A is for Additional Adventurers

Bit of an odd one this; I'm used to these modern 'toob'/tub guys issuing a replacement set occasionally, we saw it with one of the Egyptian sets (Safari or K&M?), but this being only five figures is not a replacement set, unless shrinkflation is getting serious, but rather a sister set?

We saw a Plastoy lot of ten items, two years ago, on this exact, austere date, the day of piraty talk! But here's a set of five figures with a sixth accessory, and I can't remember where I bought it, however, given the shot and the date of the photograph, I may well have got it in Waterstone's, Basingrad, around Christmas-time?

 

Nice figures, the female is particular chic and swashbuckling, while the Afro-Caribbean chap is very similar to the one in the previous set, decoration wise, but has the slimmer grace of the other four in this set, so I think we can conclude another sculptor was involved?

 

They are very heavily armed, the guy on the left is positively bereft of weapons compared to his compatriots who all have at lest three! But if you have a peg-leg, I guess balance is your first concern!

 

A raft is the accessory this time, but it means that between the two sets (if you've re-read the other article!) ALL trope-boxes are well and truly ticked now. And having two sets of Plastoy makes getting the Papo set for next year a bit of an urgency, they really are 'missing' from the Blog now!

 

In trying to find out if the other set is still available (it seems to be), I discovered the previous sample is missing a tenth figure and cannon for a complete 12-count . . . the search goes on!

2nd October - Except in conversation just now, I realised the other - incomplete - set is 40/45mm not the 54mm of these, so now it's a question of looking out to see if they are going to trend a change to smaller content-count sets of 54mm figures, as they have some nice licences, like Asterix?

C is for Cap'n Pugwash!

Brian Berke, pirate fan from New York, sent these just after ITLAPD last year, so they have been waiting a while to shine in the spotlight, and we have seen Captain Pugwash before, but I don't think you can have too much of the scourge of the High Teas, as he sailed his way through early-evening children's TV programming in our childhood!

Marooned on a desert island, with Safari's dead-man & chest, and a cannon (which has a nicer paint scheme than mine . . . I'll have to look out for that variant!), but under attack from a random Plesiosaur, which strikes me as being slightly rough luck!

 

On the shelf,; regular readers will have seen versions of the shelf before (last seen here 2019, I think), and it's nice to see how it evolves . . . or just gets busier as things are added, two Lik Be cake decorations, I can see there, in red, only one last time, they grow, you know!

Then Brian sent these the other day (I suspect as a subtle reminder of the forthcoming day, had I forgot - which I have some years!), and I've dramatised the borders! Hing Fat's finest crew, painted-up.

To be fair, if I recall correctly, there was usually more good than harm committed during the 4-and-a-half-minutes of Pugwash's adventures, and any harm which did occur was usually to the Captain's pride!

Cheers Brian! For those who don't know; you need to know!

S is for Seen Eleswhere - Piratey Pirates!

These were last year's ITLAPD images at another place, we've seen them all before here, so just a box-ticking exercise in colourful imagery that serves also as a Picasa clearer

 

Marx 'Warriors of the World' (WotW or simply WoW) and variants.

 

 

Safari 'toob' set.

 

Supreme / SP Toys later iteration.

 

Charbens and a re-issue or two.

Pirates is for Crazy Comic Piraten Serie Piratas Bucaneros Filibusteros Corsarios Berberiscos . . . and Then Some!

I didn't know how to tackle this lot, and ended-up with far too many images, some of which I know are other peoples, and which have been left out, although one or two have been kept in. Also, in the end I decided to go with the vague order they seem to have been issued in, but it's not necessarily a true timeline, so bear that in mind.

'THE' Pirate Premiums

 

Appearing around Europe in the early 1970's, there were different configurations of them, with the UK getting a paltry six poses which we have seen before, and other people getting the full twenty.

They first seem to have appeared in Spain (and Portugual?) as Arial soap-powder/detergent premiums, where they are subdivided into five groups of four figures, and next time we visit them - when I bring all mine together - I will shoot them in this order;

 

http://chicledunkin.blogspot.com/search/label/Piratas

 

Full translation of that page;

 

Aunque estas figuras son mas grandes que las Dunkin, para mi es una serie totémica, la recuerdo perfectamente de mi infancia......

