N is for New Stuff, from New York!

Welp, four hours sleep, but everything that could be painted was, and everything else was washed or hoovered and the house in on the market! I'm having the afternoon off to relax, and this was next in the 'new queue', or 'ready rounds' on the desktop, so with much gratitude to Brian Berke, lets have a look at the contents of his recent parcel!

 

Marx President Hoover (of the dam, not the vacuum cleaners!) who is very useful as there's a whole bunch to collect and I only have about five! And a horse which I think is the Ajax version, again very useful as there's a major update on that Bergan/Beton horse page in the pipeline, although technically it's a Britains Hollow-cast cavalry horse which B/B copied.

 

The ubiquity of Britains in the early 20th Century, throughout the developed world, colonies and Empire (upon which the sun never set!) means everyone copied that horse in metal even, before plastic was even used for toys - you find it a lot in South America, for instance, solid or hollow, and then plastic!

 

Under them two Van Brode figures and a ger'nome . . . because!

 

Lovely O-gauge samples from Marx on the right and Bachmann Plasticville on the left I think, I have the latter in HO-gauge, and possibly some factory painted in O', but it's nice to have the raw ones for future comparison.

 

Below which are some of the comic flat mail-order 100 Dolls figures. I was hoping - as I waded through everything this last two years or so - to find the sticker-sheet for them, but it hasn't turned-up yet, although I think I know where it is, so we will look at it one day.

 

Is this another Mold-a-Rama, or a beach toy? It's sort of in the same style, heavy-walled blow-mold (or rotary mould? I don't know exactly how the machines work), but without a plinth for promotional messages? It'd be funny if I'd got two in a few weeks, after waiting forever for one! Whether it is or not, it's a cool and unusual piece, not much smaller than the elephant

 

Two Carzol Tanks, co-incidental for two reasons; Moonbase only covered the history of this Canadian firm the other day, and they are from the US Mohawk mould tools, of which I have all but the Tank, in Khaki plastic! The New York yellow-cab is unmarked (It's marked MADE IN USA, and is Marx, see comments) while the red cars were Renwal, one family saloon (No.143), one 'space car' (No. 150). Except, I think it might be based on a concept car from a 1930/40's motor-show, but it's a space car to me!

 

Brian mentioned that some of the items in his parcel were covered here, while it was in transit, and it's true we had a 'Space Car' at the time, from Thomas, but the Rewal one he sent is much spacier, when you see them side-by-side! And a decent shot of the cab's graphics.

 

How to Train Your Dragon figures from Spinmaster/Dreamworks, I think I have a few duplicates of these now (Peter too has donated some), so I will have a stab at painting a few when I'm settled in my place of decrepitude!

 

Interesting mix of figures here, the MPC African is particularly nice, as I only have the metallic gold/bronze ones, and a couple of grey reissues, the Hippo is a new sculpt to the collection, and I like the goose and the little 'plane!

 

Oh, wow! I think the large diver might have been a baking-soda toy? He's a bit damaged now, but seems to have had a large compartment (possibly with a missing slot-in powder box) with a small air/water hole, if he was, it's the biggest such toy I've encountered outside the submarines, and much heavier, being quite a chunk of polyethylene!

 

The two Hong Kong copies of the Lone Star mini-sub/two-man torpedo are lovely, and it means there must be a (more colourful?) sub' out there as well! I don't normally collect things like the mini-fig (Bonkers for the Ryan's World franchise), but given how the 'sub-collection' of divers has grown, he's a welcome addition, for completist’s sake!

 

While the creamy-white chap seems to be a hang-glider pilot (I'm old enough to remember the hype and excitement over their 'invention'!), and is probably from a quite sophisticated kite of some kind? Very useful and will make an interesting addendum to the parachutists page when I get back to that . . . I know, I know - the Airfix blurbing-up, the Khaki Infantry page, the A-Z's!!!

 

A spoon-rider! I think it might be Christopher Robin? Quite the American thing, spoon-riders, I don't think UK cereal issued many, or any at all, nor European brands, but in the 'States there's a load of them;, TV/Movie-related tie-ins, brand mascots and others, so a nice thing to get in the post - my first!

 

I've still to ID the baseball player, rubber lady and caveman, all-three around 45/50mm.

 

Finally, Brian sent us images in time for last year's Halloween, but now he's sent the packaging! Which adds the witches to the stash! He also reminded me that the content-count on the skeleton warriors has gone down to match the newer sets, which is a bit of a swizz, but, life as we know it!

Many thanks to Brian as always, this will all enhance the collection, and enhance future posts, and the thematic pages I plan for the future; Divers, paratroopers, there's a firefighter one half-ready in the queue somewhere!

