with the logo knocked-up in Windows 'paint') and the FARM graphic has some very odd mobius-topography! All bearing a variation of the mark (shown) in their soft'ish PVC; they are probably post 1997 - if nothing else can be discerned about them!

Beach-toys! But it's all grist to the mill . . . box ticked.

10/08/17 - Still going, still listing various farm sets, but the graphic have improved, calling themselves Toy Distributors

Z is for Zoorassic Park!

Hey - if it's good enough for the Regents' it's good enough for Small Scale World and I'm short on zeds! After last year's almost endless (-seeming) dinosaur posts, this year has been a bit thin on pre-historic nature, but the odd bit has come in (or been left over from last year) and they all got shoved in this folder, so: time's come to clear it!

Boley are a strange company, some of their stuff is very good, with a nice range of HO armour and big-rigs for model railways in the past, then there was the rather poor-quality rack-toys we looked at a while ago (last year's RTM or earlier?), and then there's this, which manages to be all kinds of awful, yet has a set of five dinosaurs which are rather good, by which I mean they hold themselves up to comparison with other rack-toy dino's!

If you can ignore the fact that the rabbit is as big as the cat OR the donkey, the farm animals are OK as sculpts, just not scale-compatible, while the four wild animals are really low-hanging fruit, the lion and tiger are reasonable sculpts, but as a group . . . three big-cats from two continents and a baby giraffe - he doesn't stand a chance!

But the dinosaurs are ok, nicely in scale, two-colour decoration with that sort of 'contour' over-spraying and reasonable poses, worth buying the bag if you see it, and collect dinosaurs? And remembering my own childhood - most kids don't care about the anomalies too much, it's just more animals for the animal tub/tin/box/drawer!

I love the "over 17 pieces" . . . well . . . that'll be 18 then?!!!! Boley currently have slightly better looking stuff in tub-buckets.

Having seen them (from Wilko?) on Moonbase, then shelfied them in The Works, I first shelfied them again as a set of four in Poundworld Plus . . .

. . . then gave in to the temptation of another Dimetrodon (however crude!) and bought the other assortment, silly 'cos they were only a pound for 8 in The Works but I needed some vape-juice and only had my card on me and I always feel guilty using a card for little things of less than two quid (one of the reasons all news stories about the imminent demise of cash are column-filling bollocks!), so topped-up with crap fourth or fifth-generation piracies of old US Dinosaurs - and a load of bar-snacks!

Fluorescent primaries are a bitch to photograph, so here are two contrasting shots which between them give you some idea of the level of 'detail' on these mouldings and the true colour of my t-shirt!

Picked these up in a charity shop the other day, there were two each of 24 for a 48-count and I think we may have looked at some before . . . blind-bags or kid's-comic giveaways? Anyway - they are very small, as well painted as the Boley's above; in the same style, but only one colour over a cream base-material with the eyes spotted-in.

Last time we looked at these 'minis' (they are mostly 40/50mm)I said I'd do a comparison of all of them, and that need's only grown with the addition of these, but I still haven't got round to it; it's a low priority, but I'll see if I can't heave them out and get it done in the autumn.

Four - later - Palaeolithic (?) mammals are also included in the mix, the small size of the set (scale is too strong a word) leaves three of these pretty perfect for Airfix Tarzan and hunters - Lost World stylie! But the mammoth is a tad too small. Does anyone know what set/maker they are or from?

They only have a very small 'CHINA' mark, no numbers (common with these modern chinasaur sets), and the sabre-toothed cat and mammoth enjoy a second colour for their teeth, the big, black Rex'alike also has a second colour with red behind his black-dot eyes, while the Dimetrodon is a full two-colours (yeay!).

A stop-press from Brian Berke came-in last week with these, they seem to be better quality versions of the Wilko erasers we looked-at a while ago, lacking the flash of the UK issue, also of different species and priced cheaper at a dollar than our pound! Brian pointed out that his 'Berserker' now has his own 'Timpo' dinosaurs, and thanks go to Brian for the Boley shots too.

