G is for Gorgeous Grail Garnered in Great Gewgaw Gala

It's funny, but since I picked this up (at Sandwon), I've seen about ten on evilBay, all boxed, all with the handle-bars in their little bag, so it would seem someone has found a carton of ex-shop stock, and either broken it up at [hammer] auction, or divvied it out among a few dealer mates, and they are trying to off-load them at the same time . . . Well, either that, or it was once (mid-1970's?) as common as muck!

 

Box.

 

Our old friend Lik Be with their daft monster hugging an LB marque! 

 

And, it may well be that the latter scenario is the truer, as there is often one or two on evilBay, always silly money (I didn't pay anything near what the current ones are up for, mild water-damage to box), and I have vague memories of seeing them in newsagents when I was still quite young, and being raised to believe all Hong Kong production was poor, cheap, naff and 'no good', so I've always hankered after one, and it's nice to tick-off a proper grail item.

 

Somewhere between a 1960's racer (shades of motorcycle & sidecar combinations, in the fairing), and the Fireball XL5 Jetmobiles (other sit-astride future transports were available!), for now I'm leaving the handle-bars in situe, but at some point I may get them out for a better shot or two. There are colour-reversed versions out there . . . New grail?

 

Loosely related to their other space figures, but the suit on this 100mm-odd figure, is more motorcycle-leathers than anything USAF/NASA-issued, however the double air-tanks and pistol holster are similar to features on the other eight sculpts! Plug-in, moving arms provide help with dynamism, but odd moulding has resulted in hollow legs/feet.

 

And I nearly wrote 'simplified' moulding there, but looking at it; at the angles required to remove the product from the mould; and the 3-way-split join-lines, it may have been anything but simplified, and in fact quite a technically advanced 3-part tool, with 2-phase moving parts, in each moulding-cycle?

 

Vroom, vroom! Although, the artwork shows multiple rocket exhausts, so more of a xchkkkkkrrrrrrrrrrrrr! And is that a standard Honda seat, or a Kwaka!

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Space!

I got confused last night, that bronze figure wasn't Lido, it was Archer, but these (first shot) are Lido, seen elsewhere, not that long ago, but I'm trying to get stuff cleared from Picasa, and off the PC, so let's get these out of the way!

 

Lido, Captain Video, the large versions! I'm missing the robot, and there may be a fifth pose, but as a sample which didn't exist two years ago and has literally come in as one's and the painted pair, it shouldn't be too long before I've tracked down the missing miscreants! Note the 1930's leather American football or early Tank Crew helmet, on whom, I assume, is the actual Captain Video himself?

 

I don't know if the two painted ones are factory or 'home' painted, but if home, it was a long time ago, so contemporary with the unpainted issues, I'm not going to strip them, as I have unpainted versions, and you can harm 'styrene in a way you don't damage 'ethylenes, trying to clean them.

 

While this is the latest (and not even the best) line-up of Archer robots. These have all come-in over the last 24-odd months, and add to previously seen samples here, with two Archer on the left, a probably Tudor Rose in green, a - smaller - silver copy by Glencoe unknown and the 'heritage' reissue of the answer-robot! House of Marbles or Keycraft Global? They've both carried the game in recent years?

 

As with the Lone Star 'Richard I's, there will have to be a final comparison with all of them, as this makes about 11 robots now!

 

I wondered where the turquoise one had gone (it's in other images), and upon finding it realised the Glencoe are from the old tools (I think there's a long post, somewhere else on the Wibbly Wobbly Way, which explains it all), so I dug-him out on Sunday afternoon, and here's a corrected image with, from the left

• Archer
• Archer
• Glencoe (recent)
• Tudor Rose
• Unknown (smaller copy)
• Board Game 'Magic Answer Robot' (current)

V is for Very Fine Sight!

During Brian Berke's recent sojourn in Italy, he bought this pair of larger scale items, as rather brilliant toy-related mementos of their visit, and nothing more iconic than a Vespa moped . . . with added babalicious babe from Babalonia!*

 

In Brian's own words;

"The two wheeler riders in Naples and surrounding area are positively demented.

This may be part of the universal road rage post Covid lockdown, though I suspect they were this way before.

The roads are narrow, which does not deter 2 wheelers from passing cars both into oncoming traffic and curbside at the same time. They go down pedestrian only streets. There are the equivalent of Zebra crossings. The custom is walk across and ignore traffic? Do not make eye contact. It was quite unnerving. Two wheelers don't stop they weave around you as you cross.

So I had to purchase this as it represents the most notable memory of the trip. The scale is larger than I would like but I wanted to buy it in Italy rather than later. The figure was the only one I could find, bought in the US which surprisingly it pretty accurate in terms of rider dress code near the beach!

It has gone on display temporally while the trip is fresh in the memory."

For a speculative purchase, they work very well together, and at 1:18th scale (approximately 90/100mm or 3-inches) the bathing beauty from American Diorama looks perfect on the Maisto moped, and one can imagine her posing in the warmth of the evening's setting sun, in one of the Piazzas, while her beau fetches a soft-scoop ice-cream cone!