Now. I'm going to have a snooze, then have an evening off decorating/cleaning/sorting to go round to the flat and photograph the stuff Jon Attwood has sent to the blog!

LB is for Like Bullets!

Or at least, they would leap like bullets if they weren't missing their baseplates and springs, for now they are rather stationary but these LB follow-up's by HF had to have an iterative trope in the title and that was all I could come-up with!

 

We have seen these before and two of them were complete, with a spare spring on the third to boot, so they can all share the bottom pieces for any future jumping competitions!

 

In the order they arrived; so, that's six now, two Vichy robots giving-up before they've got going and four of the 'officer' with pistol, so it's starting to look like only the two poses were used, but I'll keep half-an-eye out for more - poses or colours!

C is for Crescent Ceremonials . . . . NOT!

This post was going to have twice as many images and be a T is for Two.... post, but half the post (Trojan Lifeguards) just appeared in Plastic Warrior magazine, so you've either seen them recently, or you need to subscribe! Consequently, it's just a little box-ticker on some nice Hong Kong copies, and by "nice" I mean old'ish and unusual, not high-quality originals!

 

I may have one of these in the pile, but I'd never considered his existence until the recent PW Show (in May), when I spotted one on Adrian's stall and said "Ooh, I'll have that, that's different", and Adrian said "There a few more there", pointing to the other end of the table, but there was only one, someone else had swooped first! At which point Chris Smith who was standing chatting behind the stall said "Yeah, they're Crescent copies, I have a few".

 

We saw both my grabs in the show-report post (en guard and drummer), but these are Chris's, and you can see they cloned the band (so technically Kellogg's copies too!), the fighting 54mm's and the 60mm set. Presumably all of them were copied, of which these are known. The base marks, probably release-pin marks from the forming process, are very similar to one generation of the Britains Herald ACW copies, so may very well be the same source/manufacturer?

Many thanks to Chris for the images, and Trojan another time!

LB is for Lik Be!

Because it's a B! More on that in a mo', first a quick reminder of the carded robot set I picked-up a while ago and showed briefly the other day;

 

The robot shape-specific blister means another set with the other three is a probable certainty, although that is itself an oxymoron, but you know what I mean! Wotan over at Moonbase has specialised in the chunky-monkey one, and I'm pretty sure he has one of these faux-vitreous ones, so the other three are out there!

 

But that logo . . . the clearest or 'best' yet; it's a B, isn't it? A 'B' for the Be of Lik Be, not Lik Pe, not Lick Pea, and definitely not Lick Pee!

 

I realised looking at this, that the two uprights are - roughly - centred, so the whole monogram is actually placed to the right, with room to the left (as we look at it) for the 'sun' rays in white, coming out from the centre to be visible, under the monsters arm. On the right you have the dark rays going in, but no white rays coming-out, because there's the bottom curve of a bloody-great B in the way!

 

It's a pain, it's always been a too-busy, shit-rendered, poor logo design, but get used to it, it's LB for Lik Be, and you read it here first, twice, several years apart; 'cos I'm calling it again!

 

The Robots; Police Motorcycle, well, that's how I've always thought of him, or 'Motorcycle Cop' but he could just as easily be ray-gunning, pressure-washing the streets or painting hoardings! In the style of the fake glass-animals which also came out of Hong Kong, he's moulded in clear 'styrene and overpainted in transparent yellow and jade.

 

I used to call this one Marcel Marceau, but now I call it Vichy (cheese eating surrender monkey) in homage to Mathias and his mob! Minimal decoration on an already weak sculpt, sums this one up!

 

Stern Gang! He's always wearing a clear, definite, permanent frown, and one feels he should be the sidekick for the 'Darth' sculpt in the Airfix Space Warriors set?

 

I also picked-up a loose set of the ones I've already got in a bagged-set (seen here at Small Scale World passim), so they can stay there! The other three I call Lobster (obviously!) Rocket Robin and I can't remember what I used to call the fat one, but nowadays, it's just Wotan!

 

I've had two lots of the small scale versions come-in recently as well, all marked originals; gunmetal polyethylene above, and chromed hard plastic below (with a few knock-off spacemen), both samples having no Lobster!

 

A poor factory-paint version and another sucker copy have also been added to the pile, and I nicked the mustard-yellow image from eBay a while back I think, cropped-out of a larger image, The soft plastic large-scale are pierced for key-rings/fobs/chains, so must be later production.

 

The small scale Bike Cop has quite different arm sculpts from the larger one, who has 'cup and ball' hands and elongated upper-arm segments, against the smaller one's flatter-cup (potato masher!) and pointer (Biro!), with double ball-joint arms.

