D is for Damn Shelfies!

I swear to God (with something more believable as my witness) these shelfies are hiding in Picasa, and every time I think I've rounded them all up, three more pop out of the woodwork! These are from October, December and the other day!

We looked at these infant-like Teamster trucks in a previous shelfie post, but I had shot another of the 'water tank' version with sharks in, really just a box ticker, as these animals will turn-up in mixed lots years from now, and need ID'ing!

 

A rather poor shot, like the previous taken in B&M, this one at Christmas, and these were in those bog-box stacks above the groceries in the 'entrance' isle you are forced to go down the full length of before you can navigate to where you really want to be! But it means they may have cleared after Christmas? If they haven't, I'll try to get a better shot next time I'm over there!

 

The brown Polar bear looks like the cream ones in the common charity-shop group, so they may be new colours of those existing, so-far generic, sculpts.

 

Seen in Lidl a few weeks ago, it looks like an Ariane or similar Euro-satellite launch-vehicle? Siku, and a long-box - twice the price, of so, of their little Matchbox types.

N is for Nursery Rymes!

Whatsisname Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on a Tuesday,
Married on a Wednesday,
Took ill on a Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,

Still believing Stevens International (US importer/jobber) and Sunjade (wholesaler/shipper) were the names behind the output of Supreme - SP Toys, poor chap! How does such ignorance persevere in a hobby where the facts are known? Is it that a certain type feels they can only shout at the world for its unfairness, by being idiots within their own 'community'?

Buried on Sunday,
That was the end,
of Whatsisname Grundy

T is for Two - Freebies!

Except at £4, 5, or 6.99, these modern kid's periodicals aren't exactly cheap, so whatever they Sellotape to the cover is not entirely 'free', but it brings down the unit cost, and none more so than this rather generic mag' I found back in November - Everything Jungle!

Two stories and forty-four stickers, sort of explains why we are going extinct, doesn't it? Sort of explains why we aren't rioting in the streets over the 300,000+ excess deaths of our loved-ones in the last four years, why we aren't protesting outside No.10 about the closure of 700 libraries? When you compare Look & Learn, World of Wonder or Tell Me Why to what kids get given these days, it rather explains everything.

 

But let's not worry about that boring real-life stuff, we've got free toys! I'm not sure if you'd call the upper cat a Leotah, or a Cheepard, but comparison with the other big cats will eventually clear up that attempt at a lame joke, by forcing it into one bag or the other, and for either cat it's quite well decorated for a Chinese generic.

 

As is the tiger, 90% of all tigers ever, having being pretty poor in the decoration department, over the years (and I include all generations/materials of Britains in that damming statement), obviously Schleich/Papo it 'aint, but better than most, it is. A reasonable [baby - if they are in-scale] elephant makes up the trio.

But then they gave us these as well, Iwako style/rip-off, plug-together erasers, two parrots, and - more amazingly - two designs, bargain! Kennedy Enterprises go in the Tag list and everyone is happy . . . aren't they?

P is for Petroleum

On one level this is just a nostalgia hit for people of a certain age, and not a young one, as this is from a mid-1970's colour supplement (I forgot to note which one/when), and the mid 1970's were, now, fifty years ago!

So which ones do you remember, these were all brands at the time, and the article makes clear there were more besides. Mex and Maxol are obviously sibling brands, while Sky and VIP look to be related. Some (six or seven, ten maybe, Mobil seem to have disappeared in the last decade or so, along with Chevron and Murco? Fina?) are still with us, with new ones like Q8 (Kuwait). We were a Shell family and had an account at the little garage on Phoenix Green, where they would come out in their khaki overalls and pump the fuel for us!

 

But this also helps illustrate a point I try to make from time to time . . . we all know the premiums issued by the bigger boys, even if, like National or Cleveland, they are no longer with us, because they were made in the sort of numbers where a fair amount survives; coin collecting albums (Shell and Esso), comic-book adverts for the promotion (Cleveland), surviving packaged examples (Jet), &etc.

 

But many of these would have issued some sort of incentive from time to time, and some of those would have been toys or collectables, which were never issued in the numbers to leave a trace, hell, half the above have no mention on the whole Internet!