 

Although these figures are larger than the Dunkin ones, for me it is a totemic series, I remember it perfectly from my childhood...... 

En realidad son figuras de unos 5 cm, 20 piratas que venían en el detergente Ariel en 1971-1972 mas o menos. 4 colores mates preciosos (para mi los mejores del mundo, los europeos son mas brillantes y en america el plastico demasiado duro...) en plastico blando (lo que hace mas dificil encontrarlas sin defecntos) amarillo, verde, rojo y azul.

In reality they are figures of about 5 cm, 20 pirates that came in the Ariel detergent in 1971-1972 or so. 4 beautiful matte colors (for me the best in the world, the European ones are brighter and in America the plastic is too hard...) in soft plastic (which makes it more difficult to find them without defects) yellow, green, red and blue.

En el paquete recuerdo que venia un dibujo de los piratas agrupados en 5 series de 4, Piratas, Bucaneros, Filibusteros, Corsarios y Berberiscos. Si reunias una serie te daban un premio en metálico y si conseguias los 20 supongo que te darian otro mejor.....

In the package I remember that there was a drawing of the pirates grouped into 5 series of 4, Pirates, Buccaneers, Filibusters, Corsairs and Berbers. If you collected a series they gave you a cash prize and if you got the 20 I guess they would give you a better one.....

Debajo os pongo un scan del trozo de carton donde venian los piratas Dibujados, Aunque no pone el nombre de cada grupo yo si recuerdo cuales eran, El jefe de cada grupo es el primero por la izquierda del dibujo. Como veis, el orden en que los puse segun los recordaba no era el mismo del cartón, pero iba bien encaminado ¿no?

Below I put a scan of the piece of cardboard where the Drawn pirates came. Although it doesn't say the name of each group, I do remember what they were. The leader of each group is the first one on the left of the drawing. As you can see, the order in which I put them as I remembered them was not the same as on the cardboard, but I was on the right track, right?

 

Just a note on the first paragraph, he's not saying Dunkin did these in a smaller size, but that they are bigger than the other Dunkin he collects which are usually around 25/30mm and also tend to come in 20's.

We need some pictures here . . . 

In the UK, Kellogg's issued only six (top left image), with Coco-Crispies and Puffa-Puffa Rice (a Quaker Sugar Puffs knock-off!), and the same colours as the Ariel premiums, there are all four versions of Cascanueces in the bottom-left image. The duplicated olive-green figure and the two white ones are oddments who have come in recently.

 

Cereal Offers do them better justice here

At around the same time Americana bubble-gum were issuing them in Germany (and South Eastern France/Italy?), as Piraten Serie, with these two images from old evilBay auctions showing that in addition to the 'standard' four colours, they also got creamy-white ones

The above three iterations were all manufactured by Tito, a premium maker in Portugal, and most carry the Tito mark somewhere, along with the given name. At some point in the late 1970's the mould-tools migrated to Peru, where the colour range got much better!

 

This is my Peruvian sample as they arrived, they are of mixed parentage however, or might be, so these are the notes I made when they arrived, I've listed them alphabetically for now;

• Arrigon (the only figure marked on the feet)
• Al Epacha (Tito mark on trouser cuff, name down cloak)*
• Barbarrója 'Red Beard'
• Cara Cortada 'Scar Face' (letter 'A' is visible, might be bootleg)
• Cascanueces 'Nutcracker'
• Corsario Azul 'Blue Corsair'
• El Arana 'Spider'
• El Bisco 'Biscuit' (no Tito mark, reversed letter 'F' is visible, might be bootleg)
• El Jorobado 'The Hunchbacked' (no Tito mark, might be bootleg)
• El Manco 'The Lame' [hand not foot]
• El Pecas 'Freckles'
• El Pupas 'The Baby'
• El Tuerto 'One-eye'
• Ivan
• Jack el Negro 'The Black'**
• Morgan (no Tito mark, might be bootleg)
• Mustafa
• Papatalo ('The Unbeaten, Unconquered'?)
• Sebastian
• Taric (no Tito mark, letter 'E' is visible, might be bootleg)

* might be Ali Epacha or Al Iepacha . . . 'The Pasha'?
* *Not apparently a racist epithet, the features being clear and of European or 'everyman' appearance, with long straight hair, so; black-hearted, or up to no good!

