S is for Seen Elswhere - 40mm Comansi / Novalinea

These were not only seen elsewhere - on the intermawebby thing - recently, but are the shots (in colour) which illustrated my (black & white) article in One Inch Warrior magazine about . . . err . . . 20-years ago? I really don't know where the time goes, but I suspect Hell has played it's part in stealing the hours, days and years! Only scans, and lowish-res', so captions, rather than full blurb, they'll be looked at properly, again, another day.

 

Long boxes, I believe these were saved from a damp shed in Malta (?) or Cyprus, by that stalwart finder of nice things, Mike Harding, back in the early 1990's.

 

The box art from the three of them.

 

Loose figures as found in the sets, unpainted examples are from the later Novalinea branded sets, painted will be Comansi issued.

 

Horses, Indians get a quiver of arrows,

cowboys and cavalry get a sheathed rifle.

Accessories are the same as for the 54mm range.

Except the Teepee / Ti-Pi / Wigwam, which is downscaled.

 

Both sides of a flyer, which came in a larger set.

This was in the tub my loose samples came from, it went the way of all flesh, being very discoloured and brittle.

Comparison between the Novalinea box and one of Esci's classic red-box sets, a clear attempt to impersonate and (given the contents) mislead. And a bit naughty as Franco died in 1976, while Spain would join the EU in 1986, so there wasn't the 'Franco / dictatorship' excuse of being 'out in the cold' to justify such piracy against a near-neighbour?

Base marking of the 40mm figures.

I'll do a better job in the future with photography!

The Yolanda mark is the same 'Saloon' font, in the same 'TV' frame!

This was the label from a tub of 54mm figures, and the reverse of the sheet shows it to have been recycled from the Thunderbirds line, which included new character figures and some of the earlier Ovni ("UFO") space figures reconfigured as 'red-shirt' army-builders!

RTM is for Rack Toy Moment

Because Rack Toy Month is over! It's bloody September already? How did that happen . . . I blame the movement of the planetary bodies in the heavens, paying absolutely no heed to my needs!

 

I've actually taken the last apple off the tree, six to eight weeks earlier than any previous year? And the blackberries/brambles are going over a few weeks early too, while the raspberries did nothing . . . we haven't got long, these are signs of severe stress which has the plants desperate to seed because they think/know they are going to die.

 

To which end all the azaleas, except the big yellow one, have gone, the bay went and all but one of the mini Japanese acers. Next door have a brown chunk in their hedge, two doors up have lost their roadside leylandii (despite all the rain this summer) and I've given up trying to save the box from the invasive Box Moth - three attacks since March!

In the meantime, Brian Berke found this in his home city of New York, and it's a fine curtain-closer, for Rack Toy Month!

In his own words, as I can't add anything;

 

"In the last hours of Rack Toy Month I came across this set: SANITATION

Now in NYC there are Sanitation Department Police who give tickets for health violations so that vehicle is OK.

The header card says: ACCOMPANY YOUR CHILDREN TO GROW UP TOGETHER! which is fine but look at the top two figures, Rambo who no doubt is part of NYC's war on rats and then a soldier with a shoulder mounted bazooka! A little excessive even for NYC rats, I hope they never get that big!

I like the recycling bins."

And those figures look similar to other 'Army men' we have looked at here, so it might be possible one day to tie them in with a branding, although it is carrying one; Huan le D-somthing? Many thanks to Brian!

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Wild West

A few bits I've posted elsewhere on the internet in the last eighteen-months or so, all on a Wild West theme, nothing to get too excited about, but getting them up here, so I can get them off the new Laptop, which I still hate!

 

 

These chaps, which were donated to the blog by Theo Van de Werden elicited no response here or elsewhere, but I found them looking for something else! They're Baravelli, who seem to have contracted quite a bit of unique stuff from the former British Crown Colony, so while they may have had other branded issues elsewhere in the world, Baravelli is good enough for me, and being 100% 'toy soldier' polyethylene I will hang on to them for the time being, thanks again to Theo!

