Oh Boy - Yet Another MPC Fort Frontier Set

This was one of those purchases where the fort itself was totally unimportant but it came with a whole bunch of 60mm ringhand figures that I wanted, as well as a Stagecoach in decent shape. The buckboard is nice but I already have a couple in that color combination. All the figures but two were Cowboys. BTW, these forts are not like Marx forts in that you can't buy extra walls and expand it to a large footprint. The front wall and one side wall is all one piece. The back wall and the other side wall are all one piece, and the two connect through a tab-&-slot method. Anywho, as time goes on I'll be posting photos of all these different ringhand figures and hopefully doing some temporary diorama photo set-ups. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

MPC Fort Frontier Playset 1970s No Box

I've posted a ton of MPC toys here on the blog but really only a handful of them were Western toys. This is the second Fort Frontier set I've posted, the first being a very incomplete affair blogged in Apr 2020.

I bought this set because, even though there was no box, it had several items that I was interested in. The Fort Frontier name had been used by MPC as early as the late 1950s to the best of my knowledge. (that, along with Fort Cheyenne were their two most oft-used fort names). The design of the stockade also hearkens back to their earlier days. The gate appears to have undergone numerous design changes as MPC had plain gates with doors and no sign boards, sign boards over the gate (like the one shown here), removable blockhouses over the gate, and finally blockhouses that were permanently attached and integral to the gate. Without the original box I cannot say for certain that what you see here was all a part of the original set. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Notice those two small blockhouses flanking the gate? My understanding is they were originally made in the '50s and designed to fit over the gate. At least one person in my facebook groups remembers having one and that these were difficult to attach. I have seen these as separate pieces in quite a few fort sets.

None of those notches on the bottom of the blockhouse matches up to any of the pegs in any of the walls, regardless of what configuration I put the walls in - like rectangle, or bowed out walls.

Vacu-formed terrain pieces became popular with manufacturers in the '70s - it was cheaper than injection molded pieces.

One of the reasons I bought this set was that both wagons had cardboard pieces. The earlier plastic top to the covered wagon had been replaced by a cheap cardboard cover in the '70s. The buckboard had always been sans load, but in the '70s MPC gave it a load of cardboard 'crates' (actually just one piece folded and glued which fit into the back). While both wagons had horses, the hitches were missing in my set. The cannon is of the 'politically correct' non-firing type that was sold in the '70s.

A scan of the covered wagon top

The buckboard load was a glued assembly so here's all the sides scanned separately

While MPC was famous (infamous?) for their 60mm ringhands, they did make 'normal' figures. These are considered 45mm. All figures with bases have the MPC logo on the bottom

When set up, the fort is 20" (50.8cm) W x 13" (33.02cm) D. The walls are 3 1/4" (8.25cm) H and the blockhouse gate is 6 5/8" (16.82cm) H

Those two awkward blockhouses were simply placed atop the walls for this photo shoot. I may use them as cannon emplacements in any future set-up

This is the second reason I bought this set. This cardboard insert belongs to the Western street front in my Westward Ho Wild West playset blogged back on 16 Oct 2021.

MPC Fort Frontier

Slowly-but-surely I've been adding to my MPC collection. I'll have some interesting updates in the weeks to follow (that is IF I don't get diverted LOL). Having said it before, I had a bunch of MPC as a kid but certainly not all of it. Growing up in the '50s and '60s my go-to choice for Western forts was Marx and I had a Fort Apache playset. Today's selection would have been nice as well to have as a kid. The original playsets I've seen had more figures and wagons and such than what is shown here and would have been an action packed toy for any kid growing up back in the day. 

The stockade is more compact than the Fort Apache but still nice.  It features soft plastic walls with an opening gate and more simplified block houses than Marx's forts and there are catwalks inside the walls for figures to stand on. The stockade measures 11 1/4" (28.57cm) W x 5 3/4" (14.60cm) D x 2 7/8" (7.30cm) H (to top of walls) or 5 1/2" (13.97cm) H (to top of gate house). The figures are 54mm and not the ring hand figs many people associate with MPC. This one is in good shape but, having been sold as a loose set, there's no horses, no Teepees, no wagons, etc. Okay, something to look forward to in my quest to flesh out the playset. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Besides the figures shown in the photos above, this loose set of riders was also included - no horses though