D is for Dinopost

Which was the title of the folder I chucked the images in, and it seemed to be an appt-enough title so I kept it! You were going to get this morning's LB (LP) post a couple of days ago, but Brian sent these late on the weekend, so I pushed the other post back by a day to get this edited and in shape, only for Brian to send more on Monday, so it all got another delay, and we can have Dino-Day today - which would have been a good title too!

Brian has a young grandson for whom he has been out and about buying dinosaurs . . . start 'em young, and all that! To which end he went to Dollar General and purchased their current range of medium-large models for a single greenback apiece (about 80p?).

Now dinosaurs are funny things to scale as the new-born's of many species would have been no bigger than a cat or dog, but a 80/100-year old adult might be half the size of our street! And my sizing isn't terribly accurate, but these are clearly useful with 'toy soldiers', whilst being maybe half their scale, as intended?

Branded to Dolencorp (who did some of the skeleton/mummy stuff a year or two ago I think? Phantom brand of Dollar General?) and the models are exactly what's written on the tag!

Brian found five different animals in total and while the slaes tags don't give names, what we seem to have here is a Stegosaurus (used as a sizer), a Triceratops, a meat eater who is probably an Allosaur' or Gigantisaur' rather than a 'T'; T-Rex - if modelled well - has larger concave 'dimples at the backs of the cheeks, roughly where our ears would be.

Finally a veggie sauropod, who's clearly a smaller scale (box or 'unit price' scale!) as is often the way with these and would go better with HO/OO type figures, but if you're 2 or 3-years old, you're not worried about scale, you just want to see how many things that go "ROAR!" there are in your granddad's toy box!

Thanks to Brian for this rack-toy update, and there's more to come, later, from Dollar Tree!

Later the same day/Early the next day!...

Further to the comments on the post after/above this one (newer post) I asked Brian for the names printed on the bellies and he sent some more shots WITH the names (which was very kind) and which I've placed under each animal.

No surprises but what I called the Triceratops is actually a Styracosaurus (which is a mistake I often make) and I would argue the T-Rex is anatomically incorrect (which is a mistake Chinasaur designers often make), but hay . . . it's a vicious meat-eater, right? Thanks again Brian!

BRACHIOSAURUS

PARASAUROPHUS

STEGOSAURUS

STYRACOSAURUS

TYRANOSAURUS REX

M is for Monster Fantasies

I knew this set (or something like it) had to exist, as those dinosaurs which appeared to be LB (LP) were much smaller (and less silly) than the 'funimals' they seem to be numbered in sequence with, while I had tentatively ID'd the four cave-men as LP (now LB) some time ago, so when I saw this going for a song on feeBay, I grabbed it!

An absolutely 'classic' rack toy; an assortment of figures and animals with no attention to either physical scale or geological time-scale, in some whacky coloured plastic with gloss paint fired at them by a blind man! Really; I should have opened Rack Toy Month with this post, but I forgot they were in the queue!

We have pretty-much done these to death now (first with a clean sample from Adrian Little and then with a look at my larger 'in storage' sample - when they came out of storage!), but to confirm the assumption they were Lik Be here is a clean sample, and to add to previous musings on the legs, all four have been given the same legs, so it must have been done by batch, not pose! Also, the 'blood', spread rather liberally on some of mine, seems to have been meant to represent the wood of the bow and spear!

We get two contemporaneous prehistoric mammals which I have identified as vague renditions of a Dinocerata type (on the left), although all the real ones have paired horns/tusks, while this one has them as in-line singles, probably for ease of moulding, but it makes him a unique HK-species! The other is a more accurate Macrauchenia, except when I say accurate; I'm ignoring the blue plastic!

Going back a 100-million years or more we get two larger dinosaurs, conforming to the bog-standard rack-toy plant-eater and a duck-billed chap (or chapess), they are what they are, and might have been pink-on-yellow, we don't really know! In point of fact, some of the stuff being found now (in sedimentary beds in places like the Gobi Desert) gives very good colour clues (and feathers) and can be tied into surviving lizards and reptiles.

