A is for Ancient Wars, C is for Castle . . .

. . . except they are medievals, not ancients and there's no castle! These are the latest iteration of figures from Supreme, previously carried-by Toy Major and supplied to various others, they are currently being hawked by dozens of phantom brands and jobbing jobbers all over Amazon, evilBay and Alibaba.

I'm sure you've seen them and will instantly recognise them, and if you shop around you can get good deals, these cost me less than a tenner, delivered, I think (it was a while ago, this is another one which has been in the queue for over a year!), and to be fair to the premise of the title, there are many, many retail variations of these, from small bags such as these here, to huge castle play-sets with multiples of siege weapons and scores of figures.

The foot figures, I would describe these as Eastern European in overall look, the Livonian Crusades or the wars with the fledgling Russia, but painted-up they can slide into a late Dark Age; Norman, Anglo-Saxon or early medieval/Middle Age army, they all had a few 'spangen-helms' or Asiatic-looking pointy-pointy head-protector anointies!

Some pretty crude siege engines of the interactive hand/eye co-ordination infant learning type are included in the 'infantry' bag, nothing like other Supreme stuff, they may be bought-in, but I suspect just aiming at a different unit-price for a different price-bracket, as I've hinted, some of the all but anonymous sellers are practically giving the stuff away . . . changed priorities in China . . . in the end it's all politics!

The horses; three variations of the same basic sculpt and another rearing beast, all bearing a resemblance to other Supreme horse-production. Riders plug-in and also come as multiples of four different sculpts, but with only two colours each (more on that in the next post) the idea is to keep black-off-black, which limits the combinations slightly, especially with a small sample.

The locating hole in the horse, the ammunition basket/sled for the balista, the catapult fires a witch's broom! And the batch in the 'cavalry' pack were a much glossier plastic (two right hand figures) than the ones in the 'infantry' pack.

The back of the 'cavalry' pack's header card actually shows the older, painted, PVC version (the figures in this post are all polyethylene with - probably - polypropylene horses and siege equipment) as supplied to various end-users by Toy Major (among others) more on this in the next - and final - post in this sequence.

B is for Box-ticking Bible-bashing Belligerents

Crusaders; Reivers of the Levant! We know these are Supreme because Tiger told the hobby they were when they announced they would be carrying the full-sized range over a decade ago, through the pages of a leading hobby magazine. Whether Tiger were going through Toy Major or direct I don't know, but the impression was they were working directly with Supreme.

It makes you wonder then that ten years later someone would be talking such shite about Supreme on the PSTSM notice-board and in direct attacks on me? But if the individual had got used to making things up as he went along, and further; got used to getting away with making things up as he went along, you cease to wonder about him and wonder instead at those around him? Several of whom were older and should've been wiser!

Knights Hospitaller . . . Templar? If the crosses used by the orders are specific, these are Knights Generic (White) I fear! In the best traditions of most other plastic crusaders! The separate weapons are quite good I think, a short lance with hand guard and another with a nice three-pointed pennant. All Italeri copies and again; a couple of the figures are similar to those in smaller-scale Supreme lines/sets.

Knights Generic (Black), Teutons, or the other Hospitaller! More Italeri copies; the horse with the lozenge base (left, and the one with the aubergine-shaped* base, right in the 'white' shot) are standard horses in the Supreme inventory being used in most sizes/scales and other (non-medieval) sets. Indeed one of the ways of working them all out is the re-use of figure poses or horse sculpts!

The foot figures are all taken from Italeri Set 6009 The Knights, the mounted from Italeri Set 6019 Teutonic Knights.

*brinjal, brown-jolly, eggplant, Guinea squash, Jew's apple!

R&B is for Red and Blue

A quickie tonight, these came in about 14-months ago, but went straight into storage, they came with a huge chateau fort/castle, which we will catch later, but they just needed a better box than the one the seller sent (not his fault, Parcel Farce or Royal Fail wreaked it!), and off to storage, so I shot the figures quickly for last years RTM, which they never made, and the siege tower, for someone on another site.

Red; I don't know if these are Supreme, but I do know they were shipped by Toy Major, as the instruction sheet for the building made that clear. Certainly they have several poses in common with other Supreme sets, and are a soft substitute-PVC, however Toy Major do source from around the region and they may be someone else's. My own though it another Supreme set, purely on the accompanying 'palace'!

