UFO is for UAP - Imperial / CEM / PMS / Titan - Sammy Steel Series, Micro Adventure, My Adventure Journey, Space Adventure, Space Explorer

So, the last trio, except as Sammy Steel it extends to nearly a dozen sets, and two or three of them were issued as generics in France by the looks of it, but for the purposes of this post we're looking at the non-Sammy Steel sets issued in the UK and Germany, which are a trio.

 

For the Imperial US/Australian Sammy Steel story (which seems to include Titan Toys here, but I've not seen them in packaging), this is the start page for a four-page explanation;

https://mikestoybox.net/2014/07/12/sammy-steel-series-1-mighty-max-knock-off/#jp-carousel-6429

 

So, my two are in the middle, both PMS (which - at the time - might have meant a 99p Stores exclusive?), with the card back to the left and a generic from feebleBay on the right, although decent shots of the rocky one have escaped this post, it may be in storage?

 

We get two identical flying saucers, but only on the outside, as even then, they are different colours, while the inner liner is very-different between them both. To go with them is a rocky 'meteorite' based on what is supposed to be a volcano sculpt!

I didn't really notice that the German one is another card, and while I did shoot it in its entirety for the group shot at the end of the first post in this sequence, I don't have a decent single card shot! This was imported by a CEM?

I haven't opened this PMS set, but you can see the 'rest of the world' generics have all the contents of the Sammy Steel sets, but in new colours and without the Sammy character figures, although, I'm pretty sure I have him, the sabre-toothed smilodon (on the Blog somewhere?) and a couple of the other pieces not found in this trio, so they will all turn-up eventually!

 

Note the plug-in dish/ariel and fold out ramp, scudding about loose in the blister!

I did open the PMS version of this one after I'd got the CEM one to keep whole! The lizard man looks better in green than the Sammy Steel orange, in my opinion, although the fliver/flyer/hover-bike is probably better in the original grey? And these are all - sort of - 20/25mm compatible.

So, six true UFO 'saucers' and three more esoteric designs . . . I hope these posts have helped some with the ID'ing of these which have confused for some time, and as I say, these posts are a bit half-cocked, and we will return to them when I get everything in one place, and find the few missing bits (I may have the meteorite/cave), maybe do it as a single page, with all the sets/links together in one place?

And this is only what I've found, there's probably more; more packagings, more importers, more brand-marks, and while I don't often address money here, I was going to have a long paragraph or two ranting about the money being asked/paid for the US/Aussie sets, only to find someone has one of these PMS cards up on evilBay right now for 50-smackers? WTF? These are recent, cheapo rack-toys, you should hope to get, or pay no-more than 15-quid for, and - intrinsically - they are a fiver's worth of tat!

D is for Ducks, Dogs, Deer, Dairy and Dobbin Dudes!

The penultimate post of Jon Attwood's parcel brings us to the domestic animals and farm stock, although some pesky penguins snuck-in under the classification radar while my back was turned, changing batteries!

Dogs; we looked at an overview of collie-dog sheep dogs a while ago, yet here appear to be several new sizes/sculpts/makers! In addition to the other perennial favourite, scot's terriers or 'Scottie Dogs'! The Alsatian, the brown one (pointer?) and the Airedale (?) look like they belong to a 'toob set'?

 

The penguins are shooing the poultry back to the yard for bedtime! Most of the front row are also from a toob or rack-toy set I think, and there's a fair bit of this stuff around, all to be sorted-out at some point in the future! The exception, is the white goose, who I don't recognise, but is polyethylene, and with a bit of age I think, so early British or US production?

 

Oooh, is that a Gem lamb? Just what's needed for Mary and Bo'Peep as they are always losing thiers, or chucking them in the air! 

 

Mary had a little lamb

It's fleece was white as snow

And everywhere that Mary went

The lamb was sure to follow

So she led it to the abattoir

I'm sure you can guess the rest?

Now Mary's having cutlets

For her roasted Sunday best!

 

Randolf the red-nosed big sheep and other China'mals, the two deer and - possibly - the grey sheep also being toob-types?

 

Piggy-wigs! Four China'mals and a marbled Blue Box!

Onkey-donks, there is a post of Donkeys in the long queue, a couple of 'lazy-post' group shots, like the Rhino ones, which have risen to become the most popular post ever? And a few more have come in, so I might do another group shot and get them out over Christmas?

