E is for Eye Candy - Wild Minimals!

E is for . . . will be a new trope here, a single shot of interest, or a couple of shots, with a bit of blurb, maybe maximising Tags, illustrating a particular feature or specific point, or just showing a nice image!

 

Today it's some of the many sets of 'Minimals' as I call them, the smallest size of commonly commercial plastic animals, approximately 30/40mm-figure compatible, but actually 'unit sized', so never to true scale with smaller animals in real life rendered larger, and larger animals in real life rendered smaller.

 

Two bags of loose, but clean samples (bottom left), probably complete or near-complete (all these sets tend to a content count of between 8-16 items), and then clockwise from the top left; Ackerman Group tub, 'Play Works' from The Works bag, Kandytoys blister-card, Boland BV of the Netherlands and Henbrandt (second set I think - newer card, we looked at both passim), both header-carded bottle-bags.

 

The contents of these sets are always fun, with an almost guaranteed Elephant, Giraffe and Lion, with Tiger and/or Leopard/Cheetah/Jaguar type (occasionally a black panther), then a Hippo and/or Rhino. Most sets will have some kind of Monkey or Gorilla, some have both, and a Zebra is almost as guaranteed as the three standards.

 

Then it gets a little less predictable with Camels or Kangaroo's to the fore and some kind of ruminant, either a North American / European Deer/Moose/Elk, Bison/Wisent or an African / Asian Gazelle/Antelope type or Buffalo/Wildebeest, better sets have a Bear, but it can be black, brown or 'polar', and usually only one, if present!

 

More off-the-wall items in bigger sets might include an Alligator/Crocodile type, an oversized Turtle or an equally enlarged Penguin! There have also been several insectivore/Ant-eater types over the years, and occasionally a - usually poorly sculpted - Hyena thing, or Wild Boar/Warthog! And these mini-sets are never usually more than two-fifty or three-quid - proper pocket-money toys!

A is for Ackerman

I bought the first two of these four sets (both contract manufactured by Pioneer) from the same shop at different times, when passing, but they had both spent some time in direct sunlight so suffer bleaching on the faces, I've tried to adjust the colour in Picasa but with limited success! The card backs, however, are true colour.

The first is the nicer play-value wise, if you consider three simplified sandbag walls an improvement over none! And you'll recognise the 'airport fire tender' VAB with twin foam-generators and 6x6 truck from the big overview I did on these back in RTM 2017, which was when it became clear how many of these cheapie die-casts are out of Pioneer's factory/ies.

Again we've seen various paint-schemes on the Hummer and like the previous set this is branded to Ackerman Group here in the UK (previously seen importing Supreme output) but will have been other brands or brand marks (phantom brands) elsewhere, such as Realtoy - all three of these models are to be seen in their sets.

A few more shots, again (thinking back over past musings on this subject) the little walls are a useful clue (like the street furniture) as to who was being supplied by Pioneer and who was ripping them off!

The 6x6 truck has a less common short tilt, no troop-carrier this one; cargo-carrying in inclement weather! The Hummer's markings have it looking a bit Chinese . . . have they copied it? Oh yes! The Dongfeng EQ2050!

Another set which I shot as one before breaking them down into the thematic tubs this stuff goes to now and probably from a minor maker rather than Pioneer; one of their copyists! King Tiger has banana-barrel; a line you probably never thought you'd read here or anywhere else!

Again, these came 'clean' from a charity shop in the last year or two and are clearly painted to type and belong together, actually quite nice; scale's not so shot-to bits, as it often is with these 'matchox' scaled sets, coming-in at around 1:90th? But an interesting choice of subjects which include a Sherman Firefly (or even an Israeli 'Super-Sherman?), late war German SWS (Schwerer Wehrmachtschlepper - Heavy Military Tractor) 3.7cm 'flak-wagon' and an American M20 scout-car.