We have a scaler, with the Crescent shooter, it's a trope which has rather fallen by the wayside in the last few years, not least because of everything else which has been going on, but I intended to have a couple on the planned, dedicated photo-station, once I'm fully settled, and we'll get back to 'berserker' comparisons!

As part of an eclectic display of odds and ends!

Brian shot an actual one in situ!

Many thanks to Brian for these, it's nice to have something a little left-field, and with a first for American Diorama (poured PU resin), it also adds to the underused Maisto (doe-cast) Tag . . . and, it's a babe in a bikini!

* I think I nicked that from Bill & Ted!

B is for Boxed Bersaglieri!

I mentioned - back in Rack Toy Month - that Brian Berke had been to Italy and sent us a bunch of stuff, and now the show reports are out of the way, I'll be getting it up here, alongside my 60th Birthday Present from Adrian, back in the spring, the rest of the London visit stuff, and, and, and . . . it's never ending, and ever-growing, but Thanks to Brian for these, he sent me so much imagery, that it's pretty self-explanatory, leaving me not much to add, and I've broken them down into sections.

These were covered somewhere else, not that long ago, and I can't remember where? I have checked the blogs I thought they might be on, but couldn't find them, and they may have been on a Faceplant group/page, so apologies if it's you, do please put a link in the comments as I think you showed different figures?

 

Current-stroke-new production, from Giochi Preziosi, these figurines are larger than average, and depict the modern Italian armed forces, with three Bersagleri (light infantry), three Alpini, two Para's and an airmobile infantryman, a Special Forces 'insurgent' or infiltrator, and a 'Lagunare' which Google is translating as lagoon, so Marine or Dragoon (light cavalry), or possibly 'Peacekeeper', as lagoons are calm, and he's wearing a blue beret?

Packaging

Brain selected the Bersaglieri officer and trumpeter, and you can see they are attractively packaged in single figure window-boxes, which should keep even larger figures within the budget of a pocket-money collector, and also, obviously, makes them usefully touristy, in size - those luggage limits are getting serious!

 

Officer

 

A lovely figure and an unusual subject for those more used to WWII Allies and Germans, he's posed in the distinctive jogging run employed by the corps, unlike our own light infantry who do a short-stride, faster march, and wears the feathered Vaira headdress. He's a very serious-looking chap!

 

Bugler

 

The Bersaglieri are famous both for their brass bands and for their specific bugle bands, which hark back to the days when many commands were passed by bugle, most have now been disbanded, but one is retained and appears regularly on ceremonial occasions.

 

All the bugle calls can be found at the bottom of the Wikipedia page!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bersaglieri

You can see the figures are around 90-100mm, and seem to be manufactured in a modern PVC-replacement polymer, probably of the semi-rigid Papo/Schliech type?

 

Combined Shots

 

Again, you can see for yourselves how each figurine comes with an integral landscaped base, and a separate matching display plinth, probably in a harder polystyrene or 'propylene. Esercito simply means 'Army'.

 

So, many thanks to Brian as always, and more to come!

B is for Blasting off Again!

My evilBay treat to myself this month was the other configuration of the Blast Off eraser set from TJM, for nine-quid-odd with postage on a Buy-It-Now. It was preferable to drive to Basingrad to see if the Home Bargains there had taken delivery of the other set (Fleet's branch of the TKMaxx subsidiary still has a stack of the set we looked at last time!), only to find they haven't, which would cost the same in petrol.

The two together, for those who need to know, the yellow is a good match, the red is pinker, and the green and blue are different shades, brighter and darker respectively. Pencils and box are identical.

 

The blasted additions, the rocket can lose the column of flame, to stand on its stumpy fins, and the two planets are the same moulding, which is also the one used for the 'rings' planet in the other set, as I suggested might be the case, last time, and that's them, box ticked!

M is for Micronauts

Not me at all, 1980, I was leaving school, wearing a denim-cut-off over a leather jacket growing my hair long, gardening and cutting trees at the weekends and going to art collage in the week, I wasn't interested, in bitty, lanky, movey, placky, Hong-Kongy and - looking at some of the vehicles - frankly, whacky, slightly tacky, large-scale figures which didn't tie-in with any frnachise I might have been interested in, but they need to go in that Tag List!

Airfix Micronauts;

And my view hasn't changed one iota since! You see them in rummage bins at toy shows, or looking forlorn and one-armless in charity shops, and I just walk on by! Sometimes one - presumably 'rare' - is sitting on a silly-money BIN-price on evilBay and I just walk on by! But, if they are your thing, I get it, youngster! I'm a man fathered by a child of the pre-Palitoy/General Mills iteration of Airfix, me!

 

The full - well, a potted - history's here (Airfix/Palitoy don't get a mention - bought-in end of line?!);

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronauts

 

The funny thing is you can see the Takara heritage in the robots and smaller vehicles, some of which design-lines would reappear in the Bluebird-Kenner-Tomy stuff a few years later, the tracked robot looking very similar to the grey Tomy version of the  Blue Sharks one-man submersible from Manta Force, or the little robots from the same line.