Mookeys; or is it Mookies, I don't think I've ever given it much thought! I like the two large ones, modern Chinese production, but rather nice sculpts I think? The two littlies are also China, (toob set again), as is the brown one, while the Guernsey/Jersey is an earlier Hong Kong jobbie, with Blue Box DNA, and the calf down the bottom is from our own Crescent Toy Co.

You may recall the mass of horses in Jon's previous parcel, so these must be the escape committee, found hiding in a wooden glider? The two down the bottom are interesting, and I'd take any information given, they are odd poses, almost complaining about being shown the load, or being backed into the load, and the paint looks commerical, but the scale isn't model-railway, so I'm wondering if they're from maybe one of the many fund-raising models for the RNLI over the years? As a lifeboat-towing team, something like that, circus animals? [later the same day; Corgi Circus - tag added, cheers Jon!]

 

The really big one is a dressage horse from Schleich, with the small one to it's right being from one of those Revell/Pyro/Life-Like/Merit wagon kits I think, and we saw the Blue Box Japanese officer's mount the other day! It's all grist to the mill, and I thank Mr Attwood for them, as always.

UFO is for UAP - Hinstar / Avra / DAS / Dival / Eugene / Simba - Galaxy War Striker, Star Warriors

Chapter two of this particular story, and my first encounter with it, I'd picked up a few loose micro-mech's a few years before I got my dog-faced trio with their big, blue space-taxi! And one of the first to get a good write-up (as Hinstar) about 16-years ago, but I now can't find the site?

 

Marked on the underside as Hinstar without a date, each of the three machines (only one is strictly a saucer), comes with eight robots, which I assume are based on/cloned from commonly licensed 'Mechs', from Japanese or US Kid's TV output?

 

Imported into the UK by DAS, into Greece by Avra, and Germany and it's neighbours by Simba, they are all brand-marked Eugene, and I have a screen-cap which seems to indicate a Dival also imported them to somewhere, but Google won't search for Dival, defaulting to 'Devil' without the option to search for the asked phrase/task instead?

 

My original sample, shot in 2013, at the time they were in the Galoob boxes, as someone had authoritatively stated they were Micro-Machines, not an attribution I was ever happy with, they didn't have Galoob quality, they didn't have MM bases, they didn't have Action Fleet or Army Gear articulation, and they were both polyethylene and clear knock-offs?

 

But you can see they had three colourways, and more than eight sculpts (I still haven't tried to work out how many sculpts there are?!!), with metallics that vary from batch to batch and are best described as Brass/Gold, Copper/Bronze and Silver/Gunmetal/Aluminium. The one on his own at the bottom is mould-damaged, and quality on all is no better than rack-toy 'army men'.

My three, with the original 9 and others which have come in I should have enough to calculate the total number of poses, but simply haven't got round to it yet! Generally the colours of the robots tie-in with each ship, but there were larger space-station sets which may have got a larger mix of figures.

 

While one issue (Holland?) got human or humanoid figures in primary colours which I haven't tracked-down yet. Their vessels may all be different colours too, the pale blue 'arrow-head' is navy-blue plastic in the Dutch issue.

Two spaceships and a flying saucer, which has offset 'battleships guns' sticking out to be broken off! All these sets can be traced back to Polly Pocked, not the Mighty Max most websites suggest (for all three sets), as Max himself owes his existence to Polly, who predates him. Equally, Galoob, who had the most success with this stuff, were only exploiting an existing idea from Bluebird Toys.

A couple of interactive parts, with a moving radar dish and sliding 'elevator' capsule, mine all came together about 18-months ago, but then went straight to storage, so I can't remember offhand what details the other two had, the silver one may have had sliding seats, and the orange dome in the brown one may have done something?

 

The Greek Avra sets, they were issued as the above three designs as well, with an Avra sticker, but here have been given new ship designs (on the same Eugene cards, slipped into the Avra boxes) and you only get five robots per card/box.

O is for Odds & Sods - Other Figures

Although Jon's last parcel was filled with non-human animals, there were a fair few bipedal troublemakers too, and these are the rest, we looked at the small scale the other day. It's an eclectic mix with some interesting peeps!

A bit of a cheat given it could have gone with the other vehicles, but there's definitely a rider there, on the big one! Looks like it might be some sort of stunt-toy, or trick cycle with the metal studs and thin wheels - for running in tracks of some kind?