 

But when things keep turning-up, like the 'Euro-premium' colours of Magic Roundabout figures, rather than our own Nabisco cereal premium colours, chances are they were issued by one of the above, or another, not illustrated above, or a smaller/regional ice-cream brand, or fleet of ice-cream vans, or even a regional chain of convenience stores, long since swallowed-up by the big-six?

Not generic, just lost! And what is the yellow disc one - CW?

Next day -

The link I mentioned in the comments is still there, it's changed appearance in the decade or more since I last looked, and has a legacy-page look to it now anyway, but a useful list and nostalgia read which also educates!

http://www.petrolmaps.co.uk/special/glossary.htm

W is for Weston Figures, then Campbell Scale Models, Now Gone?

I don't know enough about these to do more than post the scans as a guide, and to tick that box in this series of posts, they seem to have been around as Weston since the 1940's, and we looked at a few sleeper-car/restaurant-car figures back at the beginning of the Blog;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/w-is-also-for-weston.html

Unknown, but 1970's - from the price?

Mid 1950's flyer.

1960's US model railway magazine.

The 1975 Walther's catalogue has them as a division of Campbell Scale Models who also did building kits and a range of scenics, so they had obviously bought the old company, or its IP/mould-bank, to give them an instant figure range!

 

From a British model railway magazine about 20/25 years ago.

 

 

Walther's again, 2000's.

 

They seem to have finally folded in the early summer of last year, whether anyone will pick-up the tools seems to be for the birds, or the Gods to decide?

E is for Expelling a Few Myths!

Not exactly the best spacemen ever made, being very toy-like, but in common with
the 60mm Knights from the same Cherilea stable, having a charm all of their own, and as they are quite common, with a relatively convoluted history, worth collecting, for their position on the oeuvre.

 

 

Well, that's a bit metaphysical! I don't have that many, when I had the chance to grab a few I was actually helping someone else collect them, and he snapped up all the good ones, each time, before I could shoot them, but I've collated enough to tell the story.

 

Here are the two main types of Cherilea production, baseless, or based, which helps banish the first myth; that Marx were the ones without bases, while Cherilea had bases. The fact is Cherilea added bases to their own 'pod-feet' designs, as the 70's resulted in the popularisation of 'deep pile' or 'shag' carpets - an abomination of dirt, dust, food and pet-hair storage, which went bald in paths (desire-lines) and rucked-up in the corners as the substrate stretched or broke-up.

Bonus Hugh's Handy Helpful Home Hobby Hint (H6 the 7th!) - the dust from the perished rubber backing, once sieved, makes an excellent scatter material for modelling, and a jar of it lasts for decades longer than the carpets were ever going to! And the stuff left in the sieve, once you've picked out the lumps and hairs and things, makes excellent ballast for model railways!

There were six poses, and this is a mix of originals (top-left/bottom-right) and copies, which we will get on to in a minute, the black-suited chap here always seemed designed to be driving or riding some kind of space-vehicle or hover-bike, with outstretched arms and open hands, but as far as I know nothing suitable was ever released, so he makes the best space-zombie!

Not 'swoppets' in the traditional sense of the word, and, apart from the addition of bases - they never got the move to swivel bases which the khaki Infantry did, with their third series.

 

But they did have clip-on life-support packs/tool belts and plug-in heads with slip-over helmets, I think there were six designs of 'webbing and helmet' so you could technically seek to procure 216 versions, without looking at plastic colour or base/no base, but that would be very boring, these are better held as a small, eclectic 'sample'.

 

Two of the figures are equipped with that old 1950's favourite, the Enfield EM2 experimental/trails bullpup-configured assault rifle, which dates them! Still, they made a few hundred which would have been (might still be) in a store somewhere, why not give them to the Space Corps!

 

In space, no one can hear your 1940's flash-bulb! Variation on a theme, illustrating how much smaller the copies are (second from the left), easy to tell, as they usually have paint highlights absent from the originals, and because they are manufactured from PVC vinyl-rubber, not the polyethylene Cherilea used.

And to the second myth, that Marx 'made' them or 'did' them, they didn't, these figures (the PVC copies) were issued by dozens of importer/jobber's on two, if not three, continents, and were sourced from a Hong Kong manufacturer, in every case except Marx, with no real difference between the batches.