D is for ♪Dee ♫Dah ♪Dee ♫Dah - Ah; That'll be the Fire Brigade . . .

. . . coming along here with their noise and flashing lights, their lardy-dahr 'appliance', clattery-ladders, hoses, water and stuff, saving lives again, what are they like!

This is in every way the twin of yesterday's post and I'll go though it in the same vaguely chronological order (they came in) as I did yesterday too, but with an 'action figure' tacked-on the end!

From the mobile, from 2011, from Halsall's HTI, four-quid seems a bit steep, but they are die-casts; not all-tacky-placky, so I guess there's a 'quality' premium (or material cost!) built-in to the pricing.

Branded to Hunson with a JPW import label, this is a set with figures I have no lose samples of, but you can see several which aren't in the line-ups below, pity as they look to be reasonable figures, the out-of scale accessories on the other hand . . . ?

From last year and re-shown to compare with the next image, as both are Jaru but this set has different contents from . . .

. . . this one, which (like yesterday's Police set) has the firefighter figures moulded in two colours; red and yellow, but - again - not the hollow based ones in the [later?] set above (this one's dated 2002) but rather; flat-based figures in 'new' (old) poses.

With a beach-toy type fire engine, like yesterday's; this too is a bargain at a fiver!

Another comparison, the Lucky Toys medic is a motor-racing repaint and I'd not clicked he was in there or I'd have striped his paint and put him with the others when I Blogged them back in April, May? I'll be doing so now!

With small samples of both the toob-toys from Funtastic and last year's Jaru I can only guess at the full pose-count, but the Top Toy (and others) were topped-up by poses in Peter's 'Big Bag' and a US-style hydrant back in May and are looking good at a round-ten?

The blue set is hard plastic from the 1970's or '80's and a major theme is rescuing people; the last of those blue firefighters has a child piggy-backed with its arms round his neck. Funtastic has a firefighter carrying an adult, the guy down the bottom has a clearly unconscious girl in his arms, the chap from HTI is carrying a swaddled infant while the bloke two across is wearing the distinctive stahlhelm helmet of the cold-war era Deutsches Feurwacht and has a small child over his shoulder - that's around 12/15% of the poses are rescuing someone.

Speaking as an ex-soldier (and knowing at least one ex-firefighter visits the Blog), I'd like to say that firefighters are like soldiers, only better! Both are willing to risk their lives, but while soldiers are trained - and occasionally called-upon - to kill and destroy, to lay-waste and blow things up, firefighters save lives and property; they prevent death and destruction - respect to them.

Finally an 'action figure', stranger to these shores and not a habit I'm encouraging - if only because of the vast number of them, mostly generics, mostly of limited articulation and therefore limited play-value, and . . . basically . . . they're dolls!

This one was imported into the 'States by JPW International via/for Hunson Trading, the 'fire-service' logo is similar but not the same as the one on the older Jaru card, clearly a bit of Chinese free 'clip-art' or shareware!

Brain photographed it with a similar Ninja, also marked JPW but via OKK Trading, so you pays your money and takes your choice with these sales-brands, or you can make it up as you go along.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the Ninja in Poundland under Funtastic! But that's for another day.

W is for ♫♪ Wooarp! Wooarp! - Isdee'Sound o'der Polieece! ♫♪ Wooarp! Wooarp! ♫♪

This is a right old Picasa-clearing, box-ticking, bag of bones today with nods of thanks to Brian Burke and Peter Evans for 'shelfies' and/or samples and a couple of images that have been on my 'phone since 2011!

Getting the aforementioned out of the way first; I can't even remember where I shot these, but it was in November 2011, as I was moving so it could have been anywhere! Looks to be HTI the - then - new branding for Halsall [Toys International] and the figures are about 45mm, we'll look at the firemen from the twin-set tomorrow.

A rather busty police-woman who's been put in 'shirt-sleeve' order to advertise her charms, while her colleague keeps his tunic on! And would you say the uniforms are actually quite Chinese, despite the international [play-value] feel of the rest of the contents?