Blue; Similar set, sculpting style is more like those Roman/Medievals we looked at a while ago (and which I also suspect might be Supreme?). Unlike the red & blue (on black and silver) set/s from Supreme, as carried by Toy Major to Halsall/HTI and Simba, these are the same pose-set in different colours, rather than two sets of different figures, if you know what I mean . . . but the same slightly sub-scale at around 50mm - indeed as they seem to be newer, they may be replacing that older set of - now - much pirated figures.

That siege tower, one of the images is poor, but it was a rush-job to answer a question elsewhere. Different from the one we saw in the previous post, and about the same dimensions as the Atlantic Ancient's one, albeit with straighter sides and a better finish to the archery platform. The wheels are silly though - MPC astronaut for size!

Also take a moment to memorise the wall section from the castle (left hand shot), we'll be returning to it in the final post of this sequence of Supreme/Toy Major posts.

S is for Silver Knight

Except, they are blue, red and black knights, with a higher or equal likelihood of gold paint than silver paint! But Silver Knight they were dubbed and Silver Knight they remain! The largest of the many Supreme / SP-Toys medieval sets/lines, and my least favourite, for mostly unfair reasons, but we all have our prejudices!

Empirical evidence! Taken from the Silver Knight Deluxe Play Set we are going to be looking at in the bulk of this post, we have seen the odd figure in the past, indeed, in past Supreme posts, but they were overdue for their own post!

Smaller sets were available, under the parent branding, here from Amazon or Alibarba? The Greco-Roman archer being a obvious incongruity, and a common trope with Supreme's medieval lines. Possibly discontinued now, you can still find brand-new examples on both platforms and in the odd, smaller, independent toy shop . . . if you still have one!

As I recently did with this set, going for a song (£9.99 I think, 12-something maybe?), the Silver Knight Deluxe Play Set, a small fort with outlying tower, siege equipment and two handfuls of stuff; figures in the one hand and smaller accessories in the other.

I would imagine these came separately in different sized sets, or were so available from Supreme or Toy Major's catalogues for the likes of Boley, Halsall (HTI) or Simba, if they wanted something in a smaller price-bracket/packaging?

The fort is a standard toy fort with two gates and a footprint about the same 8/10-inches as the old Airfix, Atlantic or Giant forts, the other a rather neat 'folly' with crenellated-tower, steep stairs (easily defended) and lower walkway.

Full contents on the left, pre-bagging of different elements also helps the factory packers add them to other, different sized sets, whether branded-up Supreme, Toy Major or someone else.

To the right we have the weapon-rack and a rather odd cannon above, and some of the other accessories below which includes the shields (one of the reasons I don't like this set - ridiculously over-sized and clumsy shields, breaking several of the rules of heraldry to add to their crimes!), reasonable weapons, a ladder and a pair of flick-a-pults (my word) for the battlements.

The siege tower, a pretty good model for its type and not directly copying anyone else's, it has more luck with the battlements than the towers though, but one of the points of towers was to remain out of reach! Like all toy seige towers a scale compromise (also seen in most toy forts/castles) means it's perfect for HO/OO-guage 1:76/:72 or 20/25mm figures.

'Flick-a-pult' in situ, and the ladder positioned as both defenders and attackers might use it. As there is only one, the assumption is it for the defenders to man their own battlements, the attacks having their siege-tower!

Other accessories include a guillotine and archery butts, the cannon/flick-a-pult ammo is in a bright, international emergency-orange, but I guess it helps find them and prevents them disappearing up vacuum cleaners!

The weapons can all (not at once, but after the figures have been armed) be kept in the rack, a rather fanciful item, but plenty of play-value for kids, while the lances have safety-points, which leaves them better suited to jousting than war-fighting! The cannon works as weird as it looks!

The figures. They aren't as awful as I think of them, the mounted figures and one foot figure have moving arms which makes them action-figures, or semi-action figures (one or two points of articulation is no more than Galoob gave their Action Fleet 30-mils!), and they are biggish, solid lumps of PVC or its modern equivalent. And - as you can see - 'silver' is not the stand-out feature!

Got arty with the arches! If you place the small tower in front of the castle, as a gatehouse, you create a tunnel for the attackers to negotiate, with fire and sword! On the left open and closed gates, just because!