 

Some Marx sets claim Taiwan, however, as the source, but they sourced other stuff from Taiwan, sometimes credit HK and Taiwan on the same packaging, and were - by the time they carried these - importing other stuff from the colony, both from their own factories and from people like Blue Box. These were just another line, just another possible revenue stream, bought-in like others, and from the same source as all the others.

This figure and the similar kneeling pose hark back to earlier sculpts from Ajax/Archer in the 'States and Johilco over here, following the in-space-you-will-need-a-small-piece-of-equipment-on-the-end-of-a-long-lead-plugged-into-your-backback rule! Try running from a bunch of Xenomorphs, carrying that shit!
 

Toward the end they got, first the four-hole sandy bases, then the large 'landscaped' bases also seen on some knights, clearly, deep-pile shag was winning the carpet war!

 

The third myth is more accidental, it was believed for years that the moulds had gone-on to Tibidarbo in Italy, but I suspect the Italians just bought a lot in, as they seem to have had a lot with the ovoid-cartouche bases, in green-sand-silver/two-hole and sand/four-hole, but none of the earlier baseless production, nor any of the late, large, marbled-base examples. Nor have the mould tools magically turned-up in Italy ever?

Comparison between the foot-marks of the baseless figures, Hong Kong vinyl-rubber copy on the left, polyethylene Cherilea original on the right. Some always claim these as mould-release pin-marks, but I don't think it's always the case, and here, the PVC one may have the small hollows to try and prevent the edge/rim of the pod-foot from curling-up during cooling, post-mould, and causing the underside of the foot to dome, making them even harder to stand up than the British donors!

 

In part included for Pompey Dave, as I told him the other day, that they were on the blog somewhere, when they weren't! And with thanks to Adrian Little for a couple of the shots, and someone whose name I can't find, but who corrected me on the green 'Mechaniod', for that is what they were called!

 

The correction being that I had been told the fully-open/lattice-topped Mechanoids were rarer Dalek command ships, and the alternate open/closed panel ones were common 'UFO's, but apparently that's a fourth myth! They are two of several design variants, which don't have a Dalek-non-Dalek rule, anyway, they are all missing a plug-in ladder, and mine's missing its electronic mast thingy!

To complete the spacey nature of the exercise, two Daleks! I've said in the past I thought my other was black, but it's actually silver, so I have three metallic ones and no black, or flat colour versions. Steven Smith has been posting the most extraordinary collection of them elsewhere, for the last four years, and there's quite a selection, especially of the Mechanoids.

 

It's more of an unmanned-probe isn't it! A quick scaler, the Daleks are pretty good for the 60mm figures, most Doctors (Dr. Whoms!) were about six-inches taller than the scabrous Skaro survival-suits, so baseless Cherilea spacemen are just about the right height.

A Nucorp set, as well as Marx, I've seen them in Larami, Unique and Jak Pak livery I think, and somewhere I have two unmarked-generics from Italy (I think I'd forgotten I'd got one, and bought another from the same seller a few months later!), with a squeeze foot-pump rocket launcher, they are not rare, in either form - HK or UK.
 

We've seen this 1974 catalogue here in full, not that long ago, but here's the 'Astronauts' cropped-out, I consider them 'spacemen' in my universe, due to the whacky webbing/backpacks, helmets and weaponry. It was this era of production which Tibidarbo seem to have received quantities of, mostly these white ones, but also numbers of the pale blue figures.

T is for That Was My Idea, That Was!

Except it was Vic Reeves! And these aren't his at all! Something a little different tonight, these are my Lego improvement ideas, and they fall into two groups, those I sent to Lego back in the 1990's (before I knew they were the Evil Empire!), and those I probably didn't!

 

Sent to Lego

 

I can't now remember if it was before or after they had released their own footballer sets, I have a feeling it was after, they weren't very good in my opinion, and while I'm not saying mine were better, I was aiming for something more in line with the rest of the range, i.e. a carpet-play thing, more compatible with all the other Lego 'elements', as we are supposed to call a pile of Lego these days!

 

The most obvious difference was the attempt to make them look more like footballers in shorts & shirt-sleeves! And once I was looking at their sets and giving the whole thing some thought, the ball was obvious, as was a simple goal, using their own element rules, with the ball having their click-holes, so it could be used with other things in other colours, space sets, or ships mast radar-domes, while the goal is a glorified development of the fence/crash-barrier or roll-bar, both elements which had been around for years.