TM is for Tactical Missile, Technical Manual, Threat Manager, Trade Mark, Trench Mortar . . .

. . . or Toy Major! In this case it's also for Ackerman, Hornby Hobbies and Dollar Tree, among others, I'm sure!

Bit of a toe-treading on this one, as EY posted these the other day (Mini Carry Case Playsets), but in my defence I had already photographed the six (or five-and-a-half; one's been opened) sealed sets as I sorted them out to storage, but was waiting for the lose stuff to turn-up and a couple of Hornby AFV's I knew I had in the TBS pile to tell the whole story.

Agency on these was the aforementioned Toy Major, with further branding to end user Ackerman here in the UK, in the US the packaging remained generic but the sets were an exclusively Dollar Tree thing? Modern combat, medieval-fantasy and a prehistoric mash-up - Homo's and Dino's together - were the three choices.

The US sets also have limited quantities per case in a little bag, the UK sets (retailing at two-quid in the late-nineties/early-noughties) got a larger sample in separate blister with more play value, which still fit easily-enough in the case; the crinkly-bag was the logistical constraint with the US issues!

Artwork is shared, but photoshopped about a bit to fit the different packaging options, so it was all a question of which format you ordered back in Hong Kong from the TM agents!

Some of the lose stuff, they don't seem too uncommon here, with the odd few in several of the donations from Chris, Peter and Trevor over the years, while I suspect the palm-trees (included in every set) also got a cake-decorating/crafting issue, possibly still extant on Alibaba or something similar, in bulk?

They are quite small, but fill out a war game's scenic jungle well enough and can make good thick secondary jungle in the larger scales. I donn't know why I wrote Toy Masters on the tree-tub, they are a retail toy-chain here in the UK, so I might have bought some of them there?

You can see the constraint placed on content-count by the little bag very well here, with only six monsters ('Dragons') and six figures, each split equally between two colours, you aren't going to get everything in a set, with the British issue that is less of a lottery, although you may still drop one or two poses in one or the other colour-way?

The 'cave men' are copies of late Tim Mee/Processed Plastic's larger figures, although the stone-axe man has been converted to a dagger-man!, the prehistoric hominids are also the exception proving the rule of the others in having only one colour iteration.

The knights are copied from the Supreme 2nd (of three) types, as seen here at Small Scale World before, from several brands and in several sizes, and - this time - you get six poses in silver or black. They fight each other and/or a bunch of whacky creatures which are barely dragons, and not that monstrous, indeed; the unicorn is more of a unicornet and a bit of a sweetie!

Dinosaurs have a five count; relatively crude Dimetrodon, Diplodocus, Stegasaurus, T-Rex'y meat-eater and Triceratops, although its bi-cera's are so small it almost qualifies as a proto-cera'! You can see that despite a tub-full, I've yet to get a loose 'Dipy' in yellow, so all set-contents are clearly random.

As you may have noticed the animals come in/as two paired colourways - green-yellow (which appears commoner) and a mauve'ish purple-orange combo'.

Less than an hour later - there is a fourth caveman pose with club, I thought he was an artwork/pre-publicity thing, but there is one in my sealed set, you can just make out his back! So EY's right and I just don't have  a lose one.

The combat infantry are rather nice, six poses in tan or olive-drab fatigues, reminiscent of similar figures from Revell, Silvercorn/LP or Galoob's 'Micro machines', and original sculpts of some quality. Also reminiscent of Tim Mee/PP's GI's in colour offering, but unsurprising as they - Toy Major - are responsible for a set of Tim Mee knock-offs in the 54mm range.

They are clearly in that time period between the current era and the back-end of the Cold War (sort of 1971-91'ish), vague 'fritz' helmets on a couple can be painted-out, so they will still go well in a Vietnam setting.

None of the sets are currently listed on Toy Major's site, but they are still carrying the larger GI's and one of the many 50mm iterations of Supreme's knights.

