T is for the Third Time of Asking!

I post steam, he shows . . . err, was it steam? It was far, far away! I post books, he posts books, I show football game figures, he mentions football game figures, I show a Pirate's mountain top, he does . . . Dinosaur poo? I mention Casdon, he namecheck's Casdon, it's childish! Invicta (original copy) for Invicta (feeBay scrapings!), you get the picture, well he does, usually from somewhere/someone else!

 

23,000 toy companies, millions of toys, but he seems glued to my Blog. Is he really that insecure, or does he think he's being funny, is this what passes for comedy up there on the Wirral? They do like to refer to themselves as Scallies, the little Wags! I must be missing something, but it's a game which can be played both ways, especially if you're going to copy me umpteen times a fortnight, or should that be Fortnite! He did Fortnite, so I'll do Fortnite!

 

Of the six Tagged visits to stampers, two of the most recent three, have featured the Fortnite stampers, and I did mention a while ago there was Fortnite stuff in the queue, so shall we get these out of the way, and do the key-rings over Christmas? See, that's a heads-up for him to go and scrape some key-ring shit off of evilBay!

 

The broken blind-bags (which aren't blind - it was a poor joke, the first time!)

Contents - predominately female.

 

Outer.

 

Flyer.

 

Comparison between the stampers and the keyrings.

65mm (75 with base). 

 

Three loose ones which came in a charity-shop, something else he seems to have picked-up from this Blog, where I was showing you the shit I took home, even if it is 'shit', from early-on, while he didn't use to do charity shops, and now shows us the shelves of shit he left behind! How many crushed boxes of Connect-4 or Operation do you need to be shown in a given period?

 

 Group shot!

 

When they were in The Works, back in 2019 (I guess stupid people have poor memories, or was he concentrating too hard on not recognising Buck Rogers erasers!), we saw the blind bags, five-figure 'pack' cards and two-figure boxes, and to be honest I can't remember where this four-figure set came from (in 2023), possibly Peter?

While my not-so Blind Bags, came from Poundland (store-closure program expanding), in 2021, so they've done the rounds for several years, if you've kept your eyes open, and had several formats of retail presentation! Note also, how both types seen here, state '36 to collect', yet we have a 37th?

 

The guy on the left is not in any of the artworks? 

 

Again, females are central to the gender-mix, so I was guessing Fortnite is a game played by both sexes, divided relatively equally, but AI (who we've discovered can't be trusted) says, no, mostly males, so I guess they must like dressing as 'Tank Girls', don't tell The Donald, he'll have it banned, and them, arrested and deported, for un-American, gender-bending, 'woke' activity!

 

You'll also notice, there are similarities with the clothing of the two women, this is even more noticeable with the key-rings (whenever I get round to them), and is probably a result of characters 'skins' being chosen from a menu, and populism, the default of the majority of humanity, dictating people keep choosing the same gear!

 

The stampers (red, blue and indigo ink on mine, so far, I've also seen yellow-orange), only give you the head of the character (like the Nina Turtle set), which when other stampers seen here (Thundercats, Action Man and bug-eyed Alien) have had whole figures - albeit, very small - seems a bit of a swizz!

 

Spare shot, slightly better colours!

Now, when you find this stuff going cheap in either The Works or Poundland, you tend to think 'end of line', but in fact, with these, I think now, it was more an exercise in clearance to make room for the 'Battle Royal' Series Two wave (red cards), and to get as many people as possible hooked on them by making them so available? They are now up to series three - purple cards.

 

And, as well as two or three series of key-rings, there are some mild 'deform' figures, a pair of whom will be seen here shortly, not scraped off the internet, but in the collection!

 

And, yeah, anyone can post anything on their Blog, and if you want to turn what was once the best space toy Blog on this planet, into a pile of shit internet scrapping, fine, fill yer' boots, after all, you were doing a fair-bit of that from day one, but we sort of ignored it, for the - in context - space toys, however, if you want to continue this constant niggling, point-for-point copying, I'll give it back in spades.

F is for Follow-up - Footballer Cake Decorations

Harder to believe - than last time - that this is another follow-up to all the follow-ups, being the fourth or fifth for PME, sixth or seventh overall, spacifically, this is a follow-up to the last follow-up here.

As per last time!

 

The trick being that all the pink poses in that previous set are now decorated as black, and the three black figures last time are rendered pink this time! Makes sense really, one team of out-painters takes one ethnicity, the other the contrary, and you split the winnings back at the packing desk!