 

Further musings! I also thought a normal green baseboard (obviously in scaled-down pitch dimensions), overprinted with white lines, would be far better than the strange green chunks of their system (so it must have been after?), and while I provided alternate cross-sections for the bare arms/legs, the intention was to have them as the standard Lego 'rod' thickness, so they could grab each other in the goalmouth for a foul!

No, I'm joking, I was already, as with the ball, thinking ahead to circus clowns or acrobats, who would be able to grab each other's arms or legs, with their Lego hands (already set for the standard rod dimension), to build human pyramids or do tricks or something . . . they've never done Circus? They've never done a marching band?

 

My second idea, was so obvious I don't know why they've never done it, especially in the larger Primo or Duplo sizes. Alphabet or early-leading blocks, I mean, why the hell hadn't they done something so obvious? I sent these to them 25/30 years ago? And yet, as far as I know, they STILL haven't done them, or anything like them, despite the old printed bricks being among the better sellers in the vintage sets, we had it; HOTEL, GARAGE, TAXI . . . I can't remember the other two, you could light them from behind!

 

While my third suggestion was more of an exercise in getting studs onto the Insectoid wings, so more stuff could be attached to them. The actual range had transparent aqua-blue wings with few or no studs and a sort of printed-circuit design, and I just thought if they were studded, they could be given more robot 'stuff', like modern jets, or Stukas!

Probably not sent to Lego

I always thought the medieval range/Robin Hood sets could benefit from better detailing, and these are a few ideas along those lines. Mega Bloks already had sculpted-side elements in their range (as I was working on these), and the louvred-side 2x1 brick was eventually copied by Lego (slightly differently), but think how much better the current awful-AFOL architecture sets would be, or the Harry Potter sets, with better stone-mouldings?

 

I think they've done a hat like that now, the number of blind bag figures over the last decade and a half has produced all sorts of clothing and accessory elements, while the scarf was basically a variation of their own life-jacket, but the main idea was a single ski, and it's applications, they only do a sort of double thing which is unrealistically short?

 

Almost certainly not sent to Lego

 

A few more bits of medieval architecture, but I glued in an idea I literally had on the back of an envelope! Up until the 1990's, propellers in Legoland were pretty basic, there was a 2x3 tile with spigot for helicopters, or a 2x2 tile with a blunt-squared pointy bit at 90-degrees, and spigot for aeroplane wings, and a later, third version with an actual, small, grey propeller, rather than the studded-planks which had always been attached to the older two.

 

Now, at the time I was buying a lot of Lego from Car Boot sales, and damaged elements, after cleaning, would be cut, trimmed, shaved or melted back to a usefully usable 'new' or unique element, and this started life - I think - as the upper torso of an early Duplo figure.

I was trying to get it so that it would make a perfect, if generic, propeller for single seat planes like Spitfires or Cessnas! Or you could have four of them for a Fortress or Lancaster! Now - of course - they probably have much better propellers, and companies like Cobi and Airfix (Quickbuild) are making better Lego-compatible 'planes!

The bulk of the Lego went to 'Timpo' Dave in 2006/7? While the rest went to Johnny G's kids over a number of Christmases, all scrupulously split equally! And somewhere I have a nice "Thank you, but no-thanks' letter from some woman in Bilund . . . but they never sent the drawings back . . . dun, dun, DUN!

News, Views etc . . . Housekeeping!

It was the Italian riders I had in mind on the Britains post the other day (thank you FitzjamesHorse), and I had scanned a cutting for adding to the post, but forgot it, it's now been added, to the post here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/03/b-is-for-brush-rail-britians-show.html

I also forgot to thank David Fisher for letting me photograph his carded Jungle set from Grendon at the recent Sandown Park toy fair, when iI posted it the other day, so a quick apology to him, and a note now added to that post; 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/02/g-is-for-grendon-underwood.html

The News, Views have taken a bit of a back-seat this last 12 or 18-months, but it's all piling-up and will be caught-up with at some point! I mean there's 921 images in the ScanDoc folder for Christ's sake, it's a madness!