The combat figures were also issued in a theHornby train set 'Battle Zone' back in the noughties, and while I thought the cave-men might have been in its sister set; the Jurrassic Park knock-off 'Dino Safari', they weren't . . . the set got a handful of PVC Chinasaurs, but is linked through the AFV's.

Probably a Hornby Hobbies thing, rather than Toy Major, so a tenuous link, but it ties all the loose-ends together, we have seen them before here I think, more than once, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometime.

An M1 Abrams tank lookie-likey with running-gear and hull shape closer to the variable geometry of the predeceased MBT70 program's prototypes (they could drop their noses to enhance the 'hull-down' low-profile aspect) and a rather nice Hummer, which can be found in both sand and drab to match the troops. The Hummer has a removable tilt with very delicate locating-studs which tend to be found snapped-off.

And that heading . . . it also means or has meant in the past - Tape Mark, Target Material, Tasking Memorandum, Task Memory, TeaM (as Tm. or tm), Team Materials, Team Member, Technical Maintenance, Technical Management, TeleMetering, TeleMetry, Temperature Meter, Temperature Monitor, Terrain Masking, Test Manager, "Thanks Man" (or "Mate"), Theater Missile, ['Landsat'] Thematic Mapper, Tone Modulation, [to receive] TeleMetry, TradeMark, Training Manual, Transmission Matrix, Transverse Magnetic [field], 'TROPO' Modem, Type Model, and Too Many [bloody abbreviations!].

R is for Reminiscent of Rambo the Rampaging Recce Renegade!

Dooooorrntpuusshhhmeeeeee! Brian Berke sent these to the blog the other day, and with some catalogue scanning and the Toy fair; I've cobbled together a rack-toy post even though it's not rack toy month!

I sort of recognised the TC-334 code-format and in searching for something similar, ended-up with the stuff for the rest of the post, but not the name of the maker/importer I think they may be from?

Anyway; as you can see, a carded bottle-bag rack toy with artwork from another source (Tamiya?) and a set of figures which are drawn from Airfix, Matchbox and modern (JaRu type) rack-toy sculpts.

When I say Ja-Ru, I think their large rubber ones were among the first with the 'Rambo' M60 pose and the guy with the little Uzi/Ingram's thing and radio, but there are so many of these around now, and who was first is a moot-point. Mixing 'Fritz' helmeted GI's with Matchbox's WWII Americans and Airfix's Rumanian-helmeted para's isn't that novel either as there are several versions of them around too!

Their size also places them closer to the earlier issues, but not necessarily; as the overall quality of the sculpts is screaming sub-sub-piracy! The weapon is best described as belt-fed combat-shotgun I think - for when you absolutely, positively have to kill every living thing in the woods!

Similar sets with similar sculpt-mixes are all over the place at the moment (we've looked at dozens in RTM) and a few have surfaced in the last few days.

The older (2017) Henbrandt (A) set is very similar to the unknown US set, and while the two images may look the same, the Ackerman set is clearly 'supplied by' as their image is 57KB to Henbrandt's 250-odd  megabytes, so it's been through the eMail system a few times to have got its file-size so reduced. Still finable on Amazon under a search for Ackerman, but rebranded to other phantom sellers.

In the middle is the current (or 2019) Henbrandt set, more poses, but same low quality.

The upper shot is the Henbrandt listing in full, while below is D&D Distributors (similar stock-code to Brian's set, but no banana as it's prefixed TY for 'Toys') catalogue image, of particular interest in that the figure-shot shows similar Matchbox clones, while in the toob-shot they are full of Hing Fat product (codes 1800/1860), but with generic packaging/artwork!

Tobar have been running with these for several years (and supplied Debenhams's a couple of Christmas's ago), they are also larger than 54mm , but stick with a better quality all-Matchbox clone selection!