EMCE is for Effigy Manufacturer Confirms Events

Back in December I received a nice eMail from Joe Sena, on the subject of the little output/figure list I appended to one of the earlier EMCE posts, a subsequent back and forth of correspondence produced this pocket/potted history of the various brands I had been getting confused by, so - with Joe's permission - here it is for those who may be interested;

 

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"After a 10 year period in Los Angeles, where I helped grow the merch side of a large Star Trek convention company in the early ‘90s as designer/creative director, I moved over to the New Media Group at Universal Studios where I went from writer/producer to Creative Director in a few months – largely because in the mid 90s, anyone who could spell “Internet” was an expert (also, I was the studio’s “Official Universal Monsters” expert because I was the only nerd who made it past the gatekeepers). A few years later, Universal was bought, I saw handwriting on the wall, started a web design firm with other Uni' ex-pats which crashed and burned within a year.

Moved back to NYC with my tail between my legs and went back to what I did for a living before the internet, which was to make merch. Most was of the apparel variety, off-brand and original stuff for fans of horror movies. I made a product called the “Zombie Outbreak Survival Kit” which exploded, and made me enough money to put toward growing the business.

My business’ legal name is SphereWerx, LLC, which I named after the Unisphere, the steel globe landmark in my hometown of Flushing, Queens, near the stadium where my poor Met's attempt to play baseball. After a few years of having to re-spell or correct the pronunciation of “Spherewerx,” I registered “Fourth Castle” as a “doing business as” name. I named it such because of the influence of your fellow countrymen – as with the King Of Swamp Castle in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, this was my fourth attempt at business, and it didn’t fall into the swamp😉

Coming back to NYC reunited me with an old high school buddy named Paul Clarke, who I was stunned to discover had a business called “Dr. Mego”, in which he would hand-make replacement parts for collectors of Mego action figures. If your Captain America lost a shield or Batman his cowl, Paul hand-poured them in resin, colored them and sent them off.

Eventually, he received a cease and desist from DC and Marvel, and asked me what he should do, and I said that I would put money into trying to get licences And bring back the Mego toys of the 1970s.

 

Through several partnerships with other license-holders, we successfully brought back Marvel, DC, Star Trek and other Mego-style figures, expanding beyond mere reproductions. I created the brand EMCE toys, drawn to look like the “Mego” logo, but pronounced “EM-CEE” or “M.C”, which stood for “Mego Corporation.”

Paul and I were handshake-partners, we never had anything on paper, but we agreed that we would split EMCE branded toys. Sadly, Paul’s “Dr. Mego” work was not enough to cut it professionally, so we hired out sculptors for heads and certain body parts, but I would sculpt small accessories or adaptations (Spock’s beard for the “Mirror, Mirror” set, Spider-Man’s webshooters and belt, etc.). I am not the sculptor of any of the major parts of any of our toys.

 

In 2008, the recession cratered sales, so even though Paul was a Mego fundamentalist, I said we had to do something to make a cheaper product. Megos were expensive to produce, so I focused on another old-school toy format: little green army men.

After a while, Paul stopped being involved in the toys brand, focusing more on his Dr. Mego business and coming back together with me for the occasional elaborate Marvel Megos we did with Diamond Select Toys.

 

I kept on with the army men and dubbed them “Nanoforce”, so I had a trademarkable name. Initially, the clunky sculpts were done by hand in the factory in China – we left them that way because a) they looked about as clunky as classic army men and b) it came free with the price of the production 😉

You pretty much know the rest, but I hope when my aforementioned presentation is complete and has made the rounds, I will send it to you as it does contain a pretty complete look at the Nano's we made from Day One. However, it’s so similar to your list as to be almost identical."

 

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So, to paraphrase the above, SphereWerx (legal), Forth Castle (trading as) and EMCE ('em-cee', line/range brand-mark) are the company name/s in the order they were acquired, Nanoforce is the brand-mark for the small 'army men' figures, and all the other names on the various sets or packaging generations are either the license-holders to the subjects depicted, or the contracting end-user (Diamond Select, Previews Exclusive/PX), even though EMCE's own branding is usually retained alongside as one or more marks. Toynk are the current distributor of the more commercial sets.