 

The others are three Micro-Machines and a Kinder type, which will enhance those corners of the collection. I did a sort of mini-season on [small-scale] motorcycles right back at the start of the blog, but never got on to the Galoob ones, so that's still for another day, and while I got into the hang of regular M/C post/updates, the next is overdue, so I'll have to address that!

Three lovey Native Americans, the Crescent Mohican (left) a particular treasure, while the Chromoplasto one is also lovely and quite animated compared to some, even most, of the other sculpts in that range of vulcanised [tyre] rubber figures.

 

The Marx six-inch is the less common hard polystyrene version, and I may try to replace the missing barrel at some point, you can hide the mend under solid strokes of gloss brown and black! While the Lik Be copy (he might be an LB original?) is in a new size - for the material (polystyrene) at around 50mm.

More Wild West, and the highlights are to the right, with a Cherilea (Hilco, from the plastic colour, Phoenix?) Indian with seperate headdress, sadly damages (as most are), but I've only ever seen chalky-brown ones before, and definitely have a spare headdress for this one somewhere!

 

While one of the few casualties of the Post Office's ministrations was the possibly Spanish-made cavalryman, whose hand is a clean-break, and should be glueable.

This horse may be Spanish as well, and once ID'd I may have a correct rider for him, but weather Wild West, Ceremonial or something else I don't yet know! Not sure if I have/had the 60mm Crescent guardsman either, but I do now!

 

The zookeeper is an oversized copy of the Britains one, possibly by Roggaz/ZZ, although in polystyrene as it is, it maybe someone else? And the mini-action-figure wit a bulls head (Minotaur?) is fun, I don't know what franchise he's from but suspect something Japanese, and televisual in origin?

 

Kinder bits go in the Kinder zone for sorting, reuniting with their accessories and building into sets! I suspect that blue nose is a little crayon, Kinder had a habit a few years ago of putting these little crayons (which last only minutes) in the tips of things and including a very small colouring sheet in the capsule-egg.

 

Combat troops; another post-office casualty, a couple for the Khaki Infantry page (kneeling firer appears to be a new - to me - Hong Kong figure) and a Monogram knock-off along with a Timpo para' sans base and a businesslike Lone Star figure.

 

The rest, the right hand picture nearly got dropped it's so poor, but the footballer will be in the next football round-up, and Timpo spares are always useful, while in the left-hand shot, the crab and ray are rather sweet, flocked in the Sylvanian Families fashion (with airbrushed detailing), while the huge medieval war-horse is by Chap Mai, and I'll have to look out for a rider!

 

Thanking Jon Attwood again for all this, as you can see, it's a fine collection of all-sorts!

UFO is for UAP - Uni-King Toys / Peter Kiri - Mysteries of the Universe UFO

So, I'm not so fussed about the absolute order of these, but these are the 'better' of the three lines (marginally), so I'm leading with them, even though the Uni King sets (which I call the 'Triple Flap Families') were dated 1996, against the 1993 of Imperial's Mighty Max knock-off - Sammy Steel!

 

March 2021 - Sci-Fi & Fantasy

These three posts are a bit of a mix of Internet stuff and my stuff, as the bulk of mine went to storage before I'd got all the shots I wanted, although some of them had already gone, or been separated at some point, the best are the Hinstar (next post) as all three loose sets came together at the end!

 

So, variously generic or, as the larger sets, credited to a Uni-King, and sometimes the UK importer Peter Kiri, these are a lot of fun, and you get little 'families' of aliens (hence my shorthand name for them!) with a few accessories, in a 'flying saucer' or UFO which unfolds in three sections and has a micro-mini UFO as the roof-piece, which can be flown off! By fingers!

We saw my first family, incomplete, way back at the start of the blog, the dog-faces, in the blue saucer, and a black saucer came loose from Chris Smith I think, not that long ago, but they are both in storage now, one with a couple of bits missing, the other sans contents.

 

But I did get the figures from the black one, although I'm not sure if I shot them, and these (Greenies) may be an evilBay image? The 'Greys' I did have to hand, but the accessories were only partial! Basically, you get two adults and two kids!

 

The green set, with its micro-UFO sitting atop the central column. This one also has three not-so-greys, moulded into their stasis-chambers, and - like the other three - a revolving floor, which allows for a second layer of detailing underneath, visible in sections as you push the missing segment of floor/gap around the central column.

