EMCE is for Even More Colourful Entities

A slightly more full post than the previous two box-tickers on EMCE, in part thanks to a purchase from Gareth a while back, as I was wont to open mine, but they give us a decent idea on the various packaging types and there was some internet stuff to complete the picture.

Fallout, another video game and not easy to collect if - like me - you are coming to it after a few years, due to different formats on either side of the pond, issued at different times it seems (it's not clear!), the above are - however - best described as the commoner poses, although I suspect overall there aren't any especially rare ones, except the flying thing (below) maybe?

I won't bore you will background on the game (there's a good Wikipedia page), but it's nice to see Steve Jackson were in there at the start, I've had their card figures in my collection for the longest time. Suffice to say, it's a post apocalyptic game with missions and combat.

 

The blue figures above are the human 'vault dwellers' (bunker survivors) and there are four other factions in the whole line/range/game universe. the khaki figures are Mutants (apparently one is friendly) and the grey ones seem to be robots.

 

This is the way to get everything, and I will open them in the future, for more detailed posts when I have the time to do the research and gather all the little details, but note the Humans are grey plastic in these sets. Each of the sets also have a larger 100mm'ish 'display' figure, and some 'equipment' pieces, not all to scale?

 

There are also bagged sets, and this was where I got confused when purchasing them a year or so ago, as some seem to be 3-of-3, some seem to be 4-of-4 (couldn't find all of them), some are 12-figures, some 24, they don't seem to equate to the four boxed sets (which do seem to be definitive, as far as poses/pose-count goes), and the 'You Will Emerge' bagged set with cartoon artwork header-card is a stand-alone 'army builder' with the commoner figures seen through this post?

 

There is also a set of six yellow versions, first issued as Convention Exclusive blind-bag giveaways.

The humans from Vault 13; a male and a female, they are smaller than most of the other figurines in the set, but don't look out of place next to them due to the monumentalism of the mutants and mechanical nature of the mech's and because they share CAD-CAM design/sculpting.

 

The mutants; I think the 'friendly one' (I can't now find the reference, but I think it was on a sci-fi art group on Faceplant, so it may not be 'canon'?) is the one with both hands up?

 

I love the tripod here, shades of H G Wells' War of the Worlds, and there was a definite retro' aspect to the original 1990's gestation of the game, with stuff taken from American Cold War propaganda leaflets and posters.

 

I believe this is called a Jersey Devil and is a sort of flying-fox-vampire-manbat-perterrordactill! there wasn't one in the lot from Gareth and I didn't want to open my 'emerge' bag for a single figure, so shot it through the plastic! It does seem to be unique to this bag?

 

The convention giveaways were probably considered rare at one point, but Toynk are offering them on their website and on their eBay store, so if you need them (we none of us NEED any of this stuff!) they are about. They seem to be limited to the cartoony figures which I assume are another faction, related to that retro' poster stuff?

 

A few links;

As always, Sean was ahead of the game with these

This is a rather repetitive and too-gushy 'review'?

Toynk's Nanoforce Page (re previous EMCE post; Toynk are global and US based!)

That Wikipedia Fallout Page

 

Having sped-read the links as I found them, to correct the above, I think it goes like this . . . 4-of-4 boxed sets with thirteen items, 12 game 'pieces'/figures and one larger bonus sculpt, 3-of-3 bagged sets, two with a 12-count and one with 24, no bonus figures, all brand-marked Fallout 76, one 'army-builder' You Will Emerge bagged set with the unique Jersey Devil and 23 other [common] figures, and the six blind-bag Vault-Tec figures in yellow. I must have imagined the 4-of-4 bags, or someone listed one wrong on Amazon?

T is for Two - Papo Minis

A quick charity shop score last November was these two 'suitcase' sets from Papo, we've actually seen one before, also a suitcase set, but I suspected it was incomplete at the time, this one wasn't!

 

Both in their cases, we saw the medieval one last time, so I haven't shot it this time, but the 'pink and purple' set is new to the Blog . . . I would add that both got weighed-in with a load of scarp metal months ago! The trays going in the recycling bin.

 

A nice enough set for what it is, but I'm guessing these 'for Christmas' or 'presentation' sets are a lot more expensive than the standard tub/toobs of identical contents! Unicorn, wizard, King & Queen, Prince & Princess; all you need for a mini adventure!