This was funny - not my pun, which was predictable, but the aftermath; I posted this back in January, as a joke, which read "Jean Hoefler trading as 'Big', got . . . err . . . very big!", only for Deadleaf to post all six figures a few weeks later, then some other futwit sent them to a magazine (whose readers would mostly have seen Hairband's already!), now . . . I know my 'eemies' are desperate for any crumb that they can award points too, but really?

 

This stuff is German, both subsequent 'contributors' are Germans, it's not rare, and I would expect two middle-aged German collectors to have their local production to hand? Indeed, why hadn't they shown us their 'treasures' years ago? Why wait 'till I've posted one, for a laugh, a cheap-laugh at that, before stampeding to the public sphere with their take on it?

 

Aber ich habe auch einen, tatsächlich habe ich sechs! It was a joke . . . but it's deadly serious to these pathetic point-scorers, when they're not trying to hide their purchase-guilt from their 'fat, psychopathic wives' (thanks Pink), by doing the housework! There; I just clawed some of the points back! Pathetic, isn't it?

We've seen another Argentine copy of this Timpo Hopalong Cassidy copy, on the Blog (dirty-white on a brown horse?) already, but I managed to find another pair, second Hopalong and a copy of the Herald Indian with full war-bonnet, on the same Timpo horse piracy.

We saw these in full here, so it's just clearing the picture, Hong Kong/China solid copies of older HK copies of Timpo and HK 'swoppets'.

N is for Novelty Animals

I can't remember if someone mentioned these in a comment on an 'H is for How They Come In' post, or if it was in an email, but a conversation was had, to the effect that I would blog them more fully another day, and it turns-out I have more here than I think I have in storage, so here they are!

These cats, are the ones my collection started with, not these specifically, who have only recently build-up here, and I do have a better sample in storage, they are also, along with the frogs, the commonest, or at least that's my experience, I'm sure different animals prove more or less popular in different countries/sales territories and would have been ordered-in accordingly.

I'm equally sure any similarity with the Marx Minikins 'Figaro' from Pinocchio, is purely coincidental, as there were - between 1900 and the 1970's several similar short, fat cats in popular fiction or the arts/entertainment, including two Felix's (I think), Penelope Pussycat, [Babbitt &] Catstello, Muff (from Tom & Jerry's Fluff, Muff & Puff kittens), Corky, Fritz, Lucifer, Pussyfoot and others, so these were aiming at a well-worn constituency!

 

I thought I had a card in the archive with them all on it, as a 'rack-toy', but I can't find it - although I found other things to enhance the post - so I can't tell you if it was an adult with six kittens, or all six as small or large mouldings. The smaller mouldings are commoner, as they were chosen for gum-ball machine capsule-prizes, among other things.

Pigs are also popular, and the Hippo's seem to turn-up with more regularity than some of the others in the range. I don't know, but suspect they may have got themselves into Christmas Crackers at some point, or maybe only the larger ones? They don't all seem to have larger versions, though.

 

The frogs, with a gum-ball machine's insert card below, I have seven poses here, maybe more in storage and there seems to be an eighth on the card, which also has a duplicate for a five count.

 

Other examples, again; there may be more in storage, but you can see it's all the things people tend to collect - puppies, owls, moo-cows, chicks etc. . . I think there were small elephants? The kitten doing a hand-stand (like one of the pigs), is from a later set, not connected with the (1960's?) black ones. While, I didn't realise I'd hidden the tortoise!

 

The tortoise and the rodent (far left) may be from a line of Netsuke look-alikes, their decoration is finer, and they are more realistic sculpts, indeed the rodent may be an Asian water-rat or vole of some kind?
 

The hole in the underside is the unifying factor with all these, although as you can see here, some don't have one! The smaller kitten has the standard hole, while the whole set of pigs (with the exception of 'hand-stand') have one which is large enough to make them pencil-tops?

 

The prone kitten has an oblong hole, and smaller base area figures tend to get smaller holes, and the frog to the far-right has a medium-small one. While typically the large-sized ones have a larger hole, the pair of frogs here have a small and medium-small hole, just to be different!

There is a tendency within the hobby to call all this type of feature mould-release pin-marks, but I suspect that's not the case here, and it's more about minimising material-used, and/or preventing heat-shrinkage on tools with a fast cycle-rate?