While they are also in this year's Keycraft line-up; with the same bag and box, but different artwork. Both sets (Tobar and Keycraft) might be via-Jaru (three spellings - one post!) though; I seem to remember one of the original sets sent by Brian (or shelfied) was these figures? Actually - I think the box is thinner and the count's dropped from 48 to 32 figures!

Maybe after I've got the Paratrooper and Firefighter pages sorted it will be time for a rack-toy 'Army Men' ID'ing page? Many thanks to Brian for the shots, and past rack-toy clone stuff.

F is for Follow-up - Ackerman-Lollipop (LP) / Silvercorn

We've pretty much done these to death now, with help from other quarters, but I found mine the other day and shot-off a few close-ups;

The case, in the UK it seems all forms of these sets were handled by Ackerman, but with the Silvercorn branding remaining visible, strangely Ackerman have a US office, but as we saw last-but-last time, they were Lollipop/LP in the 'States.

The three figure-runners from both sides, it looks as if each set got about four of the shooters (above left), two of the marchers (below left) and one command runner (right hand side) which had to be photographed twice! The prone guy is meant to be firing a pistol (I think?) but looks more like he's pointing at something.

There are two runners of accessories, although the two dark grey signs (see posts passim) weren’t in here, so I guess I recognised them from some tub of lose signs I may have somewhere, and that they were added to the other set?

These sit in the lid, over a pile of the rubbery figure-runners, who are themselves piled on top of a large coated-paper play-mat, hence the have two little cut-outs moulded into the outer frame-runner, to make room for the slide-lock mechanism.

F is for Follow-up . . . to some stuff we just had!

When posting the 'big set' from Peter Evans the other day, I was talking from the position of thinking these had been posted previously; they hadn't! Taken almost exactly a year ago (14/08/18), they obviously fell by the wayside, so we'll quickly look at them to make slightly more sense of the other-day's post . . . and to make up for the lack of figures in the first post!

Obviously the new - mid-sized - polyethylene figures aren't here, but the other two types are, and this is otherwise a duplicate of the fuller image we saw last Friday.

The original larger sized figures all share a base-marking/code which is the same on all the poses unpainted and some of the painted ones. It reads MADE IN CHINA 593 - [A-F] with each figure possessing its own (cavity number?) code; 1-6, the numerals reverse-stamped and matching the A-F

The exception - some of the painted figures lack the main mark - I don't think has any significance, but if the other (currently marked) poses turn-up similarly blank, or if the same (unmarked) figures turn-up with marks it may point to multiple contracts, one of which might have stipulated no marks? All the smaller yellow/black ones PVC aren't marked, neither are the new polyethylene ones in the previous post.

As to branding, the large PVC sets were originally handled by Ackerman here I think (who have a history of importing from Supreme/SP Toys), the tank we looked at - shelfied with the larger painted versions - was Ackerman or HTI (but I can't find the post), while the base numbering is similar to some stuff contracted by Toy Major, Strawberry Group and Tiger (again; all known for connections with SP Toys), so I'd expect them to turn up in Shilling sets and possibly past Tobar output? They're not rare!

The smallest set (black and yellow PVC) got their own post I think, but I can't find that either (did I forget to tag a rack-toy post in the past?), and the new ones were posted with some tenuous branding on Friday last)

F is for Follow-up - Silvercorn / Lollipop

Through the autumn/winter of 2016-2017 we managed to look at all four sets of these with help from Uncle Brian, Brian Berke and Tim/Gisby, in the course of which journey I said I had a few of the micro-AFV's in the storgae 'archive', and these are they!

They don't add anything to the previous post - courtesy of Gisby - but I've shot them at new angles which changes one of the tracked beasts somewhat; the one on the right, which had looked quite Challenger-like, actually looks a bit SPG'ish with elements of Abbot or M109?

I'd actually said I didn't think I had any of the tracked vehicles, but I have two-and-a-half! The other whole-one is the one I called an Italian/Argentine/Brazilian 'medium ' type (left-middle), with a modern-looking command 6x6 and Hummer making-up my sandy-sample.