These are tiny, and I mean 'Micro' sized (and are mostly another 50-million-odd years earlier?), with a baby meat-eater and various other infants, including my smallest Dimetrodon to date! From the poses, I think some of them are copied down from larger rack toys around in the late 1960's-1970's, some of which are still with us in Hing Fat's tool-set!

For those who - like me - are trying to build a complete listing of LB's known/marked/numbered stuff, here are what I can make out on these;

Prehistoric Sets

1046-20 - Monster Fantasies

'Micro-mini' Dinosaurs

   73 - Brontosaurus [or] Diplodocus (no 'A', larger)

A74 - 'Duck-billed Dinosaur' (larger)

A75 - Ankylosaurus (smaller)

A76 - Dimetrodon (smaller)

A77 - Triceratops (smaller)

A78 - 'Carnivore' (smaller)

   79 - Stegosaurus (no 'A', smaller)

Cavemen (each with a choice of three different un-numbered legs and three loin-cloth designs)

No. A80 - Waving Axe

No. A81 - Archer with Bow

No. A82 - Raising/Throwing Rock

No. A83 - Long Spear/Sharpened Stake

Prehistoric Animals

No. A111 - Macrauchenia (Prehistoric Camel/Giraffe Ancestor/Ant-eater)

No. A126 - Dinocerata-like (Large, Tusked Mega-mammal)

2025 - The prehistoric mammals and dinosaurs here, seem to have been copied from the larger sculpts of the Holly Plastic Factory (HP), and LB also copied six of the ten-odd, of the 'Gygax' monster sculpts from Holly, now posted here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/08/g-is-for-gygax-monsters-part-v-lik-be.html

S is for Soma's Star Rider Space City

Picked this up a few weeks back going unloved and un-bid, on that there evilBay, a month or so ago, I had no idea it existed and was looking for something-else entirely when I found it. Not really a rack-toy in the traditional sense, but I bet that when it was originally retailed it would have been half the price of a Bluebird Mighty Max or Polly Pocket set, and a quarter of the price of a similar Galoob Star Wars toy?

Folding-up to very small (6"x4¼x1¾-deep - 150x100x44mm), there's enough play-value to keep any kid happy in a caravan on a wet week in Rhyl! These days - of course - it'll either be too-hot to play in a caravan without cooking yourself, or so wet there's a danger the caravan will float away!

Fully unfolded; the gun-tower has shades of 'Hoth', the rest is - dare I suggest - more Flash Gordon than Coruscant! It comes with four of the diminutive little HO-figures I think I've shown before (we'll look at them again in a second) and a small truck the seller (alkim96) kindly added to the lot before sending, but which hadn't been in the sales shots.

And this is it, I think it's based on one of the ex-Giogi/for-Kinder mini fire engines, dated to 1997 (the Soma set) that's quite possible, but only as a vague copy; the Kinder ones were clip-together while this is screwed, following the Micro-Machine principle.

"Plastic smalls" as those with little finesse refer to them! I think we have looked at these before, and I think I've only added the four new ones, all duplicates, this is one of each from my sample, spacemen in grey and 'pilots' in green, each numbered on the base from 1 (on the left, purple and orange) to 12 on the far right.

My whole sample, most of them came mint with their aircraft and or 'spaceships' all of which went to charity about 20-odd years ago, found in generic packaging (I think) in Woolworth's it was only the little Soma on the base, and I think I'm right in saying the fighters came with one figure, the spaceships with two, hence the imbalance.

Also I don't know why I'm missing grey-5, as I should have all of them? You can also see there are some minor colour variations within each sub-tranche, but schemes stay true. Hopefully, one day, I'll be able to show you all of them, but they are not a high priority, with only two found in addition to the new four, over the years.

I have joked (at length) on the assorted panoply of weapons, clothing, equipment and headdresses so won't bore you with all that again, you can see what an eclectic mix of 1990's 'straight-to-video' post-apocalyptic B-movie extras they are! And they make an excellent set of extra bounty-hunters for Galoob's Star Wars Micro-Machines!