 

Check Juan's comment below for more on the origin/meaning of these.

 

A similar grouping but I moved them around and swapped a few colours out to make it a better image, a few months later, then kept both for the post anyway! The quality of these is as good as the Euro-issues, but you can see from the notes, that things are starting to go pear-shaped on the tool, specifically with the text and logo-markings, I now suspect these are all the ex-Tito moulds and not bootlegs, as we are about to look at some bootlegs!

At around the same time, some company in the USA, Rubenstein International Inc. (1977) started shipping these fellows in from Mexico, bags have multiple pose duplicates and what appears to be a limited number of poses, but that remains to be confirmed by multiple samples, and I suspect all 20 poses might eventually turn-up.
 

A limited palette of colours includes red, blue, yellow and white, similar to the Euro-issues, but look at the flash and the overall quality, if there are bootlegs out there, these are they, or someone thrashed the tool to within an inch of its life, between Peru and Mexico!

http://vmminiartemonocromaticos.blogspot.com/2010/07/p.html

This guy seems to have only used eBay images without captions or context, so it's not possible to conclude what any of this means, but interesting colours, and suggestions of other issues somewhere, I particularly like the jade-green set of 20 figures. But you can also see the olive and white ones I've started picking-up, so someone around here had issues of both . . . Bonux, Christmas crackers, Maltese festival treats?

It has to be pointed out that the size and levels of caricature of these pirates, means they would mix quite well with the Antipodean Crazy Pirates we saw here

 

But we finish with darker stuff . . . 

 

I was hoping Giselle over at Mokarex would have something useful for this post, as she still owes me about 40 images under the 10-for-1 rule, but her pirate page is shit, she's nicked the Cereal Offers artwork, but all chopped-up and low-res, while she's photoshopped some eBay Peruvian figures which are not the Kellogg's colours, the page purports to represent! Only two of them are right . . . Thieves are thick, you see, somewhere to the left of the bell-curve!

 

But we end with this piece of hilarity from Kent Specher in the 'States, image used for research purposes, with full acknowledgement, wouldn't want to blame anyone else for this dog's dinner of a complete joke.

 

First;  They didn't make tea, they made chicory-coffee! Ersatzkaffee! Then we find there are too many poses, Linde only carried 14 of the designs! Why is there a Tito/Ola ice-cream premium Roman from the Asterix sets in the middle of the already too-big group, at 'K'? And the colours are all wrong!

Unbelievable, staggering incompetence, make it up as you go along to make up for a lack of research; *sloppy* is - I believe - the term used in Pennsylvania! The truth, had he bothered to look for it, is here;

https://www.lindefiguren.at/fotogalerie-linde/piraten/

 

And I've posted links to that site several times I think; most recently when we looked at the spacemen! Again, I've translated the page for English readers;

14 Piraten gibt es von Linde. Von links nach rechts heißen sie: El Bisco, Patapalo, El Arana, El Pecas, Corsario Azul, Tarik, Mustafa, Jack el Negro, El Jorobado, Morgan, El Tuerto, El Manco, Arrigon und Cara Cortada. Der Name ist am Rücken oder an den Beinen zu lesen, daneben sind die Linde-Piraten natürlich immer geprägt. Die zarte Kennung kann leicht übersehen werden. Am häufigsten ist die Farbe blau.

There are 14 pirates from Linde. From left to right they are: El Bisco, Patapalo, El Arana, El Pecas, Corsario Azul, Tarik, Mustafa, Jack el Negro, El Jorobado, Morgan, El Tuerto, El Manco, Arrigon and Cara Cortada. The name can be read on the back or on the legs, and of course the Linde Pirates are always embossed next to them. The delicate identifier can be easily overlooked. The most common color is blue.

Wesentlich seltener sind sie in den Farben gelb, grün und rot.

They are much rarer in color yellow, green and red.

20 Piraten wurden von der spanischen Firma TITO produziert. Nur 14 davon gibt es mit Linde-Kennung. Ob es Al Jepacha, Sebastian, Ivan, Cascanjeces, El Pupas und Barbar Roja (siehe Abbildung) auch von Linde und auch in weiß gibt, bezweifle ich. Die Tito-Piraten wurden in Tüten verkauft. Tito produzierte auch die bekannten Dargaud-Figuren. Die Linde-Piraten waren natürlich im Kaffee.