In green I have the same 6x6 and the turret-armed 8x8 and usually keep them with opposite coloured wheel-sets, but I swapped them back for the comparison!

The components of one of the tanks, part count is the same for all of them; hull, turret, belly-pan, two universal wheel-sets and two identical track units, the same for all the tanks and bi-directional on any tank. The belly-pans however are model-specific.

I also have a few bits and pieces including the 'Soviet' tank's hull, so it's the 'NATO' one I'm still looking for, and a wheel-less (over-scale) Unimog type (which looked a bit 'Pinzgauer' last time), where I got the "...something like an Sd.Kfz.222..." idea from - I haven't the faintest idea!

I've also discovered that the entire line was issued in a single play-set; ships, aircraft, figures (with accessory runners) and these micro-armour. The whole in a card-carton, full-colour glossy-printed on a paper laminate, imported by Ackerman it was (is?) called 'Terrestrial War Games', I think - but I'm not sure!

P is for Pocket-money, Pack-Presented, Putt-Putts and Plastic-Fantastic Tupperware Crotch-Rockets!

Continuing where we left-off yesterday (cheap rack-card motorcycle toys/novelties from the Far East!); this is what's come-in over the last 12 months, half of it from across the pond courtesy of Brian Berke, the other's from closer to home; lets 'av'a'luke . . .

These have collaged pretty-much in relation to each other as you can tell from the pattern on the bed-spread! I think maybe the one on the right has ended-up slightly bigger than it should be in relation to the others? From left to right we have - rubber eraser pop-together street-bikes from Shalom International (SI Corp.), a new name in the tag-list - and MTC's real cheapie party-favours, but with riders! Both from Brian.

The Ackerman set we've looked at before, but the shop had one set left so I bought it back in the summer with half an eye on rack-toy month! Five of the bikes are the same as last time, but three of them are different colour-ways. Finally a set of smaller bikes with those little pull-back motors Lego use these days, Poundland, a few weeks ago.

The rubber bikes aren't really puzzles, certainly won't go on the jig-toy page, but obviously have a fun element, although with only three parts, there's not much to do beyond have a half-and-half coloured machine! I suspect from their website these were entry-level 'test the toy market' import items, as they are now developing a more corporate range of infant toys under a separate New York-based brand: Kid-O.

MTC's are pretty standard fare for what the are, Chines rack-toys, aimed at the cheapest end of the market, but like a lot of the old Hong Kong toys of similar ilk; such as those we looked at yesterday, a bit of paint could improve them no end!

Top left is the four types together for a sizer, while the other three images are of the Ackerman bikes I left on the card last time, I've also done a bit of part-swapping on the duplicate moulding, to make them a little more sensible-looking or a tad-less garish!

F is for Follow-up - Ackerman & Tactik

Just a couple of quick follow-ups to stuff posted about a month or so ago.

 

Ackerman - Battle Squad Army Playset

When I'd finished posting all the recent Chinatroops (which got spread over three or four posts), I was left with a scan of a card; I've collaged it with its set contents as if it were on the rack! And I think it means the two little jeeps weren't from the same set, I just photographed them in the same sequence.

 

Tactik - TMNT Foot Soldier

Picked this up to make four out of five, just got to find a Raphael to make the set - only a matter of time! And someone has sent more TMNT's to the blog - for another time!

C is for Chitinous Creepy-Crawly Carded Chinacritters

So - I am declaring August 'Rack Toy Month'. I'm not sure if the UN or HMG will add it to their lists of official days, weeks, months and cultural years, but certainly at Small Scale World, this August will be Rack Toy Month . . . and if Brian Berke keeps sending me images and examples at his current rate, it'll be Rack Toy Month for the whole of the second half of 2017!