Spiny-twisty things, there seems to have been plans for a third cover/hatch (hole next to left-hand feature), but for reasons of budget, or technical difficulty (or forgetfulness?) it never happened? The saucers and accessory-pieces are a 'styrene, or brittle'ish polypropylene, while the figures are PVC or one of its substitutes.

I'm missing a tripod, which should be red, but is white on the packaging artwork, in fact all the packaging artworks show pre-production stuff, and there are various subtle differences in design and contents. The missing elements mean we can return to this set another day, when I've got everything together and filled any gaps!

 

Each set is themed around a couple of tropes of the UFOlogists, here it's 'Greys' and the Easter Island Moais, the huge monolithic sculptures carved by the Rapa Nui with NO help from phuqing Aliens! And the little Moai is also missing, but I may have one somewhere in the stash, but I fear mine is Lego, Kinder or something similar?

18/12/2023 - Late Addition:

My original 3 of 4 'cute' aliens, I'm missing the other 'child'.

I is for Interesting Invertebrates or Insects

There were lots of Insects in Mr Attwood's parcel, so an unscheduled insect overview ensues now, another much ignored corner of the Small Scale World 'archive collection', there are lots in store, a few in the growing 'next overview' folder, and many downloads of sets to help ID them all one day for the A-Z pages, while there are good websites out there, for those who want to search for themselves, the STS Animal Wiki being the first place to start.

Spiders, this - like the cheetahs - was another one I had to re-shoot, as I found smaller spiders lurking under other things after I thought I'd found them all! A mix of the novelty/joke type and more realistic species identifiers, the stripped one on the left, for instance? But none are branded, with a smattering of CHINA marks, they will all need further research!

 

Big beetles; the khaki/dun and grey & white ones are from a set, while the two real biggies are probably (like the two big spiders) counter-top pick-me-ups, there is a consistency of marks/undersides within the contents of these five images, which suggest the majority of them are from two sets which should be easy'ish to ID one day.

 

Colony insects with a wingless ant facing-off against all his winged bred'rin! A couple of houseflies have snuck in under the 'wing' qualifier, but I'm not too sure on either of them, both larger than the usual novelty/joke flies, they have some bee/wasp qualities, and the red-eyed horror (a green-bottle, or green-arsed fly!) is more bee than fly!

 

Creepy, crawly critters (ooh, that would have been a better post title!), we have seen similar centi-milli-peades, but as we saw then, they all vary, and we may have seen the catapillar, or something similar, but I think most of these are new to stash?

 

With the exception of the little dragonfly, these all seem to be from the same set, with two issues of the devil's coachman and centi-milli-pede! The coachmen are both damaged, which makes them look more different!

 

Closing with scorpions, I've listened, all-night, to someone who's been stung by a scorpion, not an experience I ever want to repeat! The large damaged one (happily retained as 'first sample') seems to have always had two less legs, but scorpions do come in 6 and 8-leg (or 8 and 10-leg if counting front gloves) types.

The medium-sized one goes with the two medium-sized beetles in the second image, and the smallie goes with the chaps and chapesses in the previous image!

As always, many thanks to Jon for all these, they will be better sorted one day, and all have a place in the collection!

UFO is for UAP - Introduction

For reasons known only to them, the US Government have stopped calling UFO's 'UFO's' (for Unidentified Flying Objects), and started calling them UAP's (for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena), given the number of fuckwits who will struggle to spell the last two words of the definition (including me!), it's hardly a beneficial change, and people are already starting to use Aerial or Airborne for the middle letter, yet, due to the hegemony of US culture on the English-speaking press, it is a fact that everyone else is stepping into line behind the Pentagon, and UFO's are sliding into the history of 1950's hysteria, where some might argue they belong?!!

I picked this up a while ago, going cheap in Esdevium Games I think, as an end-of-line/discontinued item? It looks distorted, but that’s just the Reaper Miniatures packaging refracting the viewable image of the contents! It's quite a simple kit of six parts, I think there are three legs and a clear-yellow canopy, and is presumably a one-man UFO in 28mm, but could be a bigger machine in a smaller scale.

 

eBay I think? It's been in the folder for a while, seems to be a take-off, or partial take-off (styling) of the Marx Mystery Spaceship, we saw here, but this is a push-and-go friction toy with sparking action! Seems to be copied from the Zee Toys version: Space Saucer, or a re-boxing? And like Lincoln's clockwork, sparking Jeeps, both could be taken from a Japanese toy, or even produced under licence from someone like Yonezawa?