 

This is an updated/re-edited version of that original list, alphabetical;

• Aliens in Glowing Slime (figures from the below set, but glow in the dark polymer with a unique, oversized (in scale) 'Facehugger' sculpt. One figure per egg of slime, out of production and getting hard to find, old stock has now-solid, rubbery slime) - Diamond Select Toys / PX Previews Exclusive  / designed by Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - 20th Century Fox.
• Aliens -vs- Colonial Marines (35 figures, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - Diamond Select Toys / PX Previews Exclusive  / designed by Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - 20th Century Fox.
• Fallout 76 [bags, see also You Will Emerge - below] (12 or 24 figures per bag, 3 sets, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
• Fallout 76 [boxes] (13 figures per box, 4 boxed sets include a 4" figure and extra [blind pack] poses, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
  
• Gears 5 (Gears of War), (5-figures + droid, bag, glow in the dark variation, still around, affordable - Nanoforce by EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia) Licensors - The Coalition / XBox Games / Microsoft, UK retailer Toynk (?)
•  John Carpenter's Halloween (8 figures + 4 accessories and 1x 4" figure, very rare, limited edition of 2500 units, very expensive when found - Fright Rags / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - Compass International Pictures
• Night of the Living Dead (12 figures + 1x 4" figure, very rare, limited edition, very expensive when found - Fright Rags / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Image Ten)
• Star Trek - TNG (12 figures + micro-ship model, 'The Next Generation' boxed-set, newest, affordable, easier to find in UK - PX Previews Exclusive / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Fanwares a division of Fanwraps) Licensor - CBS Studios
• Star Trek - TOS (12 figures + micro-ship model, 'The Original (TV) Series' boxed-set, newest, affordable, harder to find in UK - PX Previews Exclusive / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Fanwares a division of Fanwraps) Licensor - CBS Studios
• Universal Monsters (planned/cancelled/next? EMCE / Mego?)
• You Will Emerge (24 figure 'Army Builder' bag of Fallout expansion, 23 common figures in 9 poses (twos or threes) with exclusive Jersey Devil flying monster, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle, no Toynk) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
• Vault Tech Convention Exclusives (six figures from Fallout, in blind-bags, one per-bag, limited-edition yellow polymer, still findable/affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
•  Zombies at War (35 figures, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - PX Previews Exclusive / Brilliant Novelty Co. / Diamond Comic Distributors / EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia, no 'Nanoforce')
• Zombies in Glowing Slime (as per above, but blind-bag model, in a tub of slime modelled as an oil drum, one figure per unit, glow-in-the-dark polymer, getting harder to track-down - PX Previews Exclusive  /  EMCE Toys) 
•  Zombies -vs- Zombie Hunters (35 figures, 10 poses, 3-each survivors, 4-each zombies, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - PX Previews Exclusive / Brilliant Novelty Co. / Diamond Comic Distributors / EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia, no 'Nanoforce')

In December, Joe was hopeful that more figures would come out this year, but I haven't seen/heard anything yet? Halloween was the last set issued, last autumn.

LB is for Little Buggers!

Another eBay tale! I was checking late one nigh/early hours and saw the small Matt Mason knock-off's I needed, so bought them, only to see a similar set from the same seller, so bought them too, messaged the seller asking if he might be able to combine the postage (after I'd paid full twice) only get a message from the seller almost immediately (mid-evening over the Pond), pointing out there was a loose set too . . . a few emails later and I'd found the other, he'd cancelled the two purchases, bundled the three lots, relisted them and I'd paid for them - at the third attempt!

Purchase on the right, it was the generic version of the Lik Be set on the left (old eBay image), and both have the same contents of the five 'cake decoration' mini moon-exploration vehicles, without the wheels you normally see them with.

 

The other purchased card (on the left here), it's another generic, overprinted to M. Shimmel Sons (MSS), and had the addition of the two 'NASA' style astronauts, also seen on the right with their lander, command module and flag - as they were also issued as cake decorations.

 

The smaller card is another generic, and also an old eBay image. Both Space Set generics are overprinted to the Happy Mates division of Electro Plastics of Newark, New Jersey, a jobbing rack-toy importer who also carried Yat Ming die-casts.

Note that the Shimmel card has artwork including the unmistakeable outline of Mattel's Major Matt Mason himself, with tubular rubber suit-joints, swinging-by to deal with the deadly triple hi-fi jack 'that's not a moon' of the dreaded Moron Vee! While the figures are either based on LB's spacemen (Mercury/Gemini programme suits), but without air-tanks, or the two Apollo types.

 

The seller included another Space Set card without blister, to which these were supposed to be attached, but they have the cake-travelling wheels attached and red astronauts while the blister (missing) would have struggled to hold them neatly on the same sized card, so these may just be cake decorations, or from one of the boxed-sets?

Ultraviolet is probably responsible for the bleaching of the figure bottom left and then the discolouring of both elements to a burnt-orange? It's also missing its wheels, which is useful . . .