 

Although there was an element of pure luck about it, in that I forgot we'd had the previous set, and just grabbed this one as it looked 'new'!

 

And here they are with the smaller ones Peter Evans has sent to the Blog, whether they run to the full seven poses or not only time will tell, but if they are going to run to all the colour variations I've found for the larger ones, I'll be drowning in footballers before too long!

B is for Brenner?

Sorry, got a bit lazy after the Pirate-fest! It's always nice to add a new name to the tag-list, or sum-total of the hobby's knowledge, and to add two, unrelated lines in the same post is a bargain-bonus! Except there is a US Toy in the tag-list already

 

One of those situations where I sort of knew I knew, but couldn't remember where from. Turned-out it was an old dealer list from the 1990's which either Paul Morehead or John Begg gave me a very 'black' (no contrast whatsoever) photocopy of a copy, years ago.

 

Warrior Ants from US Toy (Brenner) is what I have, and of course, trying to Google US Toy just gets you a million US toys, same on evilBay and Etsy, so what was a patriotic company name back in the pre-internet days, is now a liability lost in a miasma of Adsense, Google-Ads, spam Ad's, hidden-Ad's. pop-up's and all the other marketing shite which has been tacked-on-to/embedded-in the Internet in the last 15-years!

 

However, they are still going and have a lot of novelty/party/rack toy stuff, including some of the figures featured in Plastic Warrior magazine (courtesy of Les White in the magazine, Brian Berke, here, the tag mentioned above - firefighters), a few years ago, but not, sadly, either of these sets, I don't know the significance of the Brenner in brackets, as annotated in the old dealer list, but will add it as a seperate tag?

Aren't they brilliant, probably taking-off the insect movies of the 1990's; such as Bugs Life  and Antz (both 1998, which may help date them) rather than the earlier Hasbro/GiG franchise Army Ants/Kombatini, there is also something of the Trigan Empire about their Greco-Roman get-up, but I accept it's a tenuous link, verging more on wishful thinking!

 

As is often the case, Shaun at Fantasy Toy Soldiers is the only other source of info' on them and he has had them as unknown, for some time, which I've just been over and solved, but a larger sample, with a better selection of colours.

 

Also credited to US Toy (Brenner) is this set of anything but grey 'Grey Aliens', in a palate of lovely metallic shades. A bit bigger that the Warrior Ants at around 54mm vs. 45mm, and both sets are supposed to have eight poses for a full set, ants in four pastel shades (I have no green ones, yet!) and hopefully each of the aliens available in all six of these shades?

 

Seen elsewhere only the other day, a quick alien comparison with, on the left an unknown 65mm, glow-in-the-dark figure (I may have a note on them somewhere?), the silver chap is a pencil-top, we saw the next two here (Soma on the left, Imperial on the right), then the US Toy (Brenner) and finally a counter-top/point-of-sale type, pick-tray/carton novelty, 45mm alien of unknown brand'age!

N is for Not Phidal, Oh, No, no, no, no, no, or Not?

By which I mean I would happily put a small wager on these having come from the same factory and/or design team who work with or supply Phidal, but they are not sold as Phidal, but rather as total generics in blank packaging - some warehouse somewhere is shifting them to anyone who wants them, and there are several sellers on evilBay, and Amazon I think.

This is not to say they mightn't be clearance from Phidal, there were a lot of early sets about which I know little, as the style, painting and bases are all very reminiscent of some of the Phidal output we've seen here before, but they are unmarked and direct copies (pose wise) of a Disney Stores 'exclusive' set (which are marked), which suggests unlicensed knock-offs? A third near-identical set exists, with metallic painted figures.

How they arrive, six heat-sealed pockets in a rolling double-sheet which is then cut and stuffed in another vacuum-packed bag, causing the warped bases on what are otherwise quite substantial figurines; and a hideous carbon footprint, and they are a little larger than typical Phidals at around 65/75 mil.

When I say "unmarked" I mean they don't even have a '©Disney', which is a pretty good sign of some Chinese (they don't have 'China' either!) ner'do'wellness! But they are nice for what they are and will go OK (not necessarily perfectly, but 'OK') with the larger Marx and other more modern figures by Bully, Kaiodo, Schleich etc.

Those unmarked bases, just for completeness! As hinted at above, the packaging will likely leave one or two requiring some hot-water reshaping. And you may have noticed; the Cheshire Cat's a peculiar colour . . . that's never going to make a Bagpuss!