The medieval set, previously it was loose contents in the window suitcase, this time we got the blow-moulded tray, so I could see it was all here. It turned-out what I was missing the last time was two shields! That's them, box ticked, in the stash!

EMCE is for Even More Condensed Exposition

Another box ticker for EMCE Toys (Forth Castle), and, this time, their take of the Microsoft game Gears of War, specifically Gears 5, which Wikipedia (if you're as un-gamey as me) states; " . . . is the fifth main installment of the Gears of War series and the sequel to Gears of War 4. Gears 5 follows the story of Kait Diaz, who is on a journey to find out the origin of the Locust Horde, the main antagonistic faction of the Gears of War series"

 

EMCE only seem to have briefly dipped their toe in this one, with a six figure set, split between three red ('Locusts'?) and three blue figures (character figures?), although the whole set can be found in a glow-in-the-dark version too.

 

As far as I know, it was the first set of figures tied to the game, and no other figures have been issued for subsequent game editions (Gears Tactics), but as generic Sci-Fi troops; very useful. I'm guessing the lady on the header cards is Kait Diaz?

As with most of the EMCE output we've seen so far here at Small Scale World, there are a number of brands and brandmarks associated with this set;

• Forth Castle Micromedia are the parent of-
• EMCE Toys, the trading/design brand.
• Nanoforce is the overarching brand mark for the small-scale figure lines.
  
• The Coalition are the game designers.
• X-Box Game Studios are the platform carrier.
• Microsoft Corp., is the platform owner.
• Gears of War, Gears 5 & the 'crimson omen' logo (skull in a toothed gear-wheel) are brand marks/trademarks.
• Toynk were/are the UK importer (using the Amazon platform), I think; they may be a more global distributor?
  

H is for How They Come In - Playing Catchup!

Some of these go back to January, when I wasn't shooting as detailed a set as other times, and all are the regular 'red cross' parcels from Peter Evans, who rarely tells me he's sending a parcel until it's arrived and more than one of these lifted my spirits on a mare-of-a-day, which I have mentioned elsewhere, when some of these got a quick show, but now, again, and in vaguely chronological order;

I think this actually arrived in time for Christmas, but that may be the next shot, this was photographed on the 20th Jan, but the next was shot on the 24th, and one had been hanging-around unrecorded for a while?

The carded sets from Toys As Fun (a phantom brand sticker!) include large wild animals, medium-sized dinosaurs and more normal-sized farm, all good box ticker stuff. The French bazaar bagged set will be looked at in better detail one day, and had Lido/Tim Mee clones I think . . . I just tried working it out from the photo, but the plastic is too foggy, and they almost look like MPC clones, which I'm pretty sure they weren't? Doh!

There was nice stuff in the two little bags, but they didn't get shot as I was busy trying to get this place finalised, yet here I am six months later with at least three days painting ahead of me and a lawn to mow for hopefully the last time?

The card/paper bridges (middle, right) are odd, I suspect some Japanese thing, but they could be from a board game, with the three road/trackway colours? AFV's and grist to the mill 'Army Men' make up the lot.

The other December/Jan' lot was a smaller jiffy, but full of nice things! Dr. Who, Kinder, novelty frogs, a nice tree, a pirate's moll, Lido Knight copies, and other HK Britains Swoppet clone in need of a sword! There were also a few 1:76th/72nd bits and some interesting farm animals. The half-hidden cowboy is Safari.

 

In February this lot turned-up with a bunch of New Ray clones in two colours, a Henbrandt aliens in bag, a mini dinosaur with a generic label which may tie-in with one of the many bags of such miniatures, some Halloween stuff, a lovely beefeater in resin, a 'funnimal' donkey, Kinder space, rack-toy farmer with lamb . . . all sorts!

 

April brought another parcel with some very useful stuff, and it was one shot but I cut it in two to get the thing more manageable! I'm not sure but I think I have the cab-unit for the US trailer, albeit with another trailer configuration, you know I love the one-horse wagons and there's a nice mix of Wild West in the centre.

The paint-your-own deform Halloween thing is fun, you can never have too many rubber guardsmen or parts of rubber guardsmen, and both scenics are useful! While a bag of Marx knights may be a bit chewed, but they are hard, glueable styrene, and I intend to tackle a whole tub of damaged Miniature Masterpieces one day with a view to enhancement/conversion!