M is for Musings on Multiple Mounts

This post is a narrative conversation with myself, and you, if you're reading, and comes out of a conversation I had with Chris Smith before Christmas, at which time, I think I said I'd publish this in January, or at least that sort of 'after Christmas' which might lead someone to think it was imminent, but with 120 posts in less than 90-days, I can hardly be accused of idleness!

 

And I say 'conversation', or, in the title "Musings" because there are few facts here, and those bits which are facts can be taken with a pinch of salt, the whole aimed at preventing TJF rushing-off to correct me out of someone else's great tome, everything here is open to question, even the absolute facts . . . except that the Japanese officers in some of the shots really are Blue Box!

 

First a reprise of mine, except that the ones we saw last time have gone off to storage and these are all new, I think? From the left in both shots we have the Blue Box Japanese officer on his mule-looking pony, then the Blue Box farm horse and finally a clone from one of the Hong Kong neighbours, who probably got it into a dozen generic bagged or carded sets!

 

Belly-marks suggest that the farm horse was around for a while before his owners cloned him for service in World Carpet War II, the generic - in this case - is unmarked, often they would have some sort of mark, even a poorer third version of the Blue Box's neat DIN-font.

Chris has one of his officers on a Blue Box farm horse, but the other came with another horse, of which he's found a second in white, and both have the rider peg, and he was wanting to know if it was a Blue Box design (an alternative Japanese mount), or something else?

 

Both are copies of a Britains horse, from the civilian-farm-show jumping-equestrian lines, and both are the straight-legged version, saddle-cloth might be original, but I suspect has been added, from a Wild West horse/set, and the reins may or may not be likewise original/added later?

 

Both have the sort of mark I just referred to, more of a 'typewriter' font, or uneven engineers-stamp, actually, one of the better ones, in that nothing seems upside down or mirror-reversed (which a lot are/have elements of), but they do read opposite ways, however not really the neatness of the Blue Box?

 

At which point we have to hark back to this morning's post, and any follow-up feebleBay search you did at my suggestion . . .

. . . where hopefully you found at least three sets? There were about five before Christmas, maybe seven with other search terms, but this afternoon I just briefly found three. One of which proves the theory I couldn't have proved back then, so maybe there are less question marks now, than there were going to be, but never mind, I think I've caveat'ed myself against blundering oafs trying to correct me!

 

You can see here, that the set has a pair of Britains production horses, one with the straight front legs (slightly different from the Hong Kong copy, where they are less splayed, but it's the same sculpt), the other with the bent leg, here though both riders are the woman with the dark riding jacket.

All four images in this sequence are from auction sites, but I've cropped-in to the bit we need. here we see again, Britains, again, two ladies, but this time it's both bent-leg horses, and the expanded polystyrene foam tray seems designed to take both types, with the bent-legs snugger than the straighter legged horse.

 

To be fair, both Britains horses are variations of the same sculpt, just with some leg/tail position changes, well brushed and groomed competition types (where you see those pointed tails) all look very similar!

 

Here another version of the game has the same pair of bent-leg Hong Kong production as mine (previous post), but with cream-plastic riders, he in pinks, she in her chic number! Indeed, the rule apparently established at this point is - always contrasting colours of horse, but not so bothered about the riders?

 

Confirmed by another Hong Kong set, now a vac-form 'styrene tray, and again both bent-leg versions, and we're back to two girls riding. The point being, these sets had either/or a pair of mixed, or only straight/bent legged horses, in contrasting colours, which for some time were sourced from Britains, and some equal time, Hong Kong. Riders shared the source with horses, but could be either opposite sexes, or the same sex.

 

Caveats - so far (and apart from today and Christmas, I have searched for these before, not least when I bought mine, from whatever was available that day, a few years ago), the white horse hasn't turned-up in a set, yet, and two male riders, together, haven't been seen in a set yet, either.

 

But the point I'm suggesting, is that to have the mounting spigot for a rider, the white horse must be from these sets, as Wild West wagons, say, for instance, even if given Britains standing horse piracies, wouldn't need the rod, and the other Hong Kong source of Britains show-jumping/hunter piracies use the gate-jumping horse.

 

This one, seen in singles, pairs and fours.

But this also turned-up during the shenanigans for the above, and it's another take on the Britains standing horse, but around 1:30th, and almost certainly from a horse-box or animal transporter of some kind, probably cheap and plastic in a colourful box, and now over a hundred-quid for a good one!