. . . as you can see how the wheel units were added to the undersides by simply glueing the double-unit over a small protuberance on the models, clearly visible in some of the shots above.

 

A couple of shots of the cake fleet on the move!

 

Another iteration of the Space Set card on the left, as an LB original, we will return to it, soon, in a future post when we look at the robots attached to it.

Six weeks later - Follow-up here from Moonbase Central, except I don't think there's any Giant spacemen involved, they are all the Lik Be sculpts. [The Giant were later edited out!]

EMCE is for Every Model's a Corking Effigy

Two of the more recent lines from EMCE have been the TV/Movie tie-ins, including Star Trek, two of mine have gone to storage, and I've only scanned the boxes of the other two, so another brief look today, and something more substantial in the near-to-medium future!

 

Star Trek - The original Series (TOS), a set of upright or less dynamic poses, but the sculpting/detail is there, and each figure is recognisably who they are supposed to be depicting! You get four each of the figures in three colours, and a larger model of the original Enterprise (NCC-1701) in a smaller scale, so best added to the Galloob/Mattel/Soma mini-ship drawer!

 

I've never been a fan of the Horror genre, so couldn't have much to say about this, except that depicting other icons from the movie has reduced the figure count to only eight? But you do get a giant glow-in-the-dark matey as an extra!

 

I did shoot the other two before they went away to storage, and here - with stuff we've already seen in recent posts - are the Night of the Living Dead on the upper-left and Star Trek - The Next Generation (TNG) on the upper-right. I believe there has been talk of more monster sets, or a 'Universal' [studios] monster set.

The Living Dead had a full set of 12 figures along with another-glow-in-the-dark large-scale figure, while likewise the TNG set has 12 figures and an Enterprise model (NCC-1701-D), the figures in all four sets are pretty standard 54mm against the slightly smaller figures in the earlier Zombie and Alien sets.

All in all, a nice pair of additions to the increasing range of figures from EMCE.

LB is for Nasta Industries!

I had an amusing interaction with an eBay seller back last year, he had the Lik Be spacemen for sale at a reasonable BIN, in Nasta carded bottle-bags, so I hit DOIT and sat back and waited for my ill-, or easily-gotten gains to arrive, but when they did, I almost had apoplexy!

 

They weren't LB, they were the shitty MPC-clones, well actually some of the better MPC-clones, there are many copies of the MPC astronauts, and some are very poor, but these are OK, however, MPC-clones they were, not the LB I had ordered.

Now, I figured it must be a mistake, so I checked the seller's other items, and sure enough, no toy figures, but clothes, household items and car parts - or 'Autoparts' - he was in the 'States! So I checked the sales listing again and sure enough there were the Lik Be's in all their glory, but the blue arrow pointed to more images . . . And sure enough, there were the MPC-clones, and the page was screaming '2 items - 1 available 1 sold' . . . Which was clearly the one in my lap!

So I quickly bought the second set before messaging the seller, and then messaged him to confirm that the gunmetal ones were in the other bag and the 'wrong' ones had turned up, he was very apologetic and offered a refund, which I happily declined as it was still a new name, and having both versions would be no hardship!

 

Waiting another two-and-a-half weeks (global shipping shit!), it duly turned-up and lots of positive feedback was awarded in both directions. And as you can see, very different contents under the same card.

The ones I was after are the 'proper' ones with the full Lik Be base-mark, and they are a nice clean sample, I thought there might be eight of each colour for all poses, but careful checking reveals a 20 count, however there don't seem to be pose duplicates within each colour's sample, so some complicated packing for 2x7 and 1x6!

 

The LB sample also takes up a lot more space than the MPC lot (also a 20 count but more random), which came first I don't know, but I suspect from the 1970's feel, that the LB were issued until they ran-out and then the MPC-clones were sourced to complete a contract, or continue a well-selling line?

 

Also, the red and blue polymers are not quite the same, so two sources seems likely, as does the white versus gunmetal for the third colour.

 

Nasta have a 200/5th Av., address ('The Toy Building') which leaves little by way of clues. Google doesn't reveal much, Brain Heiler has a catalogue from 1980 with odd stuff in it, otherwise a mix of rack toys and electronic 'big-box' stuff, with trademarks registered between 1973 and 1989/90 (their apparent high-water mark), after which they seem to have faded, probably into someone else, like Mattel or Kenner at the top end end; Ja-Ru or Larami at the other? Bloomberg says Tyco! Who were acquired by Mattel! And Tyco seem to have purchased them after bringing a trademark case against them in '95!

We previously saw them here.