LB is for Lik Be!

Because it's a B! More on that in a mo', first a quick reminder of the carded robot set I picked-up a while ago and showed briefly the other day;

 

The robot shape-specific blister means another set with the other three is a probable certainty, although that is itself an oxymoron, but you know what I mean! Wotan over at Moonbase has specialised in the chunky-monkey one, and I'm pretty sure he has one of these faux-vitreous ones, so the other three are out there!

 

But that logo . . . the clearest or 'best' yet; it's a B, isn't it? A 'B' for the Be of Lik Be, not Lik Pe, not Lick Pea, and definitely not Lick Pee!

 

I realised looking at this, that the two uprights are - roughly - centred, so the whole monogram is actually placed to the right, with room to the left (as we look at it) for the 'sun' rays in white, coming out from the centre to be visible, under the monsters arm. On the right you have the dark rays going in, but no white rays coming-out, because there's the bottom curve of a bloody-great B in the way!

 

It's a pain, it's always been a too-busy, shit-rendered, poor logo design, but get used to it, it's LB for Lik Be, and you read it here first, twice, several years apart; 'cos I'm calling it again!

 

The Robots; Police Motorcycle, well, that's how I've always thought of him, or 'Motorcycle Cop' but he could just as easily be ray-gunning, pressure-washing the streets or painting hoardings! In the style of the fake glass-animals which also came out of Hong Kong, he's moulded in clear 'styrene and overpainted in transparent yellow and jade.

 

I used to call this one Marcel Marceau, but now I call it Vichy (cheese eating surrender monkey) in homage to Mathias and his mob! Minimal decoration on an already weak sculpt, sums this one up!

 

Stern Gang! He's always wearing a clear, definite, permanent frown, and one feels he should be the sidekick for the 'Darth' sculpt in the Airfix Space Warriors set?

 

I also picked-up a loose set of the ones I've already got in a bagged-set (seen here at Small Scale World passim), so they can stay there! The other three I call Lobster (obviously!) Rocket Robin and I can't remember what I used to call the fat one, but nowadays, it's just Wotan!

 

I've had two lots of the small scale versions come-in recently as well, all marked originals; gunmetal polyethylene above, and chromed hard plastic below (with a few knock-off spacemen), both samples having no Lobster!

 

A poor factory-paint version and another sucker copy have also been added to the pile, and I nicked the mustard-yellow image from eBay a while back I think, cropped-out of a larger image, The soft plastic large-scale are pierced for key-rings/fobs/chains, so must be later production.

 

The small scale Bike Cop has quite different arm sculpts from the larger one, who has 'cup and ball' hands and elongated upper-arm segments, against the smaller one's flatter-cup (potato masher!) and pointer (Biro!), with double ball-joint arms.

EMCE is for Effigy Manufacturer Confirms Events

Back in December I received a nice eMail from Joe Sena, on the subject of the little output/figure list I appended to one of the earlier EMCE posts, a subsequent back and forth of correspondence produced this pocket/potted history of the various brands I had been getting confused by, so - with Joe's permission - here it is for those who may be interested;

 

**************    *************** 

 

"After a 10 year period in Los Angeles, where I helped grow the merch side of a large Star Trek convention company in the early ‘90s as designer/creative director, I moved over to the New Media Group at Universal Studios where I went from writer/producer to Creative Director in a few months – largely because in the mid 90s, anyone who could spell “Internet” was an expert (also, I was the studio’s “Official Universal Monsters” expert because I was the only nerd who made it past the gatekeepers). A few years later, Universal was bought, I saw handwriting on the wall, started a web design firm with other Uni' ex-pats which crashed and burned within a year.

Moved back to NYC with my tail between my legs and went back to what I did for a living before the internet, which was to make merch. Most was of the apparel variety, off-brand and original stuff for fans of horror movies. I made a product called the “Zombie Outbreak Survival Kit” which exploded, and made me enough money to put toward growing the business.