The Mattel 'Heroes in Action' chap (top left, early 1970's?) is really an action figure, and I used to not rate them, but enough have come-in over the last few years for me to now have a tub-full, and therefore to be contemplating the sorting of a 'sample' at some pint in the near future!

 

There is a post in the long queue on Tamiya/Aoshima Samurai and others (bag, top left), but I haven't shot everything in the stash for the post, so it'll be a while yet, this bag's are nicely done, they just need a bit of renovation with liquid glue.

 

Various bags of animals, civilians, micro-vehicles and HK knock-offs with the highlight probably being the Swoppet Wild West, who seem to be a clean sample from one source and one of the better (earlier?) sources. Two nice Herald ACW clones and likewise a pair of comic flat Romans.

 

Now, I bought a bag off Peter at the PW show, the contents of which were in the 13 show-reports we saw recently, yet two weeks later these arrived! And I think he brought a bag to the London show, which I haven't shot yet!

Highlights here include the Corgi duo, who are in the less common pale brown, the two Africans are very useful, while with the Airfix copy Wild West; lots of people had a stab at them, mid-1980's saw Ri-Toys, Hing Fat, Kwong Wah, Wing Wah, Wing Luen and others, carry various qualities of clone, but these, as well as unusual colours are quite well-copied copies!

Many, many thanks to Peter for all these, each parcel has something new, something interesting, something unusual, and they all add to the whole picture.

I've still to photograph the lots from Jon and Brian, another lot from Peter and the London show stuff, which I'm hoping to do in the next week or two, once I move into the new flat I intend to spend three days shut-up there, sorting stuff (even if there are still a few bits to do here at the house), in order to try and convince the cat we've both been imprisoned by a third party! I've taken him over there a few times, and he's not keen . . .

EMCE is for Every Mutha's Clearly Exanimate!

I had an interesting chat (more of which later) with the current owner (also originator) of EMCE Toys, back in the Autumn, just before the old Laptop died, and mentioned to him that I had not managed to find the early set 'Zombies vs Zombie Hunters', only to find one a few weeks later! So with the weather changing plans drastically in the last few minutes (the lawn needs it), here's a quickie on that set, by way of a box-ticker.

You can't miss the zombies! I believe these predate the WWII zombies, which were the first of the EMCE products we saw here at Small Scale World, and hopefully we will soon have seen all their output, or mentioned it tangentially.

Like everything, they've been off to storage for a while now, but if my memory serves me well, the count worked out at three-each of five hunters and four each of five zombie sculpts; you need a crowd murmuring their way up the street! That's it, box ticker, EMCE zombies and hunters!

B is for Best Show on Earth! 13. Everthing Else!

The last of the PW show posts, and it's an eclectic mix! Then there's Sandown Park, a parcel from Brian Berke, two, no three from Jon Attwood, several from Peter Evans, the London show and, and, and . . . !

Starting with those figures which didn't get shot in the correct thematic posts! From the left a small-scale Hong Kong farmer copied from Britains, a Matchbox (NOT HG Toys!) Adventure 2000 space figure, Chromoplasto Mountie from Italy and a Hong Kong knight in need of a sword!

 

Then we have an Answer Mage/Wizard/Vizier/Magician (the alternative to 'Answer Robots' - was there also a clown?), missing his wire answer-wand, and an African warrior who may be Spanish-made, and may be a native American Indian? In front is another smallish Hong Kong milkmaid copy.

 

Plants which accrued as everything was sorted out, the interesting one here is the Merit copy stacking fir, the broken Lego fir, though, is in red plastic under the paint, they were usually green.

 

One of the favourite pieces of the whole show, buried in Trevor's bag was the teeny-tiny two-bar fence, I may have another somewhere, in a different colour I think, but it's literally an N-gauge compatible piece!

 

The stook of corn from Charbens is also useful as there are a series of posts in the medium queue (the long queue, but pretty-much ready!) on stooks, bales and ricks/stacks, but this wasn't in them, so that's a box ticked!

 

The well is useful, without checking the old posts on the subject, I think this is the post-Blue Box copy so NMP or Holly? But it has its bucket, which is the important thing! The other three are additions to bits boxes, but the windmill is in a new colour-way I think?