These should have been in last year's Rack Toy Month (as should a few other things in this year's!), but they got held over. The figures are well sculpted, but a little wooden in their dynamism and have been issued under various brands; here claimed by Regent Products' sub-brand of Good Old Values.

Duplication of pose between sets (which have figure-specific blisters so it's meant) would require quite an outlay to find all the poses, but they do turn-up in other brands packaging or loose on eBay occasionally.

Brian pointed out that the mock-up of a shoulder patch on the Regent packaging is missing the NYPD (New York Police Department) of a genuine ESU original, so it can be assumed this is an unlicensed 'tribute-act' rather than any kind of official 'homage', and as such - a slightly distasteful exploitation of peoples goodwill; we're talking 9:11 and its aftermath here?

Also from last year (but 2009-marked stock) is Jaru's set Police Emergency Rescue with the police sculpts/figures in both blue and red (and with poses I still have to track down). All that; for five dollars? Bargain!

While this year Brian sent shelfies of Imperial's offering which appears to have the same boat as Jaru's, but all stickered-up, along with the same road/traffic signs but a mix of figure poses from two of the sets below.

Note that the importers are Greenbriar/DTSC, while Imperial are a US-based seller in their own right, a fourth unknown 'name' will be the shipper and the factory - a fifth!

We looked at some of these last year, some a few years ago but I think new poses have joined the first row, courtesy of Peter's 'Big Bag', while I grabbed a few others of the same vague size. The figures in the Imperial bag contain poses from both the Jaru and the Top Toy sets but in a better quality than the Top Toys.

Top Toys/Imperial (and others!) are also taking from Fishel in the pose department, while the unknowns at the bottom pay some homage with the pistol-firer almost a mirror-reverse. It should also be noted that while having new poses the Jaru bagged set above has flat-based figures, not the slightly hollowed-out ones sent to the Blog by Brian last year and shown here.

I almost forgot - Brian had sent me this ages ago, too cool for police-college; he's painted up a bunch of unknown police and the Jaru radio guy as what I believe (Brian'll correct me if I'm wrong!) represent Dan Dare space-police in 'planet-side' uniform!

Looking at the guy reaching for his 'piece the others may be additional poses from my unknown last row, but then the shooting-with-bull-horn looks like one of the poses from the larger Jaru bagged set, are they one and the same? Or are mine poorer, 2nd-generation copies of the Jaru 'originals'?

A is for Amscan

I promised we'd start Rack Toy Month with an image-heavy, blurb-light look at Amscan, and this is that post, all sent to the Blog by Brian Burke - so many thanks to him - and all current or recent (last year's-) Amscan production/US issues which should still be track-down-able.

Pencil rubbers/erasers, some of which appear to have had a pncil-sharpener stuffed in their open mouths, or somewhere even more uncomfortable!

Stretchy-aliens (and catapult'able!) and dinosaur skeletons; Dinosaur skeletons have been a common trope for a while now, and there's probably enough out there for a small sub-collection should anyone feel so inclined!

Small vehicles with enough plastic to earn their right to feature here! Three pick-up trucks, three dog-catcher vans and two puddle-jumpers, it's a cheap way of providing transport for war-games armies?

And a bulk set of animals, there seem to be 3x12, and while they are not in-scale with each-other, they are a bargain if you've got kids and a party happening at the same time, compared to some of the 'party favours' you see over here, these are good!

'Cheepie' die-cast sports cars, and all-plastic F1 types, I love the latter, it's a pity there are six identical cars though, if they were all different colours they'd be more use, but anything with an HO figure in the cockpit scores brownie-points with me!

Whistles, qualifying for the Blog under the novelty banner, you can see from the backgrounds that there are bags of one type in older packaging and mixed bags in last-years graphics and it seems State News is the place to look for all these - if you're over the pond - as I know Brian shot them together in a session.

Both sides of some wacky, googlie-eyed, alien-head, key-rings - what else can one say about them, that's all the bases covered!

Shifting table-tennis/ping-pong balls out of season! Or should that be wiff-waff now?