20 pirates were produced by the Spanish company TITO. Only 14 of them are available with Linde identification. I doubt whether Al Jepacha, Sebastian, Ivan, Cascanjeces, El Pupas and Barbar Roja (see picture) are also available from Linde and in white. The Tito Pirates were sold in bags. Tito also produced the well-known Dargaud figures. The Linde Pirates were of course in the coffee.

And the Linde are logo-marked and likely to be slightly different-sized copies (I don't have any, so I don't know for sure), most of their stuff was copied, as Kent would know if he'd read the series of recent articles in a certain magazine I won't mention, by an author I won't mention either, as neither would want to be associated with this in any way, but Kent knows!

 

What Kent has here, what's in the above image, is either Peruvian  product, from the old Tito/Ola/Dunkin (et al.) group of tools (likely, with the Roman present) or Mexican bootlegs, and which, from the state of it, the colours. and the Roman (!!!!!!), is a test-shot or factory sample of some kind, probably off of evilBay, to which, with no knowledge of the subject whatsoever, he added a shit-ton of text with no research or checking of even basic facts with all the available resources!

 

19 pirates! Not Linde's 14, not Ariel's 20, but 19 . . . and a Roman, in a different size! "Look Ma, I gave them all letters!" But he thinks he can come over here and tell me I've got 'Lots wrong'? Staggering arrogance.

And if you're wondering why some of my Rubenstein images are the same as his, it's becasue we took them from the same seller about a year ago!

P is for Pirateology!

Having mentioned the possibility that the two smaller figures in the round-up might be from a board-game, I can tell you only that it isn't Pirateology, because that's here, right now, and it has different figures!

I thought we'd had the Dragonology set, posted up here, but looking for it just now, quickly realised it's still in the long-queue! Nevertheless, this is a sister game, Pirateology (presumably 'the study and understanding of pirates and piratey things!), from Sababa Toys (via Esdevium Games (Paul Lamond)), and it's a game . . . with pirates!

 

Based on a series of books by Dugald Steer and Nghiem Ta, it followed the Dragonology, Egyptology and Wizardology books, and has since been joined by Oceanology and Monstrology! I'm not going to pretend to know anything about them beyond the fact that clearly a franchise has been born!

 

Skull dice and coins which have gone in the spares pile for future . . . God knows what? But the little PVC-effect micro-pirate ships are rather lovely and will join the Galoob vessels in the relevant drawer of the little cabinet, we looked at a while ago.

 

The rest then went to recycling, I just haven't got the space, and would likely never have played the game, the capitalist, consumption-driven system produces mountains of this stuff, and I just waited for one going cheap (£5.99'ish), to get the figures.

 

And this is they; the meat & four veg'! About 35/40mm, quite well painted and a couple of obvious specifics; a China Sea pirate and a Berber/Barbary/Ottoman Corsair, they are really nice for board-game figures, but you'd have to be careful, as it's all in the base-colour as to who's 'marker' is who's! They seem to tie-in to the coloured banners and flags/pennants on the ships.

ITLAPD - is for Incredibly The Lad Acquired a Plethora of Desperadoes!

AHH-Harrr! Mee'arrties! Anotherrrr Int'ernationaaal Talk loik a poirate day be upon us arrrlll, and despoite the storrm-clouds outsoid, we be ready with a foin selection o'piraty plaaasstik!

To be honest, each year I wonder if there'll be enough to find for the next year, but it always seems to accumulate through the year, along with donations of both figures and images the supporters of the blog always contribute. As has become the norm in the last few years, we'll start with the odds and sods.

This was the ITLAPD 'seen elsewhere' image about three years ago, I think we saw them in detail last year, so it's just a Picasa-clearing box-ticker and colourful bunch of Hong Kong's finest Marx knock-off cake-decorations!

 

I think these were all in Chris Smith's Spring parcel, and are a right old collection of ner'do'wells, the smallest is a rather large pencil-top, the three to the left are probably all from 'big-box' infant toys or play-sets, while the lady is from the Webbs 'Supertoy' sets.

 

These two went to Charity with Chris's blessing, after I'd shot them for this post, and a couple of close-ups were also taken, the Disney mark might be 'Store' or licence, but I think he's Peter Pan, not PotC?