 

Here compared with the Japanese officer's one, as I don't have Chris's to hand, and my Salter examples are both bent-leg, and were shot years ago anyway, all three show-jumping posts were shot a while ago, which I why I had to go back to feeBay in December, and do it all as two posts!

 

You can see why I consider it a mule, it's got a face only its mother would love! But the bigger one is actually quite a nice version, and in a heavy, dense plastic which might be polypropylene?

 

While this pair, similar sculpt, seen here back in 2019, are Redbox, the Redbox of Blue Box's younger brother, another sibling of Tai Sang Toys. And you can clearly see the Hong Kong mark is the same as the farm horse, with the Redbox addition, and also probably from a horse-box/transporter toy. Which makes it all far more interesting that it looked when Chris and I were messaging three or four months ago!

 

This having the same splayed legs which takes it slightly away from the Britains donor, and clearly (as a much better model) itself copied by the unknown jobbing contract-manufacturer who supplied Salter. And possibly also the donor for the Blue Box farm horse, however I'm not so sure about that, while poorer, I suspect the Blue Box one is earlier and was a seperate pirating exercise, with the turned head, odd face etc . . . ?

And the bigger one, well, it's had the tail (long, pointed and linking all the others, Britains, Blue Box, Redbox and unknown-for-Salter's) attached to the rear leg and is marked Made in Macau, but in a very 'Tai Sang' font!

 

And we know from the research done in the height of the 'port Tai Sang' (don't look for it on a map) battle with TJF and his fuckmonkey, that there were several facilities in Macau, one of the Blue Box Vinyl (PVC) factories (and PVC copies of the above rack-toy fence-jumper turn-up as well!), Blue Box Die-Cast, and eventually (I think?) the facilities of Zee/Zylmex (turned-over to Redbox), some of which were there? Not sure about that, though.

 

However, there is every possibility this is another Tai Sang piece, issued by Blue Box, or Redbox, or one of the other in-house Tai Sang brands we found back then . . . or a contracting client?

So there we are, left with as many questions as we started with, or more, depending upon how deep you want to dig, but slowly the pieces do fall into place, and keeping an eye on the Salter sets from time to time will hopefully yield the white horse? It could, just as easily, turn-out to be a bagged horse and rider, but I've only ever seen the two riders copied, not the farmer, not the soldier and not the two gymkhana kids? Equally, searching for 'Horse Boxes' might help with a brand or branding's for several of the above!

Anyway, it's mostly conjecture or theorising, thanks to Chris for the images, and add your thoughts, if you have any, it's that kind of post!

T is for Thomas Salter

A Scottish toy firm with a convoluted history of its constituent parts following bankruptcy in the early 1980's, which had little to do with the failure of Linka to set the hobby world alight, and more to do with mismanagement, but, while better known for their science and chemistry sets (friendly (?) rivals to Merit and Lott's), they carried, for quite a while, this 'approved' show jumping set, in the style of the Britains one.

Early (most?) sets contain the actual Britains horses, either standing or walking were used and can be found (see next post for more musing on this aspect of the set!), while late sets contained Hong Kong piracies, as mine does, here, both the walking sculpt.

 

Jumps are similar to the Britains ones, with flat-topped or angled wings, what sets them apart from Britains and the Parker-Palitoy sets, is the addition of a base, with the arms of the jump wings moulded into them, they could benefit from some green paint to help hide the bases and highlight the base struts.

 

Poles, planks and a gate were issued, and the red of the red/white visual markings were thermo-printed, on one side only. No wall, brushes or water feature were included though, nor do they give us little Christmas trees in tubs! The jumps are all polystyrene, the riders are polyethylene (Hong Kong) or ICI Alkathene (Britains - also a polyethylene!)

 

The male in hunting pink and the lady in a chic-cut riding/sports-jacket from Hong Kong, are also direct copies of the Britains sculpts and one wonders what Britains thought of losing a small, but useful contract for their product, to cheap copies of the same, from Hong Kong?

There will be a follow post which features these, but musing on other things, and if you can be arsed - a search for these on feeBay will reveal three sets currently listed - one the same as mine, one which might have been mucked-about with and one with two Britains stock, one walking, one standing, and that's important for the next post. in December there were five sets listed with similarly mixed riders.