My business’ legal name is SphereWerx, LLC, which I named after the Unisphere, the steel globe landmark in my hometown of Flushing, Queens, near the stadium where my poor Met's attempt to play baseball. After a few years of having to re-spell or correct the pronunciation of “Spherewerx,” I registered “Fourth Castle” as a “doing business as” name. I named it such because of the influence of your fellow countrymen – as with the King Of Swamp Castle in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, this was my fourth attempt at business, and it didn’t fall into the swamp😉

Coming back to NYC reunited me with an old high school buddy named Paul Clarke, who I was stunned to discover had a business called “Dr. Mego”, in which he would hand-make replacement parts for collectors of Mego action figures. If your Captain America lost a shield or Batman his cowl, Paul hand-poured them in resin, colored them and sent them off.

Eventually, he received a cease and desist from DC and Marvel, and asked me what he should do, and I said that I would put money into trying to get licences And bring back the Mego toys of the 1970s.

 

Through several partnerships with other license-holders, we successfully brought back Marvel, DC, Star Trek and other Mego-style figures, expanding beyond mere reproductions. I created the brand EMCE toys, drawn to look like the “Mego” logo, but pronounced “EM-CEE” or “M.C”, which stood for “Mego Corporation.”

Paul and I were handshake-partners, we never had anything on paper, but we agreed that we would split EMCE branded toys. Sadly, Paul’s “Dr. Mego” work was not enough to cut it professionally, so we hired out sculptors for heads and certain body parts, but I would sculpt small accessories or adaptations (Spock’s beard for the “Mirror, Mirror” set, Spider-Man’s webshooters and belt, etc.). I am not the sculptor of any of the major parts of any of our toys.

 

In 2008, the recession cratered sales, so even though Paul was a Mego fundamentalist, I said we had to do something to make a cheaper product. Megos were expensive to produce, so I focused on another old-school toy format: little green army men.

After a while, Paul stopped being involved in the toys brand, focusing more on his Dr. Mego business and coming back together with me for the occasional elaborate Marvel Megos we did with Diamond Select Toys.

 

I kept on with the army men and dubbed them “Nanoforce”, so I had a trademarkable name. Initially, the clunky sculpts were done by hand in the factory in China – we left them that way because a) they looked about as clunky as classic army men and b) it came free with the price of the production 😉

You pretty much know the rest, but I hope when my aforementioned presentation is complete and has made the rounds, I will send it to you as it does contain a pretty complete look at the Nano's we made from Day One. However, it’s so similar to your list as to be almost identical."

 

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So, to paraphrase the above, SphereWerx (legal), Forth Castle (trading as) and EMCE ('em-cee', line/range brand-mark) are the company name/s in the order they were acquired, Nanoforce is the brand-mark for the small 'army men' figures, and all the other names on the various sets or packaging generations are either the license-holders to the subjects depicted, or the contracting end-user (Diamond Select, Previews Exclusive/PX), even though EMCE's own branding is usually retained alongside as one or more marks. Toynk are the current distributor of the more commercial sets.

 

This is an updated/re-edited version of that original list, alphabetical;

• Aliens in Glowing Slime (figures from the below set, but glow in the dark polymer with a unique, oversized (in scale) 'Facehugger' sculpt. One figure per egg of slime, out of production and getting hard to find, old stock has now-solid, rubbery slime) - Diamond Select Toys / PX Previews Exclusive  / designed by Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - 20th Century Fox.
• Aliens -vs- Colonial Marines (35 figures, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - Diamond Select Toys / PX Previews Exclusive  / designed by Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - 20th Century Fox.
• Fallout 76 [bags, see also You Will Emerge - below] (12 or 24 figures per bag, 3 sets, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
• Fallout 76 [boxes] (13 figures per box, 4 boxed sets include a 4" figure and extra [blind pack] poses, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
  