K is for Kicking and Screaming . . .

Hard to believe that a modern set of such poor overall (paint and fine detail) quality could feature on the Blog for a forth or fifth time, but that is what is happening here and a follow-up to various follow-up's, found in The Range, Aldershot (looking for hose connectors - always check the toy section!) and branded to the previously seen PME, but with a new header-card, it's those footballers' again!

Although, if you're a racist, this isn't a set for you, oh, no-no-no, you go and sit in your so wrong, white-right zone and leave the rest of us to enjoy the fact that a set that's been around for over a decade now has finally decided to represent what's happening on the pitch!

Sticking with one of the previously seen colour schemes, shirt wise, we now have 50% of the players showing obvious ethnicity and the knowledge that the Ref' might be a gay Scotsman, or even that one of the players might be gay, means inclusivity finally comes to the hallowed turf -  provided it's icing - as it has in real life! And it's Pride month - go Justin; you've got the ball ('Forest strip!), score goals on a green cake!

F is for Follow-up - Progress WWII Russians

I managed to find a full set of the Progress Russian Infantry (going very cheap or I would have waited) a while ago, and while I only needed the three Chris helped-out with last time we looked at them, I thought "When will I see them again?" so grabbed them!

We saw the backs of most of them when we looked at them last time, so just a re-hash from one side, they have faint traces of paint on them (a pale flesh on hands and faces, no other apparent colours), so earlier (?) sets seem to have carried paint, but I've seen them on packaging (near mint) without.

And as Chris suggested last time, still only the nine poses, I guess they considered it a set of ten items with the flag, not that any set of toy anything has to have round numbers and many don't, but with toy soldiers you tend to look for six, eight or ten &etc!

Having accepted I would have a bunch of duplicates, they came in a darker, flat green than most of my existing metallic ones, or the pale-jade above, so I will probably hang-on to most of them for a fuller sample in the near future at least, right now they are still in two places so I haven't had time to fully-compare them.

The best of the bunch, he can be holding it in a brisk updraft (right-hand pair) . . .
. . . or on a slightly breezy day!

P is for Prototypes?

If TJF and his chattering, ventriloquist's glove, monkey-puppet (see earlier post today) had done a bit of searching instead of picking the low-hanging fruit . . . so low they ended up with their faces in the dirt - they might have found these on a British patent application site;

Registered by Hing Fat in October 1995, and given the design number GB2051216 (now expired), this and the following three figures seem to have been the start of a planned sci-fi range of space warriors and robot/android figures, probably of a 3-to-4½-inch action figure type, but with no obvious points of articulation, they may well have been intended as smaller solids?

From the left; GB2051213, GB2051214 and GB2051215 (I think?), there's an obvious provision for separate weapons, and the possibility of a removable helmet on '15, I would imagine if they were going to be 54/60mm solids that the planned material would have been a PVC-type soft polymer? Has anyone ever seen these are a retail item/commercial prospect?

Both images are false-coloured by me from B&W originals.

I tried to find the original page (to give you the link) and couldn't! Google is really shit now, it's so commercially-oriented, it's almost impossible to find useful stuff, even if you know it was there years ago! But I did fond this page . . . with another figure from this 'set', but registered in 1994! I think the page is actually dead, as it takes ages to load?

Five minutes later and I found a few more, but I'll let you find them from the link! It looks like a set of Power Ranger knock-off's (added to the tag list!) registered in 1994, renewed in 1999 and struck out in 2007, and the set of space figures I'd already found from the following-year? The pages get faster once you've opened a few too!

Note the definite ring hands on what I now suspect were going to be 65/70mm vinyls?

M is for More; Russian Rack Toys

Except I suspect most of them aren't actually Russian, and they may nearly all be actually from satellite countries, but they are from the Soviet 'collective' era, so; you know what I mean!

Chris Smith sent me a few shots as a follow-up to something posted here about a year and a half ago (the Russian/Soviet mini-season?), and I never got round top posting them at the time, in part because I'd had a thought on them. Some of the shots he sent are still waiting for another day, and a full follow-up on something-esle, but these were the others.

Now, it happens that maybe none of them are actually Russian, the four red ones have the look of Progress's flats about them which could make them Bulgarian or East German, who both had a Progress factory, but who either copied the Russian originals (Bulgarian factory's October Revolution cavalry flats, seen here passim) or made original designs (E. German factory's AFV's)?