As well as lots of images from Brian, I've collected a few myself recently and there are a few older ones in Picasa, all of which can be grouped, lumped or thrown-together violently in thematic posts, or as stand-alone posts.

We'll start with last week's little act of serendipidy or co-incidence; I had to go on an epic journey the other day involving 7 buses and several miles of walking, I won't bore you with the details . . . all frightfully parochial real-life shite involving a drive-belt for a garden chipper, but I had to pop into Farnborough for some vape-juice (over two years, no fag!) at the start of the day so popped round the corner to a party shop I check for this stuff occasionally and got more lizards, four key-rings, a bag of cats (coming soon) and a bag of insects!

The netted set top right, be they! One of the key rings was a snail, so the two purchases rather drove each-other. Two buses later found me in Frimley, where there used to be a shed-load of charity shops, some of them seem to have gone, but there were a few and with 20 minutes to kill for the connection, I flew round them and found the old tub of insects - bottom right.

As I'd seen, and rejected a set of large and not very good insects in The Works earlier, I thought "Well, 'it has to be' now!" and so, two buses later, shelled out the couple of quid for the set to the left in the above collage!

The contents of the three sets, you can see why I initially rejected the Works ones, they (upper shot) are big, rubbery, lacking detail and are not trying too hard to resemble anything known to entomologists - in all cases the legs/thorax rule is studiously avoided!

Below them to the left is the Ackerman charity-shop purchase, with 13 present I suspect a couple are missing? To be honest they're not much cop either but were only 50p! Finally the Unique branded bag's contents are a bit better, probably not that accurate either, but better sculpts and more subdued colours make them a reasonable set. They would respond well to a repaint.

Comparisons between the sets, you can see the sizes in the previous collage are pretty close to the actual size comparisons here, anyone who knows how Picasa collages work will know that's more by good luck than good judgement!

The un-branded key-ring which started the insect purchasing frenzy is probably a marine mollusc - with a shell like that, certainly something very foreign to the UK? I've removed the ring & chain for this shot, and looking at it next to the monkey and horse it came with, I suspect they were tub/toob items themselves once?

Supporting evi'dawnce! A few weeks ago I'd got the trick roach, also from The Works (59p, for a hysterical insect . . . bargain!) to add to the small number of novelty insects and invertebrates we saw back in December's novelty posts, now I'm well on my way to my first shed-full!

Several of these will be very useful as monsters in a secret dungeon trap! Although the best candidates for that are the scorpions who all need their tails bent up with hot-water treatment as they are all moulded flat. Indeed; the scorpions (count the legs!) can all be ridden by 25/30mm figures?

Again . . . from the I-buy-this-stuff-so-you-don't-have-to dept., a couple of day after I put this article to bed, I found these two, from H. Grossman (HGL) which I bought a while ago with next December in mind, bearing in mind last December's novelty 'season'!

The snake is vile, both sets come with a protective sheet to prevent them damaging the card backing and neither has the 'may stain clothes' warning of the 1970's capsule toy we looked at last Christmas. But, while the maggots are fun and quite realistic; the two larger black ones are more like leeches than maggots - the snake is a blob, which stained and deformed the first PE bag I put it in, which went soft and wrinkly - in hours?

I've now stored it in foil, rolled in one bag, in another bag, with a mental note to chuck-it if there are any more problems! Vile, I tells' ya; cold, slimy, probably radioactive, lump of sun-gelled, hell-spawn!

M is for Rado Industries (Ri-Toys)...No! it's for Marx and Marksmen!

An overview of recent developments with old Marx 30mm mouldings, well...I say 'recent', it's all a few years ago now, and I say 'Marx', some of them may be mere copies...I say '30mm' when Marx themselves couldn't decide on a common height for their 'Miniature Masterpieces' and when I change to 'a few years ago now' one of the developments is current!

Also, we've looked at a fair few of these before, but there's many ways to skin a rabbit and always room for another look so we will come back to them again yet!