I think these have both been on the blog before, but they turned-up while I was looking for the other bits, so here they are again! These three cats are in storage, but probably not yet with the 'master' sample, so you can see there will be quite a few in total.  The bear is later, and probably from a different company, but more on that in a mo'.

 

Just a quick-one on all these, they are similar to Kinder's 'hard plastics' and Kinder followed the concept of cartoony 'styrene animals, but the Hong Kong ones mostly predate Kinder by a decade or more, and while some of the above were claimed in early Kinder collector manuals from Germany, I think they've mostly been excised from current edits as there just wasn't the empirical evidence.

A set of clowns are within the oeuvre, usually sold as cake decorations, as were these Santa Claus figures mucking about, again, slightly newer and contemporary with the bears, we saw them here, with a Model Power iteration and links to Tobar (Hawkin's Bazaar) in the comments! Note the Greensward Leprechaun!

 

I also noticed, while sorting this stuff the other night, that those garden gnomes (hollow plastic, wheel barrow and garden-tools lot, and musician lot), have a smaller, solid iteration, which may be part of this extended range? Six clowns are also sold as cake-decorations.

I've tried not to lecture or pontificate this Rack Toy Month, but I often come back to one message in RTM, with this cheapo', novelty type stuff, you can only pin them down to a brand if you have the packaging with them, otherwise they are any one of several brands AND several anonymous/generic issues, and I'm sure a quick search of evilBay will pull Unique, Carousel and/or Grandmother Stovers into the fold!

To which end Wilton carried families of larger animals, glossy airbrushed; pigs, lambs, squirrels, poodles, pandas, rabbits, chicks &ect. Typically, they were two or three babies and one adult, Culpitt had a set of chicks, but they are larger, and mostly in storage (if I have more than one or two?), so can wait for another day!

F is for Follow-up - A Splash of Paint

A pair of rather colourful Astronauts now. This could equally be a 'T is for Two' post, but we have looked at one in detail, and covered the other in passing, in a roundabout sort of way!

 

So, first, the eraser Macro Nauts we looked at here, I have now found a painted one, which makes sense as they were made of that silicon rubber which makes crap erasers, just smudges the pencil and eventually splits down the weak-points, so, selling them as painted playthings would be an obvious step! I don't have anything on maker/brand or set yet, but I'll be looking!

While this guy is interesting because when we looked at the Kinder version, someone, elsewhere (of course), made a comment to the effect he 'thought' they were Azrak Hamway (AHI), but they weren't, although they are clearly copies, here's an AHI original, and he's about 75/80mm to the Kinder's 35/40mm!

F is for Follow-up - Space Flats

I don't know how I've ended-up with all this space stuff, it was supposed to be vehicle-figures-vehicle-figure post and then move-on to something else, but there's a folder full of the stuff and I just carried-on working through it! In the meantime, I shot this to confirm an earlier comment . . . 

. . . re the green semi-flat chap having been issued by Montaplex unpainted, and here we see two in yellow, they seem to be from the same tool, so someone must have bought a bunch to paint-up and sell at a different price-bracket, because you do see them like this from time to time?

 

Posed with two contemporary figures from Torgano (grey) and an unmarked white version of the Linde/DS Plastics (Plasticraft) spaceman we looked at here. The helmet is a non-canon one which happened to fit . . . 'ish!

11-Sep-2023 - definitely not French! He is pathetic, isn't he? "Neh! I got one too and mine is blue!"

2 is for 'Men From Outer Space'!

Picked this up a while back, ostensibly for the 'missing' pose, from this post (was it really five years ago? I don't know where it goes!), anyway, because I spotted the pose I didn't give much more attention to it beyond noticing it has the same card-art as the previously-seen set, but with a 2 instead of a 3 . . . begs the question; was there a 4 (with one of each pose), or even a single 'Man From Outer Space'?!

So, what I missed, was that the lenticular eyes on this pair are printed in a Nordic-blue, rather than the black/gray ones I've seen hundreds of times over the years, possibly on every other example I've seen - which still had the eyes, tatty ones are usually missing them! So, that's a rack-toy variation on two counts, Giant copies, box ticked!