Ph is for Phidal's Phrozen Phellows

No, it was similar but I don't think is was exactly the same! Just a quickie, we've seen some if these as an incomplete lot in a charity-shop bag, but this is the whole set, there was another set with smaller figures (and the useful sleigh) which has also come-in as both  awhole set and some spares now.

And it's a while since we've had a Phidal post, but apart from one or two superhero sets still to find (the earlier ones) whole, and the Transformers one (which I've nearly bought several times, to actually picking it up - only to suck my teeth at the x6 micro-vehicle blobs and put back) along with various Disney/Mickey type which I'm not so worried about, I think we seen most of the better ones here now?

A mass of snow-babies and another useful deer, useful for 54mm rather than the 25/28mm of the one in the other set? The three figures are big, too big for much @approximately 80mm, but would fit-in with ELC-Papo-Schleich medievals, while the snow monster (Marshmallow?) could be thrown straight in a fantasy/D&D army/setting!

M is for Mare Mediterraneanus

Had a bit of a board-game photo-sesh the other day, one of them was this, mentioned before in passing, we may even have looked at one or two of the figures from time to time, but today we'll get the box ticked properly!

Seems to be clear!

The pieces; each player gets an 'army' (including naval elements) in one of four colours consisting of various numbers of four unit types; Elephants, Horsemen, Infantry and Ships. The colours are in the lower image and consist of an ivory-white or cream, black, red and blue, scale is all over the place!

The box-art is superb, mixing the naval battles of the Persian or Punic-wars with the Islamic migration/invasions and fall of Constantinople (when, although still oared, the vessels looked very different) , it's trying to cover the four great empires, who waxed and waned around the edge of the Mediterranean Sea over a few thousand years, in order to justify the game which pits them against each other!

The artwork is also similar to some of that produced by artists Don Lawrence for the Trigan Empire strip in Look & Learn, or Frank Hampson for his Dan Dare work in Eagle, but the box carries no signature or credit note, and I'm mostly basing my wild assertion on the treatment of the smoke & flames of the burning vessel!

A full 'army' in red, the single cavalry and elephant units being joined by three of infantry and two naval, in a similar way to the later Risc, there aren't enough to cover each point (towns & cities), so have to be set out with strategic goals and working with your partner, the game being designed to be played either with two pairs of allies as a four-player, or two players commanding two armies apiece.

The cavalryman in blue has warped and I think it's heat-shrinkage (technically; 'cooling' shrinkage) due to premature removal from the mould-tool, not latter deformation due to unstable-polymer ageing, as they are otherwise a stable polystyrene; the problem is common with these, and some of my lose acquisitions are similarly warped.

As I was having a session, I had the time to spend on generating a couple of .gifs, the other to follow later. It's basically unpacking the box to the Nth degree and then setting the table up for a game!

The board is generally to be treated as a diamond, evidenced by the angle of the titles and the rule-cheat boxes, with the four 'contemporaneous' City States (for the purposes of the game) being Ptolemaic Alexandria (red), Hannibal's Carthage (black), Western-Empire Rome (cream) and Eastern-Empire Constantinople (blue, Byzantines?), there are two each of the red cards (which photographed abysmally) and which are randomly-dealt 'go to jail' type things each player hangs-on to, until needed.

Play is by a pack of cards (made in Belgium, interestingly) rather than dice, and there's not much else to add - so I won't.

"What? Board Games? No, I don't do them, there's far too much space in the lid and the walls aren't high enough, they don't call them 'bored' for nothing, you know! Wake me when there's something I can make a real nest of"

News, Views Etc . . . Catch-up

Summer Sale

New message from Barney Brown over at Herald Toys & Models;

"Okay so the heat wave is well and truly over, but we have over 300 very hot SALE items to tempt you with! Just click on our 'Specials' pages to take a look at our many new sale items, with further reductions on many others and "Get Them While They're HOT!" Stay safe and keep well everyone."

I've been over to have a look and there is a lot of good stuff!