 

The rest! It really is all grist to the mill and there's a home for all of it somewhere! The Dracula novelty teeth will go with the other body-part novelties we saw a few Christmases back (a bag which has already been added to several times), I intend, once everything is reunified and sorted (a three-month job; I've done it before), to re-run that 'season' in the same order, but looking at the expanded samples of everthing we saw then!

 

It was a fantastic show, there wasn't enough time to buy for catching-up with old faces, and there wasn't time to chat properly for buying! Thanks to all for everything last May; Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith, Peter Evans, Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin and Adrian Little, with special thanks to Brian, Peter and Paul Morehead for organising it all again . . . and it's only 10-and-a-half months till the next one!

L is for St. Labre Indian Catholic High School

Wikipedia suggests not all is rosy at this establishment, and I could dig deep and make a few more 'eemies' with my usual revisions of history toward a more accurate truth! But this is really only a quick box-ticker, while the eventual A-Z entry should have a better historical sketch.

We've seen some of this issuer's products before, quite recently with the canoe mini-season (thanks Brian) and ages ago with the semi-flat, relief tipi/tee-pee & children, as well as one of these totems, way back at the start of the blog, but here's a few more of the figural/toy figure output - an output which seems to have been quite prolific, due to the attachment of a Cheyenne Indian Museum & Gift Shop to the school, although there was clearly also a mail-away or direct-sales thing as well.

I've had the one on the left for years, and I have no idea how many there are now! Two lines, with the thinner more realistic ones being simple Totem poles, the other two seem more figural (legs and feet) and I wonder if they represent another type of 'totem', maybe dance costumes like the pueblo Indian clay heads, or stylised 'Welcome Poles'?

 

I could Google it for hours, but life's too short!

One of mine is missing its top-cap piece, so it was but a second's work to confirm you could stack these to infinity! I have seen one with black or green I think but the same design with the same three slip-in/slip-over, silhouette elements - 'Thunderbird', owl and wolf or bear? Beaver?.

I'm pretty sure I saw a third design of these too, on eBay at some point, so it looks like both lines ran to at least three variants, possibly more, and the construction of these is slightly more complicated than the straight poles, with no interchangeability. They also look like 3D forms of the designs you find on some of the rugs and blankets woven by Native Americans?

 

Additional to the Native American we saw with the canoes is the lady with papoose, this just plugs in to her back with two studs, and with the boy/chief makes three in the pile now. The figures are hollow polystyrene mouldings, the straight poles are polyethylene, while the 'totems' are a denser, possibly nylon polymer.

B is for Best Show on Earth! 12. Military Men

Into the twilight of PW show reports, with the 20th century combat types, and in the end, there were quite a few, with a few AFV's this time, mostly from the donation bags, but various other interesting items including some - shock horror! - metal!

Starting with the ubiquitous parachute toys, and we have an original 'Poopertropper' from Imperial (a US importer/jobber), but I suspect someone over here also carried them as they do turn-up quite often without having to look to eBay for a current import.

 

The two complete with parachutes came from Brian Carrick and the chap with the tangled one will reassemble, I've checked, one of the shroud-lines has come off it's 'hankie corner' and got tangled in with the other three but it shouldn't be a big job to restore him.

I think I picked this up from Steve Vickers, Jon has already ID'd it! So without further ado . . . 

 

. . . the Crescent navy in a pocket set! My title of course, there is no title on the box, although there maybe one in a catalogue? One each of the small scale (approximately 1:72nd) figures seen here lose, years ago, and one of the vessels, as the submarine would also fit the slots, I'm guessing it was a bit of pot-luck or a sneak-peak to see what you were getting, and perhaps a sixpence toy - replacing the previous generation's penny-toys?

 

From the far-eastern shores of Hong Kong came two bagged sets of those Britains Swoppets, but in solid form, two small samples of rack-toy 'Army Men', the left trio being Airfix clones and the right-hand group being rather mashed Marx copies. Six painted Blue Box GI's make-up the numbers in this shot.

 

Closer to home in the upper shot here, with some Sikhs from Cherilea, another blue Crescent 'artilleryman' (as close to Germans as they ever got!), and - by sheer fluke - a fifth pose (the berserker!) to join the four I already have, so only one to find in that relatively uncommon set.

 

Another of 'those' MG Gunners, undecorated (maybe BR Moulds?), a bog-standard Herald Hong Kong officer and a Lilo SMG-gunner I really didn't need, but he seems to have come home with me!