While the two MG-gunners, have the same bases as Wild West and ancient Roman flats attributed to an - as yet - unknown Hungarian manufacturer, those distinctive 'Zulu shield' bases having been linked to Hungary by several commentators in the hobby, and most commonly found in the stock of Hungarian ebayer's? Although a Latvian seller on feeBay often has the same pointy-based figures? I think - size wise - these tie-in with the blue sailor set we've seen here from Rasnoexport at around 65mm, which would make them Russian.

So, the above could all be non-Russian production, in the meantime the thought I'd had on them was that "I've got some of those red ones somewhere?" . . .

. . . . except that when I'd dug them out a few weeks later, they (my sample, here) were clearly different, and while they can be called WWII Russian Infantry, have some of the signatures of Polish production; heavy bases and a more demi-ronde than flat sculpting, so may not be Russian at all!

At the time of writing (August 2020) there are two sets of these on feebleBay, both in a lovely shade best described as 'pastel heliotrope' or 'raspberry yogurt' , and both lot's consisting of the same four poses, so this may be a complete set? They are also both rather pricey, so clearly this would appear to be a 'rated' set back in the former USSR? 

Which leaves the silver guy we've seen before who happened to be left in Picasa for some reason . . . his flag reads 3rd October Revolution (I think?), and some have attributed his whole set to Poland, but they do fit the same 8-figure carriers as the Russian Napoleonics, which we know are Russian because the have the prices in kopeks and rubles marked on them in Cyrillic script! So he may be the only Russian in the post!

A size comparison with my may-be-Polish and a close-up of Chris's probably-Hungarian machine-gunner finish this brief look at a regular here - 'Soviet era' flats and semi-flats! To be fair, I really suspect the two MG's of being Hungarien, the rest probably are Russian in Origin!

A few days later - many thanks to Theo van der Weerden's wife for translating the flag, it actually reads -

"за власть советовъ" = 'For the power of the Soviets'. 

B is for Big Chief Box-Tick!

A real box-ticker; I don't think I even have all the poses, but in sorting the Wild West over the last few weeks these presented themselves as being vaguely photogenic, so I fired off a quick shot or two, and the box can be ticked!

Supreme's Native American Indians, copies of course and rendered in a soft'ish PVC-substitute with a - probably - polypropylene horse and base for same. Airfix piracies with the odd adjustment; note the footrest, the horse however seems to be a more original piece, but I dare say there is a donor/are donors somewhere!

I think the Supreme's (1) are all six-colour paint-jobs, which is pretty good for Hong Kong/China, but the copy of a copy (2, we saw in Hunson packaging with some shelfies from Mr Berke), is seven with the base! 3 is a more traditional clone with the original British Airfix sculpt at 4.

However it must be said, none of these are particularly rare, and you can probably find all three copies still on sale if you're lucky? Although in the case of 3 you are more likely to find second or third generation piracies in brighter, primary colours, but we saw a similar set from Imperial here at Small Scale World a while back, while Hunson are running some similar ones too.

Note that while 3 is probably a pantographed copy, the two rubber figures (1 & 2) have the hallmarks of hand-copies with re-sculpted folds to clothing, new chunky-versions of the weapons and less realistic torso contours.

Better view of the rider, the stand-fixing wasn't quite in focus, not that it matters, I couldn't work out how it's fixed, but like Britains Deetail horses/bases, there seems to be an element of wedging involved, which I wasn't going to force for curiosities-sake; in case I broke it!

MM is for Miss Marple . . . no; Marvelous Missus . . . no; Mrs. Marmite . . . Miriam Margoles . . . Doh!

Love her or hate her; it's all too silly for words, but blurb has to be produced or procured and a bit of controversy at the start of the year is no bad thing!

This Phidal set was reduced to £2.50p in the post-Christmas shelf-clear at TK Maxx the other day, and was the only reason I bought it, having rejected it several times at full-price over the last year or so.

Carol Danvers - Captain Marvel

The reasons why I kept not buying it when I saw it, include the fact that it was one of the rarer sets with only ten 'figurines' (instead of the normal 12) for the money and the fact that it's one of the even rarer sets which are 'blind-bag' screened so you don't know what's in them, which meant it could have been one of the sets containing 'semi-deforms' - which are not somewhere I want the collection to go particularly!

I don't know why a few sets have this blind layout, but interestingly the only other one I've purchased cheap, was one reduced after being damaged by someone browsing in-store, who forced the corner of the cover up and couldn't get it back resulting in a clearance price-reduction. . . one of the DC sets we looked at last year?