An unbranded generic on feebleBay a while ago, same knights, different fort (simple one-piece relief sculpt) and a new siege weapon, a catapult of the scorpion type, other sets have an arm-over ballista or double A-frame battering-ram. Missing a few bits including a horse, it only came with four figures and would have been quite cheap and probably well within rack-toy parameters; £5.99 or thereabouts? Although probably popping-up to 12-quid odd near Christmas!

B is for Blackrock Castle . . . Again, Again!

Except that this one is Black (wait for it) Rock! The Blackrock's all having four walls and the larger one's; a Keep, this one is open, and more of a relief-structure, or a backdrop to the mêlée. Simba did actually carry several sizes of the other Blackrocks too. I'll tag it without the gap, just to keep the tag-list tight.

The box is very poor, which has rather curtailed the shots that are usable with this one, but with everything being pulled together in the last post in the sequence, it is enough for a box-ticker.

You can see the parallels with the previous Blackrocks in the spray-decoration, and the six figures give enough play value, but there's no hind of extra 'stuff' as there is with the Army Base play-set (previous / 'older post').

The other two sides which could be brought-back to something like their original colours with a  bit of tweeking in Picasa - five foot and one mounted, three and tree silver/black, two ladders and the fort, it is what it is; a cheap play-set for corner shops and service stations at Christmas-time!

15 parts, plus stickers; in fact two of the flags are pre-stickered and part of the upper, figure display, as I've not opened the set I don't know if they've been taken off the sticker sheet, or if the sticker sheet is only laid-out for the others, a minor detail of little consequence, but I will do a box-opening on this one at some point in the future.

In checking the Supreme tag, for preparing these posts, I've found we looked at this set years ago, right back at the start of the blog, so I must have shot it before, ages ago!

Standard variations of the standard Supreme range with the 'standard' Greco-Roman archer! Enough for a little mêlée in front of the 'castle' back-drop, or to send a few guys up a ladder to take a wall, or die trying!

A is for Army Base

And so to the Toy Major Army Base play set, not their usual PVC or ethylene 50-60mm fodder with a few accessories, and - like all their inventory - bought-in from someone else, the vehicles may one day help ID the maker, if their ad' turns-up in an old trade publication?

Being a major middle-man in the trade, Toy Major will have had some input to the manufacture and contents, if only so it would fit into the line which includes a knight's set, and probably also had, at the very least; a Wild West and either dinosaur, farm or zoo iterations?

The illustrated packaging (which we will look at below) suggests there are more contents than those displayed on the card and visible through the window, but we get a vaguely Cold War set up.

The backing photograph is unusual, depicting Canadian paratroopers (mid-1980's?) debussing from a Hercules transport 'plane, I can't find the actual photograph, but others which could be from the same sequence can be found on the Internet.

The figures, they are somewhere between the solids from First we saw here back at the beginning of the Blog, and the Action Fleet style of Galoob's Battle Squads; heavier sculpts; more like the First figures, but articulated like the Galoob.

The jeep is mostly Willy's MB, but there is more than a hint of M38 about the front end, while the Hawk trailer is a surprisingly common toy/model, I can think of four or five now, more if you include SNAP's ridiculous flying machine!

An M60 medium tank, nice from the skirt, up, but the chassis and running-gear are a bit crude, I suspect a push-and-go motor is hidden in there. It's one reason I will unbox this one day, another being to get a better look at the figures.

While the box-art; full contents-photo', suggests there is a bag of extra scenics and figures hidden in the carry case . . . and a helicopter? More reasons for an unboxing! You may also notice a similarity between this case and the diminutive one - also carried by Toy Major - we looked at just over a year ago.

I is for Introduction - Rack Toy Knights

I used to prepare 'mini-seasons' and pile them up in reverse order so they'd read right down the page, but I don't do it anymore, it's a faff, and you should all have got used to the non-English way of publishing on most blogs . . . that Blog on the Belgian Congo (not updated much these days) did publish down the page, but the landing page was always the first-ever post and you then had to find page 21 or whatever and scroll down to find the new one! The vagaries of the limitations of digital publishing!

Also this is going to be five or six posts, and the last post will link back to both the immediately preceding posts of which this is the first, and previously published stuff here on Supreme (and everyone else)'s similar knights, and 'Black Rock' castles.

I bought these ages ago; like 15 or twenty years ago? They were sub-scale and quite small for full-on play sets, and they were cheap, can't remember if it was a toy show or a car-boot sale, but I suspect the later as one is hideously sun-faded and damp-effected and was clearly left in a shed-window or something similar for some time?