 

These are a real find!  A bit crappy, quality-wise, but growing on me, and we saw them before, a year or so ago, unbranded here, but under Kipp Brothers in the 'States, I now have more poses, and a branding! The axeman with cutless from last time is missing, so it looks like an eight-count on the total poses?

Jemark Pirates are the local mob, and I think these might have come from Peter Evans a while back? Standard rack-toy import fare, probably more likely found in party-shops? We have a large party-shop in Farnborough, and I check the Clapham one every January as regular readers will know, but they neither, ever have figures in their pirate sections!

 

Upper shot here is another lot of recent or contemporary rack-toy types, and it's proof that it'll be years before I have all or most Pirates, and yet the same exercise can be done with Romans, clowns, elephants . . . Nobody can ever have everything!

Below is a probably French figure, around 60mm I think, I forgot to measure him! More chalkware than some olin-composition, maybe pumice? He needs a bit of surgery on his right forearm, but is fortunately the kind of pink-shade you mix from red & white, so a mend will be well hide'able when I get around to it!

A mixture of figures which have come in over the last 12-months from all sources, on the left a PZG copy of Marx's Captain, two shots of a nicely painted, flamboyant chap from Cane, channelling Captain Harlock and a couple of small Vinyl oddities around 40mm, which might be from a board game?

These have all come from Jon Attwood, in two or three parcels with some Halloween stuff also from the same importer, who in this case is Rinco, and he got them as a job-lot from a closed-down beach-shop/kiosk. Erasers (halloween) and rings (here) and in over-moulded rubber, and a pirate theme!

These (upper shot) are currently in Poundland, and many thanks to Peter Evans for announcing them on his Faceplant group, I actually got a bunch of other things, but thought the three 'PLDZ' Hidden Garden naval items were piratey enough for this post!

 

While below the new resin treasure chest joins several others and a couple of piles of loot, again, all come in, in the last 12-months. The little green one looks familiar, but I can't place it and the large one with a base is a Disney Pirates of the Caribbean piece.

 

The small, odd shaped pile of plunder may be from something like Mighty Max (?), while I think the other is out of the top of a larger treasure chest I may already have, or still be looking out for?

 

These were a charity-thing, I think (apologies if you sent them?) and will be from a smaller 'big-box' play-set aimed at younger kids. I suspect the blue chap is a revenue-man, but not depicting a Brit . . . Spanish or generic 'toy town'? Fun, anyway!

Finally, three cannon; one from Technolog I believe; the grey one, a little PVC one which is Toy Major's design and might be an earlier one from the skeleton warriors sets? The red one is from a current rack-toy set (marked 'China') but I don't know which one yet!

 

Two shots of a home-painted Kinder pirate, who will need to be stripped-clean at some point, and a pair of the Papo 40mm's, a set which is still notable by its absence from the Blog in its entirety . . .Maybe next year?

A is for Addendum

Well, I don't think it's technically a 'Follow-up' and it's not really a 'More On' (far too much input from morons this week as it is!), so addendum will do! Just a couple of pieces from Picasa which add to things said in other posts this week.

We saw these in a show-report back in 2018, when I bought a few from the seller at the Plastic Warrior show in Wilton/Twickenham, SE London, now as it happens when I got them home, they'd been mucked about with, so I don't have all the correct contents of all the boxes, and while I said - at the time - they'd get their own post, they never did!

But I'd forgotten I'd shot the rest, on the seller's stall, in case the five boxes weren't 'all of them', so here's a perfect example of the Italian output of Food Premium style novelty mini-kits. If I recall correctly, they had no branding; packaging or product.

 

But they are not R&L, they are not Rubenstein, they are not Tatra, they are not DS Plastics, or Siku, or Manurba, they are Italian. I think a fair few of us are familiar with the CGGC motorcycles (and the lovely figures - some of which would end-up in Kinder-eggs a decade later), also from Italy, and I have seen lovely N-gauge train kits in smaller boxes (something like 'Eppi', but I forget the actual name), one of which is very similar to the R&L animal wagon.

 

The frames are relatively unique and assemble into a fancy base after you've made up the kit, and they are manufactured in a dense polymer which is a nylon/rayon type or possibly a hybrid propylene of some kind, sold two kits to a box.