That the one was forced and the other end-of-year cleared, would suggest they aren't a popular move by Phidal, and one hopes they will be phased-out? Presumably they are aimed at generating hype through 'influencer' box-opening on social media?

New superhero -

The Amazing Morphing-Hips'n'Hair Woman

Anyway, having had a dig at the packaging, let me be equally unhappy with the contents, firstly - as I've said -  we only get ten not twelve items; the normal count for a My Busy Book, secondly, of all the poorer or sillier characters to come out of the DC-Marvel 'verses, the main one here takes the biss'quit . . . she 'Carol Danvers' (I'm sure?) used to be a he, she's taken Superman (from DC)'s colour-scheme, Han Solo (Star Wars-Lucas)'s waist-belt arrangement and also has some of the same sort of superpowers as Clarke Kent (no x-ray vision); in short - she's a formulaic, derivative, wet-nurse's pap!

Also she's a Captain? In the Air Forces you have Flight Lieutenants, Wing-thingies and Squadron- or Group Wottsits and Air Commanders or Commodores; not Captains (actually you do get Group Captains - Doh!, but they're older pilots). AND . . . she doesn't get her superpowers until she's gone civilian anyway, so, even if the USAF has flying Captains, it's a spurious rank, and people look down on retirees who hang-on to such lowly ranks anyway, my parents generation where always slighting Mark Philips for hugging his captaincy! Airline and Ship's captains are the exceptions which prove the rule!

In the above image we see her as Air Force- (green, 'who ate all the pies' Carol), Civilian- (blue-jean, 'Helen DeGeneres' Carol) and Superheroine (spandex body-suit, 'cosplay porn-toob' Carol) to the right, with another member of the Alpha Flight team on the far left.

While here we see Ultron in the middle (who in the best traditions of Spandex Comics Inc., proved to be anything other than 'ultra'!), flanked by two Kree, one of whom (on the right) is probably Captain (aliens have the same ranking system!) Mar-Vell (geddit!), expect a Captain De-Cee any day now.

Below the aliens are two Ultron-Bots (useful with Star Wars Micromachines!) and Captain Carol's fighter (which will end-up in the drawer with the Galoob and Mattel micro-aircraft).

Now, I guess the whole trope behind superhero comics is to keep some crippled kid on a trailer-park - with a vicious, feckless step-father and junkie-mother (or vice-versa) - dreaming the 'American Dream (Princess Perfect-Pilot's a true 'patriot' by the way), but the whole by-the-numbers plotting leaves me cold, comic heroes here or in Europe have always been either anti-heroes working to straighten the State, or normal citizens like Tin-Tin, or rebels . . . or drunken, divorcees with issues!

The reason I make an exception for 'old' Batman is because the TV series had obvious, for entertainment, over-the-top humour to take your mind off both the implausibility of it all and the plot-hole craters.

And if you're wondering why I'm being so cynical today, a quick check of past superhero posts will show you the subject often triggers my inner-curmudgeon and I'm full of deadly Asian-radish, extreme-cold-man-flu-lurggie!

However, another point, raised before but worth a repeat; whatever my (or your) thoughts on the background subject matter, or 'blind' purchases, by the time you've got them home and unpacked; you get a bunch of high quality figures (whether ten or twelve) for the price of one [Russian] 'new-production' figure, or about one-eighteenth of the price of a King & Country radio operator!

That's not to be sniffed at.

While the number of these sets issued so far, now make Phidal more prolific for both number of sculpts and number of sets, than Airfix were in their early 70's 54mm heyday, just because they aren't WWII or Wellingtonians doesn't mean the 'hobby' - as a market  . . . for kids - is not perfectly healthy, despite what you may read elsewhere.

S is for Sally's Silver Band

A box-ticker, but one I'm happy to have as it's a lovely set, and happy to keep brief, as it was fully covered in Plastic Warrior magazine not that long ago and I don't know enough about silver bands, musical instruments (as we've seen before!) or even the Salvation Army!

The 'Salvation Army Trade Department Hong Kong' apart from being a mouthful of words also sounds frightfully grand for an organisation I can't remember having ever seen associated with another product? But there you go; possibly a phantom brand for reasons of tax or charity status, or maybe a/some Christian Chinese produced them at cost or paid for the contract or something?

Figures - vinyl/PVC - are a tad on the large size, coming in at around 65mm, although you can see they are not the same height, with the lone side-drummer quite noticeably smaller than his band-mates at 62mm all-in. That's them, ♫♪♪♫ Onward Christian Soldiers ♫♫♪ and all that; Christmas is coming!