We will look at the Army Base one in the next post, it has its points of interest, then we will get stuck into the knights with a series of posts. Not obvious in this shot though, is the fact that . . .

. . . one is branded to Toy Major, the other to the German firm of Simba (now Simba-Dickie Group), but make no mistake these are the same line, just different treatments of the packaging. Back when Mr. E. Sell (he who makes it up as he goes along) was in full flood, and long before he started talking shite about my Blue Box Australians, he was wont to talk shite about Supreme, and indeed, Simba and others!

And while I think I've undone the worst of it over the years since, these next few posts (excepting the Army Base) will underline some of the rules around the stuff, while remaining a bit confusing and leaving a few question marks to be cleared-up at a later date!

As to the above shot; Toy Major are more commonly a middle-man, or shipper/jobber between the manufactures in Hong Kong (now China) and both Western retail chains and other end-chain wholesalers in the US, UK and Europe, so when you find stuff with their branding, it means the end-user took it without new packaging as a kind of generic, albeit in the TM branding, while Simba (also, back then, a jobbing wholesaler, now a manufacturer in their own right, but we'll get on to that in a later post), have gone with their own branding.

T is for This is Why August is Rack Toy Month

 

'Nuff said! You treacherous holiday-taking lightweights!

Still, I hope you avoided the sheeple-driven mess of ports and airports this previous fortnight by leaving your departure dates 'till now? We'll still be here when you get back, but there's a lot in the queue, so you'll have some catching-up to do! Except - of course - you've all buggered-off, so you're not even reading this; Doh!

W is for World of Dinosaurs

The first set from Phidal I bought the other day is a bit of a departure from them, but if it's a sign of things to come, more of it, farm and zoo to follow, knights and soldiers in the near future . . . I suspect not, but the hope is worth some thought!

No movie, no cartoon, no Disney license, no Marvel or DC tie-in, just some model dinosaurs. A Guaranteed seller; I don't know, nor have ever known kids who aren't fascinated (or at least a little interested) in the prehistoric behemoths, so I hope in does well and encourages them to look at original sculpts of other fauna, extinct or extant!

Again only ten, and simply marked © Phidal, from the top left to bottom right they are;

• Triceratops
• Stegosaurus
• Spinosaur? [not named in blurb]
• Velociraptor
• Pteranodon
• [not named in blurb]
• Apatosaurus
• Tyrannosaurus Rex
• Elasmosaurus
• Kronosaurus 

And they seem to be a whole new set of sculpts, not Battat's or Toy Major's, so, yeah, any farm, zoo or other figures of a non-licensed type Phidal want to produce or commission will find a market I think? Let's hope.

B is for Book-full of Bunnies!

It only seems like the other day I cleared the Phidal out of the queue, but actually it was January, with a quick touch in April, both a while ago, and while I was bemoaning the apparent dropping of them by TKMaxx (my main source), they had two sets in stock the other day and I grabbed both.

This was actually the second, I was only there to sort out a car battery nearby, and popped in to have a look, purchasing the one we'll look at next, and wondering if this was the one I already had. So I memorised the figures and went home to check the set already published here, they were different and as I'd known I'd be back on the battery, got this at the same time a couple of days later!

We have all the rabbits again, Peter (left), Benjamin Bunny (right) with Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail (I have no idea if they are in name order and there are no clues on the figures or in the text!

Benjamin is wearing his Tam-o'-shanter . . . when we were kids we had the wooden Victory puzzle of that original painting by Beatrix Potter, and because in one of the stories Mr. McGregor throws a marrow at one of the rabbits, I thought, for years; he was wearing a marrow on his head!

Only ten figures again; which seems to be the trend now (cost of living crisis etc . . . ), but if it keeps them at 5.99 (an eminently acceptable 'rack-toy' price), I'm not going to whinge too loudly!

Tom Kitten replaces the three missing figures of the odd cockerel, Brock and Pigling Bland seen in the first set, with the other four - Squirrel Nutkin, Jemima Puddleduck, Mr Tod (The Sandy Whiskered Gentleman) and Mrs. Tiggywinkle - getting a reprise. I would had that the Nutkin is quite a realistic sculpt, but he was one of the less anthropomorphised originally, and I thought the Mr. Tod character sculpt was a poor sculpt.