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Toys in the Media

This was a Faceplant 'sponsored post' which appeared uninvited in my feed for some local (well; Reading) IT company of some kind, it's more Preiser doing stuff in a human world, rapidly becoming a tired trope as far as originality (or 'artiness') goes but always fun to see.

While I suspect unpainted Preiser provided the population for this shot illustrating a Tic Toc article in the 'i'.

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Hammer Prices

The was some feedback from the special Action Figure single-collection auction at Vectis last week;

"A two-day sale of action figures, TV & Film ty collection sold for£210,000 at Vectis Auctions today.

The sale was mainly made up of a single owner group of small-scale action figures many people will remember from the 1980’s – 1990 including Masters of the Universe, Thundercat’s, Tron, Buck Rogers, Clash of the Titans, Flash Gordon and many more.

These toys would have cost a few pounds each when originally sold, with many in the sale now reaching three or four figure sums.

Lot 5582, a Palitoy Star Wars vintage Power Droid 3 3/4" figure sold for £4560 against an initial estimate of £800. Palitoy were the UK manufacturers of the original Star Wars toys from the 1970’s and are now highly sought after by collectors. Another similar Palitoy Star Wars vintage Greedo 3 3/4" figure appealed to buyers raising £3840 against an £800 pre-sale estimate.

Vectis regularly achieves high prices including world records for selling Star Wars toys but other less know character releases were snapped up too. A Ben Gali Belgian figure from the 1980’s Thundercats cartoon television series sold for £840 against a £200 estimate. Another popular series from the same era was Masters of the Universe He-Man with a single figure snapped up for £696 against a £200 pre- sale estimate.

The selection of Kenner M.A.S.K boxed vehicles and accessories were especially popular; the 24 lots saw fierce bidding with the highlight being the M.A.S.K SWITCHBLADE vehicle selling for £2160 against a £400 estimate.

Another strong section were the Transformers. You would have to be prepared to pay a minimum of £264 to buy any one of the single toys up to £708 for the Hasbro Transformers G1 1984 Dinobot SNARL. Even empty boxes WITHOUT TOYS commanded money – Lot 3143 Hasbro Transformers G1 1984 SOUNDWAVE, BOX AND INSERT ONLY (NO TOY) sold for £168.

As with most collectable pieces the condition of these toys was excellent, they were unopened and un-played with, in essence a collector’s dream!

The extensive collection is the best of its type ever to be sold in the UK if not the world and confirms the popularity of ‘in living memory toys’."

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Links

NME explore a new game which even has me wondering if I should have a go and I'm sworn-off the ultimate 'bread & circus' time-waster that is PC gaming . . . in my own opinion of course!

Fake products including toys are planted in stores to confuse and amuse consumers

Collector Peter Nussbaum gets his collection in the local paper - Star Tribune

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More My Modern Met

Preiser's Plastic Pudding People Part One

Preiser's Plastic Pudding People Part Two  

R is for Rubber Raider Rack Toys

Except they aren't rubber, they're polyethylene! Actually the Britains one is dense PVC which has some of the properties and is given some of the tasks of Rubber, but it's not what we're concentrating on here, except in so far as for comparison; it's the Greek rack-toys!

These were on feebleBay for ages and for very little money, I think I had them bookmarked for over a year and no one pipped me to the post, so when I finally had a spare tenner a few weeks ago I grabbed them for RTM@SCW!

They came from Greece, and while they could be Solpa they are more likely to be Stam Toys (who did use silver-coatings) or Petalo (lots of rack toy - until quite recently or still going) or even an early import by someone like Zita Toys, although they are lacking any Hong Kong or China marks, which can be a sign of domestic production, but can also just mean that local laws don't insist on origin-marking? Nevertheless they are definitely 'in the style of' Hong Kong rack-toy tat!

Obviously copied from the Britains assault craft; 'Gemini' or 'rigid raider', the three figures are quite different, with one being in a bright-blue polymer, another manufactured in gold-flecked resin and the third has an overall coating of sprayed-silver paint with a dark-red plastic figure underneath.