Basically; Marx made a bunch of stuff (or paid some guys in Hong Kong and Taiwan - it was always 'guys' in those days - to make the stuff), some of them were then copied at the time, the rest appeared via Rado in the late 1980's, being supplied (in the first instance) to Marksmen here in the UK, from whence, via ad's in Plastic Warrior and Military Modelling magazines they wended their way to collectors.

From time to time, the figures, sometimes enhanced with horses, or as reduced-size copies would appear as stand alone rack-toys, and the other day some more turned-up with new poses...pretty clear; huh?

The basic Marksmen range, less the dinosaurs (micro scale) and with some of the other issues, the labels are self-explanatory, but I'll waffle a bit anyhow! Sets were basically paired for five 'friendly/enemy' situations; which very much depends on your point of view...especially with the oldest set, are the British Grenadiers the good guys or are you rooting for the colonial insurgents? If only Mad King George had ordered a Shock & Awe 'Surge'!

So, in chronological order, we have:
Washington's Army versus British Grenadiers
US cavalry stealing something from the Mexicans (shako hat versions)
The genocidal move 'West'- Cowboys and Indians
La Légion étrangère exporting bratwurst to Arabia (or should it be le?)
and...Tommy Atkins loosing Singapore to; and then re-taking Burma from; the Japs

Federal/Confederate fratricide - Ri-Toys also re-did the American Civil War, but using the round-hat Mexican mouldings as either Confederates, or Union, depending on the plastic colours of the day! They or someone else then ripped-off the FFL, smaller and set them to combating US Marines taken from Airfix, and the Arabs have just (a few months ago) turned-up with three new poses.

Upper shot is a comparison between the Marx originals and the Rado supplied versions, the Japs are slightly smaller, but the Brits are if anything a tad bigger? All explained by shrinkage/bulk of the different materials used, and I think it's safe to assume these were the original moulds, fallen into Ri-Toys hands, something I dealt with in PW's little brother One Inch Warrior, but will return to here one day. We will also return to the WWII troops as there are a number of variations of the Japanese, and we've already had a peek Here.

Lower shot shows the two colours of the Marksmen figures as issued (white and oxide red-brown), with - above them - the latest incarnation of these figures, the three new poses on the right-hand end of the line-up, being mounted figures made 'foot', an old Montaplex trick!

These figures were kindly supplied by Doug of the Doug's Soldiers Blog, who found them on the Wibbly Wobbly Way and sent me a bunch, for which he took neither payment nor swaps (although the offer's still open Doug!), he covered them in detail Here

I have also previously covered both the Marksmen and the rack-toy generics Here, to illustrate a discussion on a forum.

Another quick comparison between the Rado-Marksmen figures and a re-issue of an Arab looking character figure (called Kulu) from the Marx African Hunters set.

The ACW set from Ri-Toys, for some reason although they had ACW moulds, they chose to supply Union troops taken from the old Marx Confederate moulds, while making Confederates from Mexicans! As they then made both from both in their own blister sets for dollar-trees by swapping colours, you wonder why they didn't just do the Confederate moulds in two colours, or use the (lost?) Union poses? They also added the horses needed, even though they hadn't supplied them to Marksmen, despite some of the sets being supplied with mounted figures...the whole thing is/was a bit mad.

What's madder is the tale behind my examples of this carded set...

The above set was from Gareth the other day and is complete, the set I've had for years isn't...Paul Morehead from plastic Warrior rang me back in the days before I had the interweb thing (1997'ish), and said there was this chap in Scandinavia who wanted to contact me, was that OK? "Yes" says I, "No problem".

I get a nice enough letter from one of the then new collectors (the Internet, evilBay, and H's Hät & Eric Williamson's sites practically inventing small-scale collecting as it is today!), with a mad scan involving lots of miss-attributed figures he'd seen on-line, and an offer of a swap, the item on offer being another example of the above carded set, also scanned, and although the scan was fuzzy it looked like the 'new' one.