 

Seen before here, but there's not a lot you can do with a carded generic except photograph it against a different background from time to time! Fixed-key clockwork, I keep hoping to find a loose one going cheap, but may de-card this one day?

 

This was a recent modelling show piece, although when I say recent, I think maybe three or four years ago, and I can't remember if the picture was online, or eMailed, but I think it was a forthcoming show-dates thing, so the model may be older still? I thought it was fun though, lifting a cow for weird experiments and/or visceral mutilation!

 

Clearly other people think it's fun becuse there's quite a few around now, this one is credited to a Matt Smiriglio and issued by Running Press Mini Editions, usually to be found around the 10- or 12-quid mark, with free postage (or £20+ if you click on one of the US listings by accident!), and as well as lights, sounds and a magnetic cow-abductor, there is a booklet on the cow-abduction phenomena! It's Christmas soon, hint-hint!

 

While these band-wagon products are cow abduction table-lamps! The one on the left being £150-odd, and a generic? The right hand 'Area 51' piece can be found from between £50 and £180, and is claimed to be from a Wan Tai, in some ad's.

 

While the real reason for this post, is some forthcoming posts, on the three sets of UFO minis in the style of Polly Pocket or Mighty Max, which graced our cheapie stores and corner shops a few years ago, Three sets; Aliens, Robots and miscellaneous Sci-Fi 'stuff', each line had three toys, and most had more than one final branding/packaging type.

Here we see two carded cheap sets, two robot sets and one Alien set (green), and the three set-specific posts will be interspersed with the Jon Attwood donation-posts over the next few days.

L is for Layouts and Little People!

There were quite a few figures in the huge box of mostly animals Jon Attwood sent recently, and we're looking at the smaller-scaled stuff in this post. Of interest as my intention is to get some model-railway stuff posted over Christmas, because it's a long time since we looked at any of it in any depth, and the last time we did, it was all that Preiser/Merten stuff, which won't feature this time round!

A late ('yellow' pull-off lid) box of Airfix Platform Figures was stuffed with small scale . . . err . . . stuff! And this is me sorting it into piles! Most of it is grist-to-the-mill stuff you wouldn't want me to go through pile by pile, but what can you spot - the image enlarges quite big, but a little pixel-fuzzy.

 

Some highlights from the previous though; the paratrooper is from a parachute-plane kit, but I can never remember which is which, as there are more than one with a figure, one is Airfix, another Monogram I think, which may be this one? Then a Blue Box German throwing  grenade over a damaged, but rather fine (Edwardian?) board-game piece, to his US oppo', while another of my favourite little Hong Kong cowboys charges into the fray!

 

Faller scenic sets, these are the really useful sets of 'bits', rather than specific kits, and I well remember those coin-operated railway dioramas at mainline and terminus stations in Germany having the contents of 973 stacked round the two cottages under construction, which would be made to look on fire with blackened timbers, cotton wool, hidden red and yellow grain-of-wheat bulbs &ect . . . so the fire equipment of Roco, Preiser, Herta, Praline and/or Wiking could be given something to do, for a feature in one corner of the layout!

 

A lovely sample, of samples, of metal railway figures, both bigger name and after-market, old and new'ish. Jon has also sent images, and I have also had both a photography and scanning sessions, so there will be intermittent posts on some of this in December, all going well.

 

We looked at these years ago, they were samples from a dodgy outfit in China/US/Germany, and Mike Niederman confirmed Tomolio's suspicions they were Presier copies, but fun nevertheless, as figure collectables, and seen here in what looks to be OO- and O-gauges. Upper shot is duplicate poses in the two sizes, lower shot are colour variations of the OO figures.

 

Hong Kong knock-offs of Merit/Randall scenery, with the white stuff attributed to Blue Box and through their Sunshine lable, Marx!

 

Jon also sent this for a very interesting advert on figures from a maker I only knew from their similar ad's in the military modelling press, where they were promoting 1:90 or 1:100th NATO recognition models of Cold War armour! All for the forthcoming posts on Railway figures!

Thanks again to Jon, for all this, which is already proving useful and will continue to do so for years to come. You know, everything which you physically have in the 'stash', is something you don't have to search for, at some point in the future, to feed blog articles or illustrate points!