Q is for Question Time - Rack Toy Question

Sean at Fantasy Toy Soldiers had these somewhere, and I think he has more poses than me, but he too was asking for further information, so, hoping there are different readers here, I'll ask too - does anyone know anything about these chaps and chapesses?

They are about 50mm (a Hing Fat trait?) and pretty mid-to-late 1980's in style; a bit Star Wars, a bit Nottingham Mafia, a bit post-apocalyptic and straight-to-video! Medium density polyethylene and, apart from the sci-fi subject, typical 'army men' rack toy fodder.

Colours are also very Hing Fat, ignoring the two shades of grey, and these are also very reminiscent of the Galaxy Rangers from Hing Fat, which is not to say they are Hing Fat, but might be, or might have been supplied by them for someone else?

 

Looking at the two in the larger picture, could they be meant to be Buck and Wilma from Buck Rogers, after the 80's TV series? They carry no mark (which is also the case with the Galaxy Rangers I think?), and I have one heat-shrinkage figure who is useable - the white plastic chap in the small picture.

S is for Star Patrol

Do you remember those Imperial glow-in-the-dark bug-eyed aliens we looked at a while back, well, they did them in a smaller size with armoured space-marine types and a few lumpy space vehicles as real rack-toy trash; brilliant!

The boys in gunmetal; there are five poses and each is in a different 'battle suit' and they are a similar hardish polyethylene to both sizes of alien.

The aliens come on all four of the larger poses, I only have three so far, but that's the fun of collecting! They are in the same three glow-in-the-dark colours, but don't have their eyes painted in.

 

A part/near complete set on evilBay a while back, in trying to brighten the contrast it may have lost a bit on the aliens, and I suspect there's a second flat ship missing, I have none of these, but must find the space tanks! It may even be most of two bags?

S is for Starguards & Aliens

Another post from the 'Seen Elsewhere' folder, this one actually combining two posts from elsewhere, the loose figures from Britains Starguard (or Star Guard, 1981-1987'ish) and friends, and the rare boxed set (there's one on evilBay at the moment for a hundred-quid, which might be cheap?), which can go here as they're not going to generate a too-long tag-list, and it gets KP Foods on the tags!

I'm guessing these were a mail away offer, there aren't enough in here for a counter-top or behind the counter multiple-purchase offer type thing, so they must have been a save so many packet tops or coupons or something, but you get six of the standard yellow Starguards, and six of the black Aliens with the 'divers' helmets.

 

 

My set is definitely missing a decent sample of the kneeling-squat guy! But they aren't that uncommon, in any variation, so I'll pick up the rest one day, probably just get everything missing in a single feeBay session in a year or two. And, as we'll see in the next few minutes; my sample is currently quite small, overall!

 

The trouble with this set - as I see it, and it's only my opinion - was that they were dated the day they hit the stores, and not only dated, but incompatible with anything that had come before; Captain Video, Hill/Cherilea hollow-cast, similar lead-solids of Buck Rogers from the 'States, or latterly, the vaguely NASA stuff from Europe, Marx/MPC or Cherilea's 60mm giants in plastic, so there was little to do with them . . . if you know what I mean.

However, the plethora of space toys which have been issued since the Star Wars (and Battlestar Galactica) phenomena of the late 1970's means that actually they have grown on me a bit, and you can, if so minded (I'm really just a collector) now paint them up and add them to, or add-in all sorts! While they will enhance any space-toy display shelf!

The original Aliens, these are just the Starguard bodies in black with a red 'deep sea diver' helmet, another problem with the range; repetition throughout the range! Technically they should all have silver weapons, but over time other colours would be issued, and the slight 'swoppet' nature of the range, means anything goes to get the shot!

The Cyborgs! Again Starguard bodies, but with more complicated add-ons and a universal head/computing-unit! These have always suffered (from nearly new) with a stickiness caused by a reaction between the gloss, metallic green (possibly the Humbrol 50 enamel, which makes renovation easy), and furry lumps of these were a common site at car-boot sales or in rummage trays a few years ago, all covered in pet-hair, carpet fibres and dust!

My only 'Raider', he should have a gold weapon, and in catalogues is shown with a black or blue base. These are just the Aliens in an orange/blue scheme, and went up against white-bodied Starforce (or Star Force), of which I have none! Well, I say that, there may be one or two in storgae, in the TBS piles?