• Gears 5 (Gears of War), (5-figures + droid, bag, glow in the dark variation, still around, affordable - Nanoforce by EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia) Licensors - The Coalition / XBox Games / Microsoft, UK retailer Toynk (?)
•  John Carpenter's Halloween (8 figures + 4 accessories and 1x 4" figure, very rare, limited edition of 2500 units, very expensive when found - Fright Rags / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - Compass International Pictures
• Night of the Living Dead (12 figures + 1x 4" figure, very rare, limited edition, very expensive when found - Fright Rags / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Image Ten)
• Star Trek - TNG (12 figures + micro-ship model, 'The Next Generation' boxed-set, newest, affordable, easier to find in UK - PX Previews Exclusive / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Fanwares a division of Fanwraps) Licensor - CBS Studios
• Star Trek - TOS (12 figures + micro-ship model, 'The Original (TV) Series' boxed-set, newest, affordable, harder to find in UK - PX Previews Exclusive / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Fanwares a division of Fanwraps) Licensor - CBS Studios
• Universal Monsters (planned/cancelled/next? EMCE / Mego?)
• You Will Emerge (24 figure 'Army Builder' bag of Fallout expansion, 23 common figures in 9 poses (twos or threes) with exclusive Jersey Devil flying monster, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle, no Toynk) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
• Vault Tech Convention Exclusives (six figures from Fallout, in blind-bags, one per-bag, limited-edition yellow polymer, still findable/affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
•  Zombies at War (35 figures, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - PX Previews Exclusive / Brilliant Novelty Co. / Diamond Comic Distributors / EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia, no 'Nanoforce')
• Zombies in Glowing Slime (as per above, but blind-bag model, in a tub of slime modelled as an oil drum, one figure per unit, glow-in-the-dark polymer, getting harder to track-down - PX Previews Exclusive  /  EMCE Toys) 
•  Zombies -vs- Zombie Hunters (35 figures, 10 poses, 3-each survivors, 4-each zombies, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - PX Previews Exclusive / Brilliant Novelty Co. / Diamond Comic Distributors / EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia, no 'Nanoforce')

In December, Joe was hopeful that more figures would come out this year, but I haven't seen/heard anything yet? Halloween was the last set issued, last autumn.

LB is for Little Buggers!

Another eBay tale! I was checking late one nigh/early hours and saw the small Matt Mason knock-off's I needed, so bought them, only to see a similar set from the same seller, so bought them too, messaged the seller asking if he might be able to combine the postage (after I'd paid full twice) only get a message from the seller almost immediately (mid-evening over the Pond), pointing out there was a loose set too . . . a few emails later and I'd found the other, he'd cancelled the two purchases, bundled the three lots, relisted them and I'd paid for them - at the third attempt!

Purchase on the right, it was the generic version of the Lik Be set on the left (old eBay image), and both have the same contents of the five 'cake decoration' mini moon-exploration vehicles, without the wheels you normally see them with.

 

The other purchased card (on the left here), it's another generic, overprinted to M. Shimmel Sons (MSS), and had the addition of the two 'NASA' style astronauts, also seen on the right with their lander, command module and flag - as they were also issued as cake decorations.

 

The smaller card is another generic, and also an old eBay image. Both Space Set generics are overprinted to the Happy Mates division of Electro Plastics of Newark, New Jersey, a jobbing rack-toy importer who also carried Yat Ming die-casts.

Note that the Shimmel card has artwork including the unmistakeable outline of Mattel's Major Matt Mason himself, with tubular rubber suit-joints, swinging-by to deal with the deadly triple hi-fi jack 'that's not a moon' of the dreaded Moron Vee! While the figures are either based on LB's spacemen (Mercury/Gemini programme suits), but without air-tanks, or the two Apollo types.

 

The seller included another Space Set card without blister, to which these were supposed to be attached, but they have the cake-travelling wheels attached and red astronauts while the blister (missing) would have struggled to hold them neatly on the same sized card, so these may just be cake decorations, or from one of the boxed-sets?

Ultraviolet is probably responsible for the bleaching of the figure bottom left and then the discolouring of both elements to a burnt-orange? It's also missing its wheels, which is useful . . .

. . . as you can see how the wheel units were added to the undersides by simply glueing the double-unit over a small protuberance on the models, clearly visible in some of the shots above.

 

A couple of shots of the cake fleet on the move!

 

Another iteration of the Space Set card on the left, as an LB original, we will return to it, soon, in a future post when we look at the robots attached to it.

Six weeks later - Follow-up here from Moonbase Central, except I don't think there's any Giant spacemen involved, they are all the Lik Be sculpts. [The Giant were later edited out!]