While this is the rather poor rendition of what I suspect is meant to be a Douglas F4D Skyray, from Montaplex of Spain, it's in a different league, being soft polyethylene, chunky and simplified, it just reminds us of the breadth covered by these mini-kits as an oeuvre!

It was sold in larger multi-sets with three other kits, in little single envelopes (early iteration, I think) and as an accompaniment/accessory to some of the figure sets, pretty randomly in the latter case!

B is for Beach Buggys [sic]!

When I was a kid I always wondered what '[sic]' or '(sic)' meant after a word or phrase, and while I did ask the odd adult from time to time, I clearly didn't ask the right ones (with 4-billion people to the left of the bell-curve [phrase du jour!], there's a lot of pretty thick adults out there, people; be careful!), and while I kept meaning to look it up, I'd never remember to, when a dictionary was nearby!

Eventually, when I started my Encyclopedia of Military Abbreviations (don't ask, several box-files of shite, all in long-hand, several formats/part-drafts and unlikely to ever be finished, but it probably kept me out of various troubles!), I did finally look it up! I'm sure many of you, too, now know what it means, but for those who don't - from the good old Oxford English;

 

Used in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original, as in a story must hold a child's interest and ‘enrich his [sic] life’ or a hero of antient [sic] Rome.

 

In our case, here, the word should, correctly, be 'Buggies' or 'Buggy's', not the given Buggys. Now I know one or two idiots across the pond will assume I'm having a go, specifically at America/American and that therefore I'm being "racist" (again!), but I'm not, I'm just correcting an incorrection* in the correct manor [sic], because I like a bit of correctness!

*Noun. incorrection f (plural incorrections) a fault, default or impropriety, especially of language. State of what is incorrect. (dated) Character of what goes against courtesy and politeness (Heeheehee! The Rubenstein card is impolite!).

 

Rubenstein's Dune Buggys [sic]; As you can see, they - like ALL Rubenstein sets - have a stock code (3004), and you can find them in single colour sets and multicolour sets, two production tranches or one quirky production run? If anyone knows it will be Kent Sprecher, hopefully he'll tell us, with empirical supporting evidence, in his forthcoming, world-saving, Hugh-beating, article of grand-importance?

Six different designs, very much in the style of Rosenhain and Lipmann from Australia, but are not R&L, and are not claimed as such by the R&L experts. R&L did do vehicle sets including the Dragsters which are certainly in the same vein, but where R&L have lots of fine parts (or several per kit - wheel hubs and axles in particular), these are much simpler kits.

Unlike some of the other vehicle sets from Rubenstein which are a softer polyethylene, mine are in a hard 'kit' polystyrene, however the multicolour set may be the opposite, and it might be that they all got issues in both plastic-types/colour-ways, I don't know, but hopefully Kent will tell us everything, about everything, all at once?!

 

I should point out, before some bottom-burping oaf in Pennsylvania hysterically reports "Ah-Haa, they've all got a name he didn't tell us!", that they all have a name and I haven't told you, only because I forgot to write them down before they went to storage, life is too short and it gives us an excuse to return to them another day! Like when I build the other four . . . I was in a hurry, this all happened about a year ago, you know? I can't presage the idiocy of idiots, 24/7/365.

 

R&L did however, supply Aurora with their little kits, at the same approximate time Rubenstein were carrying their Dune Buggys [sic]! Sold as Snap-a-roos, they were the cereal premium sets, as sixes, sold in little boxes, which is how these (and similar domestically produced) sets were also issued in Italy.

But then 'Burns' reports this group of three, apparently simple, small, clip-together kits as being announced in the 1973 Lindberg catalogue (or catalog, not a '[sic]', but an accepted foreign variation of English), which was subsequently never issued. The feeling being that they were supposed to be, or seemed to have a connection with; the eponymous 'Kilroy' of World War II fame.

 

Which, applying TJF's logic must mean there's a Kilroy 'of The World' fame, out there too! And can you hear that scratching noise in the background? That's Sprecher quickly adding a paragraph to his Magnum Opus! He's probably added several in the last seven days.

That they (the Aurora set) never appeared and Rubenstein's wouldn't appear until sometime in or after '77, suggests that the Rubenstein set, was whatever was left after the above three pre-production artworks went through the production process, those driver/Kilroy figures would have required much more complicated (and therefore expensive) tooling for undercuts &etc . . . so there is a possibility they were simplified into this set . . . but I stress, that it's casual musings on the subject, not canon-history or any fact of any kind.