A is for Another One, or Two!

Lord luv'a duck Meeery Popp'ns, that Chris Smith's only gawn and dunn it again, aint' he?!

Just when you thought there can't be more, another explorer turns up looking for the long-lost source of his branding!

He's a far better sculpt, being either an original sculpt or copied from a better figure (did Heinerle or Leyla have a chap with flap-pockets and his arms tied?), and when I first saw the images I wondered if he might be from another set, but back home and mega-embiggened on the old Windows-Media-thingamabob, the pink matches perfectly.

Which has got us to a seven-count - I think - on poses now? I have seen an eighth, recently,  but it's not looking quite right, so I'll wait until an un-repainted one turns up, call me Doubting Thomas, or better; doubting Hugh, but better safe than sorry! Still - nice to see other's picking-up on the set!

As the set grows you wonder what accessories went with it, other than the animals which Peter Evans mentioned when they were first Blogged, here, not that long ago? Huts, cargo, boat? And there must have been palm-trees?

Courtesy of Bill B comes this 90/100mm chap from Wing Luen Plastic (not Wing Luen Foundry, although they were only a couple of roads apart in the New Territories and may well be related), sadly he seems to have come as a stand-alone with animal sets - no natives with Thermos-flasks or sharp spears, but he does accompany very nice copies of the Britains palm trees!

Possessing some of the other items (but not the Hunter!) I can say the 10cm is a bit misleading (it'll be a 'commercial buyers' guideline size); the figures are around 60/70mm.

S is for Shelfies - Fortnite

Drawing the curtains to a close on Shelfie weekend we have a couple of long-shots I took in Smyths in Farnborough the other-day, after the clearance Fortnite in The Works a while back (at not-clearance prices - why I shelfied them too!), it seems there are several other lines/ranges of Fortnite stuff out there at the moment, a lot of it aimed at younger users as the game appeals to younger gamers.

Epic Games have issued these, they are action figures, but in a smaller 60/70mm (?) compatible size like some of the Lord of the Rings sets or the smaller Zizzle pirates (although they weren't articulated - but you know what I mean!), each has a separate weapon and while definitely not 'my thing' they may be 'a bit of you' sufficiently to be worth a look?

These are also Epic and are semi-deforms, but they are 'solids' so may be of some use to fantasy/sci-fi fans? I'm sure I've seen (and not/forgot to shelfie) some Mattel branded Fortnite stuff, and due to its being the current 'big thing' in gaming, I would expect more toys to appear.

S is for Shelfies - USA

As well as the Ja-Ru shots Brian sent which we looked at yesterday, he's send lots of other Shelfies, some of which are in other articles in the queue, some of which are still in the 'long queue' probably destined for a straight to A-Z entry (when I get on top of them), but here are three which can go on the blog forthwith!

As a follow-up to another Bible Toys set he sent which we saw a while ago (Noah I think or was it JC himself), we have David and Goliath with other sets illustrated on the blister's backing card.

They all look a little Euro-Caucasian for Arabs, an excuse you could justify explain in the past when the whole of Western civilization was a war-loving, patriarchal, colonising, Pope-driven, racist, Christian cult, but these days they really should know better!

We've seen these before, both sides of the pond, under about five different brandings. Peter Evans sent one to the blog which was more of a candy-premium? Here under Hunson's moniker and four figures to a card, they are second-generation copies of the old Supreme sculpts - which also got several brand-outings!

The bowman (who also came with the candy set) is arguably the poorest pose in an otherwise reasonable group.

Graphics are odd - even by rack-toy standards, with the figures suspended over a lava-lake held-in by a glowing-red 'Berlin' wall??? Wild Willy's Gun Shop is clearly some portal to Hades, or the ammo-store just took-off with a bang!

These look very familiar, are they the sets we saw in Plastic Warrior magazine a few years ago (issue 159 - back issues avaiable) as US Toy from Les White? I think they are, you also see them from time to time on evilBay in sets of 12.

Now, they are six-pose sets, but there are only five in the bag, so you would have to buy at least two sets (four in this case as the firefighters come in red or tan), but as JPW they are likely to be so much cheaper than as US Toy or feebleBay's £$€6-something+postage, that it looks a good deal! The other set which comes in two colours (not in the PW article) are the soldiers who come in tan or green.

Many thanks to Mr. Berke - all useful stuff, especially if you are over the pond.