 

The Mutants, who would become Mutant Raiders are also lacking at Chez Smallscaleworld, they were similar to the Cyborgs, but had whackier heads/plug-ins and sometime come ina  metalic grass green.

Eventually, in 1985, a set of green, polyethylene aliens called Terror Raiders (which I do have somewhere, we'll see them here another day) were issued (after about the time it takes to realise your figures are going sticky in people's play-boxes!), which had actually been shown in the earlier 1984 catalogue, as different sculpts in a chrome-finish. By 1987 they were the only aliens in the catalogue alongside the orange Raiders and white Starforce, then the curtain closed on the whole Starguard 'experiment'!

 

Ten minutes later - I'd forgotten we looked at all the weapons here; lower shot.

 

And later the same day - Many thanks to John Begg for letting me photograph the KP Outer Spacers set in his private collection.

S is for Space Tank!

Definitely had this title before! You know I like a space tank or two, and I was quite pleased to pick this up, although a quick search on evilBay revealed a half-dozen, so not old, and not rare, but equally it was't pricey!

Boxed space-tank, or 'Reconnaissance Tank', made in 'China' so not that old, but carrying the legacy of 40-years-worth of cheap plastic or tin-plate space toys. There's a relatively illegible logo which seems to be an apple or a tomato, with two letters the second of which might be an 's', while the toy's code is prefixed 'PS', which means nothing to me!

 

The beast; it actually looks a bit 1980's to me, and while some Hong Kong manufacturers phased in the China marks prior to 1997, that mostly occurred in the year or two before the changeover of administration, so this is probably an early, all Chinese (mainland) company's efforts?

 

Posed with a few figures to give a sense of scale/size, and a shot of the relatively generic underside, there's a production code of some sort but no further clue as to a maker. The stickers could fuck-off with my blessing (it looks like a cake-decoration racing car!), but it's boxed and relatively mint, so I guess they'll have to stay!

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Space Shots

Quick round-up of spacey stuff I've posted elsewhere in the recent past, although that included stuff from 2021, and I'm sure we've had seen elsewhere-posts since then, but maybe not the space stuff?

All Spanish, I think? We saw the Credeco Romano-Greek bronze-age chap here, while the fireman is unknown to me and possibly from one of the major figure guys (Jecsan, Pech or Reamsa?) for a vehicle maker like Paya or Guisval?

 

While the focus here is the spaceman/space-alien, unpainted these are 'Sobres' by Montaplex and slightly cruder (flashier) mouldings, I don't know who put paint on them, but a minor make I guess, and they are slightly redolent of a couple of the Captain Video aliens with the long respirator / face-mask.

Saw a similar shot on the But is it Giant Blog, but here's another shot of a bunch of Giant's finest, reporting back to the hive-mind godhead-mother on their victorious exploits in Junior's carpet-wars!

I believe these are both gum-ball machine capsule prizes, obviously knock-off's of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, or at least the chap on the left is, but I think they go together, and most Power Ranger baddies were men in rubber suits, so, as a figure, it figures! He has a half man-bat, half lagoon creature look about him (or her!) and Keith Bowman wondered if Ultraman might be an origin?

Ah yes! More shots of my Portuguese copy of the Sel-Mac (not "Set Mac"!) robot (or spaceman; there's a helmet missing), imagine . . . just imagine waiting five months to score a point off me with your 'I can post that too' by waiting for your very good friend to send you the image, only get the name wrong! And the name of your very good friend wrong! They're funny guys, very funny guys. All the info is to be found in the links I posted, back in January.

 

Jim from France are responsible for these two, NASA types engaged in peaceful exploration, one seems to be taking a sample while the other films him in close-up from a youie-stick! I can't work out if they are a styrene or a very dense PVC, so it's probably the same hard phenolic/formaldehyde polymer of other French stuff, but looking-feeling odd in pure white?

 

Finally, these came in not that long-ago, and obviously painted, which I will remove, Thomas spacemen and aliens in PVC rubber, I rather like the painting, which seems to have been done from the limited pallet probably provided by a paint-your-own thing, there's the three primaries, black and white . . . the metallic bits are the figure's own colours left unpainted.