All three Greek vessels have retained their 'Allied Star' stickers, but my Britains boat has lost it's little MOD crossed-swords thing. I have a feeling I know someone who has a sheet of them (probably left-over from an out-worker's stock) , so if he's still got a few I'll get that sorted!

All three figures have a hole in their base to fit the forward spigot copied-across from the British model; in point of fact, both spigots are reproduced (larger than the originals, but in roughly the same place) but the base sizes (of all three figures) preclude them from lining-up with the rear one.

The other obvious difference is the addition of a cord-loop at the front, to help pull it along, but I don't know if they were fitted with one, if they were part of a hook-wall display-hanging, or something you had to add at home?

Although copied from Britains, they lack the buoyancy of the donor, but do still float so all is not lost . . . when looking to shoot them in the pond (left) or water-butt (right)! I suspect it has more to do with the properties of the Britains' PVC (more air trapped in a less dense material) rather than anything else; the design - otherwise - is carried-over pretty-much intact.

D is for Déjà Vu

Chris Smith sent me these a while back, with the possibility that they are related, as the Lilo are generally believed to have been sold as beach-toys, and therefore definitely 'rack toys', we're going to have a quick look at them if only to put the question-mark out there!

Chris wanted to point out the similarities between the Lilo figure (there's still only the one pose known) and those unknown larger-scaled composition figures we looked at here which was mentioned then.

There are slightly more cloth-folds in the composition figure, but that could be put down to the figure being deliberately smoothed for plastic production, as it was still a 'new' technology and mould-removal was an early identified problem (and remains-so, to this day), but away from the sculpting of the clothes we have an almost identical respirator-case on both chests, almost identical SMG, the same 'deep sea diver' treatment on the boots, and while the chin strap is deeper on the composition figure (and the helmet play-worn) that too can be put down to the material intended for/of the final product.

The overall size, the slightly two-dimensional approach to the figures and even the faces, are also similar. No one is saying - for certain - that these are from the same maker, or even necessarily the same sculptor, but it's fair to say both Chris and I are suggesting the latter, which may also point to the former?

Also it's worth noting, if you haven't already clocked-it; one of Chris's figures is painted (I've only ever previously seen unpainted figures - as you would expect from seaside kiosks), and even that painting mirrors the painting of both sizes of Brent figures' and the unknown composition maker's? Thanks to Chris for noticing the similarities and bringing them to our wider attention.

B is for Blistered Buildings

Coming in at a vague 1:70th, these were probably designed to provide basic scenery for a first model railway, Jean Höfleur had a small railway system, but it was hand-push and go only? Whatever the reason, I have two carded samples and RTM is the best time to show them!

Enough buildings for a whole village in war gaming terms, while the card shows other recognisable Jean products - I have the earth-mover somewhere, or a copy of it! A church and three chalet-style dwellings with shallow roofs for collecting snow (both for insulation and for not falling in a heap suddenly and killing someone!) are all very 'Bavarish', as they should be; it’s the home of Jean!

Construction is much simpler than the diminutive HO-scaled buildings from Vollmer, Faller, Nock and Co., so these are definitely cheaper, infant toys, they are also quite robust so will take a fair bit of punishment, despite being polystyrene rather than the polyethylene of the companies figure production.

These are all polystyrene as well, and the vehicles can suffer from the kind of damage you would guess-at with such a material, however smaller hands delver less stress, and they can (or could - back in the day) provide good inspiration for conversion, I have a few from some old war games army somewhere, stripped-down and painted matt olive!

All three vehicles are marked J&H, even the Post Office (Bundespost) van! The service station has two pumps and a car-wash . . . big enough for the lorries, which is why they are so shiny, silly!

That's it, two carded Jean sets in the collection, the trouble with this carded stuff is, that really they can only sit there on the card, and there's only so many shots you can take (these were shot in too bright sunlight and are a bit fuzzy as a result) but it would be a crime to take them off the card now, not that they are as rare as the 1950's/60's stuff,; one seems to be dated 1979

 

Couple of weeks later aaannnnnnd . . . TJF posts two (count them!) carded Jean sets! Nice to know he's paying such close attention!