F is for Farm-hands and Feeder-fellows

This has been in 'Edit' since last January and a copy has been on my laptop's desktop for about 6 months waiting for me to get round to finishing the blurb!

We actually looked at Blue Box farm ages ago, so this is more of a ramble round some of the other aspects of the figures - all Britains piracies - than anything else, and rather unfortunate that they were in the queue while certain other thing were/are going on, but I can't shift a shadow, so I'll have to work through it!

And at least we've some new stuff to look at; I'm not showing you the same stuff with some bits taken out because I was making it up as I went along the first time!

So to the bit we DID look at last time, yer'bog-standard Blue Box farm-hand  copied from Britains with [some of] the same tools. So far I haven't found the hoe in Blue Box (or other) guise, nor the besom-broom but the rake, pitch-fork and stiff-broom are all to be found along with one of the meat sticks (see below).

Now; I used to think green bases = 'farm' and grey bases = 'zoo' sets, and that's not a bad rule of thumb from what you find, however during one of the tedious searches required to correct and correct again the wilder utterances of Erwin Sell I found a guy somewhere (no; I don't think it was evilBay, some other site? May still be findable) who referred to the right-hand figure as Redbox, as it was a stand-alone figure on a sales site, I have to assume he had seen it previously in that guise - to come to that conclusion.

As we've also discovered from the short war (they seem to have given-up on almost as soon as they started it?) and he and Paul Stadinger's misappropriation of the Vectis catalogue; both Redbox and Blue Box shared the output of both the main Singapore plant at Toa Payoh and the Hong Kong facility at Aberdeen, so it's fair to further assume that the figures are what they were in that - also deliberately miss-presented by the pair of them - catalogue: 'Blue Box-Redbox'.

The new question mark is over the chap with the yellow shirt, he only has a smaller 'HONG KONG' rather than the larger, fuller 'MADE IN HONG KONG' of the Blue Box-Redbox figures.

Also there are differences in the sculpture of the base, suggesting copy, or re-cutting? However, as the Singapore end were also responsible for the same chap with a moulded-on tool (the missing hoe!), all bets are off until a set turns-up with him in it!

The colours are reminiscent of Lucky Toys stuff, particularly the road-racing and garage sets, but they weren't known for soft plastic figures, although more of that in the near future and the more you look the more you find with HK!

And here's the evidence! Circles within circles and these are only what I have here, in storage I have one of the long thin boxes - we looked at ages ago - with 4x5½ click-shut bags, with probably 50+ variations of this or the other Britains figures, and many more 'unknown farm and zoo figures' including HK copies of Starlux - themselves copied by their near neighbours - everybody was up to it!

The smaller 50mm'ish figure with the red trousers is actually a very nice, finely-etched, sculpt, while the factory painted 35mm chap is from a more commercial issue of the pink one we've seen in sets before, but who also came in Christmas crackers, gum-ball capsules and the like.

One of the sets referred to above - because this has been in 'Edit' for so long, the set was re-shot for the mini-farm post back in the Autumn; hey-ho! This is the one trying to look like it may be Blue Box - it 'aint!

Below is a clean sample of some Blue Box livestock which came in a while ago, we'll look at the animals when I get my stuff out of storage, in the meantime there's always chance another Blogger may cover them, especially now he's trebled his output and raised the quality [of some] of his copy?

SP is for Supreme . . . Post!

Actually; Supreme Products or Supreme Toys but using SP in the 1990's, like a lot of the older Hong Kong companies (they were formed in 1974), we know little of Supreme or their output, as it was mostly contract manufactured for third parties.

But from the late 1980's they did (like Soma - another older company) start to mark some stuff (mostly packaging) so that it was ID'abl at the point of sale, allowing us to ID other stuff by default, even though A) not everything they produced and/or marketed followed the 'pattern' and B) even today they don't always mark their stuff!

Case in point is this 'shelfie' I shot in Basingrad last Friday, these are a reissue of Supreme's first version (mid-late 1970's) knights, marked-up to Halsall's rack-toy brand My Toy - Time4toys, new paint (compost-green shields over a silver wash) but otherwise unmistakeable.

In a few weeks (when the budget is healthier) I'll get the set and we'll have a quick look at it in close up, as a stand-alone.

I hope everyone is familiar with these (as this is all I've got - and all I want really!), Supreme's second attempt at knights, trying to compete with the action figure market/craze of the post-Star Wars 1980's, they were chunky, too large and produced in red, black and blue vinyl-rubber with gold and silver highlights, over-sized polyethylene weapons and similarly huge shields with stickers struggling to obey the rules of heraldry only added to the action figure look. Not to mention the Greco-Roman archer with leg-armour!

In recent years they (Supreme) have issued two newer sets of medieval figures (both pirating other makers stuff - Italieri for instance), along with Saracens for them to fight. However, they themselves have been subject to much piracy, and due to the 'back-door' nature of a lot of piracy in the Far East some of the 3 version figures have ended-up with the 1st version!

And due to my coming late to the collecting of large scale examples, while we're going to look primarily at those early ones, we will be mostly looking at the copies here today! The above being all Italieri sculpts/poses - from the current 3rd/4th 'sets' except the silver one (middle bottom) who's from one of the 3rd generation sub-pirate sets.

Both Supreme and its imitators have issued these in various sizes over the years and we have looked at the 25mm Blackrock Castle set donated to the Blog by Brian Berke before, next to it we see 30mm and 45mm versions, both unpainted, with the 30mm probably being Supreme (nice detail, PVC) and the 45mm a late pirate brand, in ethylene.

As can be seen from the artwork on the card, painted versions are available and I have some 25mm versions in a boxed-set of the castle which I thought was on the Blog somewhere, but can't find it so it may be poorly tagged; tags/tagging rather evolved as the Blog grew! Found it, which means it's in the attic . . . somewhere - it's the Guildford-bought one which is still missing; in storage!

Here we see the standard copies in 50mm (the 'action figure' rubber-uglies are 60/70mm) from at least two origins/sources, of which I'm sure one is Hing Fat, but can't find the reference, so will leave them off the tag-list for the time-being, but you can see the difference in the bases, likewise Applause may have issued some!

Another pose and we have 30, 45 and 50mm and again the late or 3rd generation copies are less accurate, having been re-cut, or mucked-about with! Also 'again' the only actual Supreme in the shot is likely to be the 30mm PVC chap!

Another pose and again the 45mm is derivative rather than a straight piracy, but only insofar as he has elements of other figures from the same original set, tacked-on or swapped.

Ditto, but showing the difference in base shape - between two generations of copy - clearly, suspected Hing Fat on the left.

I shot him so I'm posting him, even though this is supposed to be a post about the foot figures. The 30mm version and an unmistakeable Supreme horse with a splash of paint; the mounted figures get the huge weapons scaled down to still look over-sized in their diminutive ring-hands.

Contents of the whole tub shot together, although there are some painted ones still to go in it, they too, are probably copies - we looked at them before but I can't find the post (what am I like!) and I have more of the small scale (25 and 30mm) in storage, which we will come back too with all the forts - one day!

Note also that some of these - otherwise quite recent - black ones are getting brittle and will soon be no more than landfill

These have been sitting in Picasa for so long I'm happy to get rid of them! They were shot when the contents of the tub included a few 'similar' types and so included here are Jean'esque (foot, oval cartouche base, missing pole-arm) and Timpo'esque (mounted, shield sticker) figures now in another tub . . . ironically enough, the one with the four Supreme rubber-loons in it, as they won't fit in this one!