I duly sent-off my side of the 'bargain'; I can't remember what it was now, but I seem to recall it was either a loose Airfix Tarzan set (they were £50+ on feeBay at the time!) or maybe a set of Civilians or Station Accessories? Might even have been Highlanders, a lot of those new collectors fifteen or twenty years ago seemed to think they were rare! Whatever...the parcel went off and I awaited the return part of the deal.

It arrived with most of the horses missing and a note to the effect he'd kept the 'artillery' and some of the horses, hoped I wouldn't mind?...Some people! It's now clear he kept one-each of the mounted figures for each side with a horse...the set was no more use than an example of packaging! And there never was artillery (what had originally tickled my fancy), he was talking about the miss-attributed Marx gun team on his daft collage!

That's not the end of the tale though...he spent the next year or two sending Paul and I free (unsought) bootleg CD's of original Nazi marching songs with flyers that seemed to connect to the Scandinavian far-right! Lucky for him the correspondence (and the Nazi marching songs!) are in storage or I'd name him as a bloody menace!

The US cavalry sculpts were chosen to fight the Mexicans, but the 'other' Mexican mouldings were used - 'round hat', again the Cowboys would have been just as good? Meanwhile the British Grenadiers were made available in Blue for George (Washington) to use, or hire from France, but his set wasn't made available in red to help the British recruit line infantry with tricorn hats?

The US cavalry - as issued by Marksmen - was one of the sets that included mounted figures without horses, clearly, when you can find the Ri-Toys horses they are bloody useful! Here the size difference is noticeable in the standing poses, but not the kneeling ones, again; suggesting shrinkage rather than pantographed copies.

Marksmen has a set of non Rado-supplied ACW, which; with a tie-in to A Call to Arms (ACTA) packaging, leads to six colours to track down; red, butter-nut, navy blue, sky blue, mid-grey and pale grey.

Ignore the labelling of the 'sprue'/frame, one of the figures (the officer) isn't the Herald one, and while the kneeling firer is know as a 'Replicants' pose, I think I'm correct in saying the others were commissioned by Michael Ellis (Marksmen) from Peter Cole (Replicants) anyway, so they are all 'sort of' Replicants.

The thing is; it was - at the time - a rare thing, figures previously available in 54mm, being made available in the smaller size, and the fact that it took figures from at least three sources and placed them together in one set made the enterprise all the more useful for ACW army-building.

We looked at these in some detail Here, so I'll let the picture talk for itself, the upper image is the new info, a size comparison with various Marx originals. The Dale whatsherface (Evans?) is a named-on-the-base 'character' figure.

The Ackerman sets and the generic header-card Marksmen used for the little packs, it actually lists the larger Marx reissues they carried, the smaller figures were only listed in magazine ad's and the flyers he used to send out. The above link to the Arab article will lead you to shots of earlier Ri-Toys packaging. Marksmen had another header card for the Reamsa reissues but I've never seen it used with the 'HO' packs.

Marksmen Listing;

Return of the Hero (nominally ‘HO’ but actually most were 28-30mm)

Basic Range (+/- 30 figures per bag)
1 - Redcoats

2 - Washington’s Army

3 - Mexicans, (Shako)

4 - Cowboys

5 - Indians

6 - 7^th Cavalry

7 - British WWII

8 - Japanese WWII

9 - Foreign Legion

10 - Arabs

11 - Dinosaurs

Bulk Sets (+/- 150 figures per bag)
1501 - Alamo (figures taken from sets 3 and 4 above)
1502 - Revolutionary War (figures taken from sets 1, 2 and 5 above)
1503 - Custer’s Last Stand (figures taken from sets 5 and 6 above)
1504 - Burma Trail (figures taken from sets 7 and 8 above)
1505 - Desert Patrol (figures taken from sets 9 and 10 above)