EMCE is for Every Model's a Corking Effigy

Two of the more recent lines from EMCE have been the TV/Movie tie-ins, including Star Trek, two of mine have gone to storage, and I've only scanned the boxes of the other two, so another brief look today, and something more substantial in the near-to-medium future!

 

Star Trek - The original Series (TOS), a set of upright or less dynamic poses, but the sculpting/detail is there, and each figure is recognisably who they are supposed to be depicting! You get four each of the figures in three colours, and a larger model of the original Enterprise (NCC-1701) in a smaller scale, so best added to the Galloob/Mattel/Soma mini-ship drawer!

 

I've never been a fan of the Horror genre, so couldn't have much to say about this, except that depicting other icons from the movie has reduced the figure count to only eight? But you do get a giant glow-in-the-dark matey as an extra!

 

I did shoot the other two before they went away to storage, and here - with stuff we've already seen in recent posts - are the Night of the Living Dead on the upper-left and Star Trek - The Next Generation (TNG) on the upper-right. I believe there has been talk of more monster sets, or a 'Universal' [studios] monster set.

The Living Dead had a full set of 12 figures along with another-glow-in-the-dark large-scale figure, while likewise the TNG set has 12 figures and an Enterprise model (NCC-1701-D), the figures in all four sets are pretty standard 54mm against the slightly smaller figures in the earlier Zombie and Alien sets.

All in all, a nice pair of additions to the increasing range of figures from EMCE.

LB is for Nasta Industries!

I had an amusing interaction with an eBay seller back last year, he had the Lik Be spacemen for sale at a reasonable BIN, in Nasta carded bottle-bags, so I hit DOIT and sat back and waited for my ill-, or easily-gotten gains to arrive, but when they did, I almost had apoplexy!

 

They weren't LB, they were the shitty MPC-clones, well actually some of the better MPC-clones, there are many copies of the MPC astronauts, and some are very poor, but these are OK, however, MPC-clones they were, not the LB I had ordered.

Now, I figured it must be a mistake, so I checked the seller's other items, and sure enough, no toy figures, but clothes, household items and car parts - or 'Autoparts' - he was in the 'States! So I checked the sales listing again and sure enough there were the Lik Be's in all their glory, but the blue arrow pointed to more images . . . And sure enough, there were the MPC-clones, and the page was screaming '2 items - 1 available 1 sold' . . . Which was clearly the one in my lap!

So I quickly bought the second set before messaging the seller, and then messaged him to confirm that the gunmetal ones were in the other bag and the 'wrong' ones had turned up, he was very apologetic and offered a refund, which I happily declined as it was still a new name, and having both versions would be no hardship!

 

Waiting another two-and-a-half weeks (global shipping shit!), it duly turned-up and lots of positive feedback was awarded in both directions. And as you can see, very different contents under the same card.

The ones I was after are the 'proper' ones with the full Lik Be base-mark, and they are a nice clean sample, I thought there might be eight of each colour for all poses, but careful checking reveals a 20 count, however there don't seem to be pose duplicates within each colour's sample, so some complicated packing for 2x7 and 1x6!

 

The LB sample also takes up a lot more space than the MPC lot (also a 20 count but more random), which came first I don't know, but I suspect from the 1970's feel, that the LB were issued until they ran-out and then the MPC-clones were sourced to complete a contract, or continue a well-selling line?

 

Also, the red and blue polymers are not quite the same, so two sources seems likely, as does the white versus gunmetal for the third colour.

 

Nasta have a 200/5th Av., address ('The Toy Building') which leaves little by way of clues. Google doesn't reveal much, Brain Heiler has a catalogue from 1980 with odd stuff in it, otherwise a mix of rack toys and electronic 'big-box' stuff, with trademarks registered between 1973 and 1989/90 (their apparent high-water mark), after which they seem to have faded, probably into someone else, like Mattel or Kenner at the top end end; Ja-Ru or Larami at the other? Bloomberg says Tyco! Who were acquired by Mattel! And Tyco seem to have purchased them after bringing a trademark case against them in '95!

We previously saw them here.

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!