 

The lower image has spread it's net wider with Hong Kong's finest chromium-plated tat from Kwong Wah, cloning a Deetail Japanese MG-gunner, an Effelder East German soldier in camouflage, a Nardi 60mm Alpini, two ceremonials (from Argentina I think?) and another Comansi (a fair few of them have come in recently), with another Argentine figure in white and a small flat from HK in an unusual colour.

More foreigners here (heay, I'm happy to welcome them all, diversity is everything, it would be a boring land if we all carried on like Borsetshire's Archers!), with two of the hard plastic versions of Marx's 45mm figures, a French alpine soldier, another Guilbert and a US 1950's cold-war kit-figure.

 

In front of them are four ceramic WHW figures, two military, one civilian ('Industrious Germany', issued in March 1939) and an undecorated factory blank.

Small scale; the bulk from Trevor, with some from Brian, mostly grist to the mill from Rado/Ri-Toys or similar, but a few oddities and interesting figures are always in the mix with these mixed-lots. Here, that included the WWI French clones in a pale yellow, some Tri-Ang 'Battle Space' marines from Blue Box and three Redbox/Motormax little rubber guys!

 

US comic flats, so-called because they were advertised in US comics, always useful as my boxed-set turned-out to have a mix of several batches, so it will be nice, one day, to fill it with a complete set of the/a matching batch's mouldings!

 

Crescent bunkers providing cover for two rather shot vehicles, the one (Dinky Saracen), ahem . . . 'worked-on' with soft-soldered tubing, the other (Timpo 25lbr.) missing its shield and having melty-tyres! Weird that the tyres melt, rather than the 'styrene gun, but it was an odd [experimental?] foamed polymer?

 

Aircraft; these all have a home in the mini-aircraft zone, and one day there will be a super-sort, reckoning and series of Blog-posts on all of them! Also, a bag of missiles, bombs, drop-tanks and other under-wing/pylon 'stores' and weapons, they too, have a zone!

 

Other AFV's; mostly rack-toy fayre, the two larger lorries remind me that there's some similar ones from Brian Berke in the long queue somewhere, and I think I have shot a set with these two in, so a possible follow-up there, certainly a future post on the more 'infant toy' AFV's.

 

Finaly the Supreme copies of Italeri's WWII Russians, also taking advantage of the Crescent bunkers in one shot! I had a few more come in a few weeks earlier, so hopefully there are a few of the missing poses somewhere, but with two plastic colour/paint finishes available for all 12 figures (only seven above), I still have a ways to go before I have all 24!

Thanks to all for everything last May; Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith, Peter Evans, Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little and Andreas Dittmann.

F is for Follow-up - Marx Birds!

An unscheduled post, in that I wasn't planning one, but an old friend came round while I was gardening, and a coffee and beer later, and quick trip over to the new flat to show him, and I've lost the light, so the gardening has been halted early and will be finished tomorrow, just hope the beer doesn't affect my spelling! Or should that be 'effect'?!!

 

I mentioned these the other day, they have been in Picasa for a while now, and it was clear the contents were all muddled-up when I shot them, so I'll just chuck them up as a box-ticker, and to confirm that that one the other day was also a Marx bird I think, same design, not sure anyone else did anything quite like these?

Clues on the packaging suggest at least three tranches/print-runs for the boxes, probably only one main run for production of the models, with an earlier and later issue (red or black text for the bird names) and a UK specific issue (/UK codes)?

Simple pre-coloured kits of 5-7 pieces, depicting relatively common species, and a little card with a water-colour sketch of the bird (if you want to repaint in slightly more realistically?) with a thumbnail biography on the reverse. Box-scale but maybe between 1:6th/1:8th, for the smaller tit-birds at least? The owl probably around 1:12th.

 

Similar 'match-box' packaging to the Zoo/Wild Animals (which explains my Hippo being in two parts!), as copied by the lesser Hong Kong sourced stuff from Shackmann, they must have been fun!

Now fully covered on Moonbase, via Paul the Antipodean, although it's probably the sixth time since Christmas one of the Paul's have used my Posts for their follow-ups! It's getting boring now guys, 23,000 toy companies to Blog from and you need to keep following me? Sign you're running out of original copy, isn't it? And it's not his work, it's everybody else's efforts! Tedious; but there's that bell-curve, in the background!