Another candidate for the Aurora no-shows is this similar set from R&L, but again, not these, and again; fine parts, a feature. However, there are similarities in one or two of the main-parts, with both the Lindberg drawings and the Rubenstein set, so who knows; Burns didn't, I don't, Sprecher doesn't, The R&L guys don't and TJF never will!

F is for Follow-up - GI Flats

Here's a fun one, ready to publish a while ago, but stuck in the long-queue for obvious reasons; forewarned is forearmed! Remember when we had a look at what used to be the Bonnie-Built flats which have grown to encompass all sorts of figure-issues, on three continents, in two sizes and several plastics . . . well, check these puppies out!

I found the Armoured Cars! Argo at Loeser's, was one of the two brands I added to the canon on that occasion, unlike TJF I don't brag 'Discovery' all the time (although I did brag a bit at the end, that time!), but whatever they are, whatever you want to call them, there have been plenty of them here, over the years, and this one - like the next - came from the late James Chase collection, back in 2005/6.

 

What is known in legal circles as a 'manuscript note', that is an unattributed (or handwritten) document or part document, usually undated, which nevertheless adds to the evidential 'bundle'. In this case, a newspaper cutting discussed in the previous post, as was the likely 'Loeser'.

 

The shot on the right was an accidental no-flash, which came out well-enough to give a better idea of the true or everyday colours, but has reflected off the rust to make the underside look far worse than it is!

 

 

I still need to find the Ambulance at some point, but it's nice to be able to explain the weird artwork in the advert to myself! Clearly some BB's are fed-in through the hole in the roof and the wheels drive a firing mechanism, spraying pellets all over the place - parents must have loved it!

I'm not 100% sure quite how that system works however, and when I have time at the other end, I will unfold the floor tabs and strip the spare olive-green-one down to see how it works, and decide whether or not they all need restoring, I suspect they might be jammed-up with old pellets! Or worse - Junior's 'replacement' pellets, whatever they turn out to be!

A reminder of the other figures I added to the canon in that post, the Spencer issue, as Jan put it so wonderfully at the time, 'Pancake Soldiers'! An image also from the Chase collection, and also disassembled in the previous post.

 

An image which aught to be exclusive to this Blog, as I scanned-it from the original cutting, cropped it, cleaned it up and produced a rich-text version of the blurb to accompany the finished image.

 

Over the intervening five-and-a-half years, since that previous post it's become pretty obvious all the Spencer's are Spencer Gifts, still extant with 600 outlets in North America (USA & Canada).

 

Which only leaves the question of why, after stealing the image from me, did Kent Sprecher decide to tell everyone they were English? Screen-cap above, he's probably got a Spencer's round the effing corner from where he's at!

Not 'British', not from the 'UK' but specifically; "English"? You need empirical evidence to make statements like that, and the only evidence we have here, is the phrase 'Corpsmen' and the Dollar price? Two very American things!

 

An image thief, AND stupid. He literally didn't even read the article he was stealing the image from - probably in a guilt-hurry to download the .jpg and get back to pretending he's never seen or found the blog!

He's had that up there for at least four five years (I published on the 16th October 2018, it was on his site by the 8th December, having not been there on the 8th November), completely made-up and false caption for an image he hasn't asked me for . . . and yet he's decided to get off the fence and take the gloves off, while TJF has weighed-in! Well, learn to take your spanking like a man, 'cos there's plenty more of it to come.

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Later the same day - Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive! Kent wants us to believe he got it from a sales list???

 

What a sales list from 1961, full of tons of similar rare stuff he hasn't shown us yet??? A sales list of images from my Blog? A modern sales list using complete imagery from 1961 newspapers he decided to crop identically to mine??? A Sales list that informed him England has a chain of shops called Spencer (maybe he's thinking of upmarket clothing retailer Marks & Sparks!), that operated in dollars??? Which he just happened to find days after I published??? How stupid does he think everyone else is?

All he needed to do to save some face was blame an anonymous contributor for sending it to him, and take it down with a mouth-drying apology, but no, he's chosen to double-down on his theft with a cockamamie stack of implausible horse-shit lying! In my book, someone who is a liar and a thief, is a crook. If you are not straight, you're crooked.