H is for How They Come In - Theo's Parcel 2 of 2

So, continuing with Theo's donation to the Blog . . . I wrote as the opening to quite a bit of blurb, Monday night, for the finished article, which I then managed to delete!

Not the first time, it has to be said, but doing so brings with it both the depression of being very silly indeed and the knowledge you won't manage to re-write the article as well, in your own mind, a second time, it's one of those things, but I got the arse with myself, and sulked for a couple of days, then is was flat-viewing, then car trouble . . . then!

Anyway, we're here now, and continuing with Theo's donation . . .

. . . we'll quickly skirt-over a nice pile of Xandria key-rings, as there are full articles coming on them, but in the meantime and on the right, we have a mouse mascot/premium for the Dutch Frico (Friesian Co-Operative) cheese maker, they're still going and with both Edam and Gouda on their books, what's not to love there? Some warm sourdough rolls, salted butter, a few grapes and an apple . . . heavan! He's lost his nose though!

The other two are Germany's 'Swergs', can't remember if the Gnomes/Dwaves are Manurba (via Peltro or Fontanini, we had a link to a page of them once but I can't find it?) or someone else, although these days the caveat with Manurba seems to be 'Might not be, or might be Dom Plastik or Heinerle', and no one is as sure about all-three now, as they were a decade or so ago!

I think Theo explained the Indian to me but I can't find the eMail! Another mascot/premium type I think? The dog looks to be composition,but it's just playwear, and he's missing a hat, while the clown is hard make much of, he shares some properties with the Xandria stuff, but not the central core and could also be a mascot/premium type?

On the right we have two Oriental types with faux-antiquing, similar to other Euro-premiums, while we saw 'Bad Santa' the other day. The MacDonald's Dragon is interesting as I'm pretty sure I have another in a different pose, possibly two, so they must have been a Happy Meal set, but some time ago? And I like the blow-moulded mouse, reminiscent of some Soviet-era Russian/East European stuff and maybe also a mascot/logo premium?

Mostly Kinder and the hard plastic cartoon figures who have their dedicated collectors but aren't that rare, just fun! The fold-up/curl-up animals on the bottom row are modern versions of the older wheeled '90's one, while the sloth-bear is part of the current trend under MPG for realistic or semi-realistic (some have doe-eyes) wildlife sets.

Some more Kinder and other egg/capsule toys (Onken, Nestle), mascots and premiums, I rather like the grey bear who looks to be someone's logo-character? And the rail or bus/tram worker looks familiar? The four down the bottom (orange warthog to blue elephant) are rubber and similar to Schleich 'mini' animals, but more cartoony, and probably part of a larger set/series?

Loving the little tree and I think the sheriff's badge (from the typesetting/font) is for Desperate Dan, mascot of Dandy Comic for years, while the little green man may be an early (1970's) Kinder prize?

Above will probably go on to charity (in storage at the moment) as I can't start on Action figures, no time, no space and the wrong generation! Although - see below - for a exception, but they all get recorded as they come through and the little Playmobil-like character may be an early Maxi-Egg prize?

While the stuff below used to be a single takeaway tub, but are now sorted into a stack of thematic tubs; traffic lights, road signs, other street signs, traffic cones, pumps & dispensers, street-lights/lamps, barriers, other street furniture &etc! All grist to the mill and one day I'll get an ID page organised for them all.

Only recently covered the integral-moulded wheel minis', but there's a few here (and I found a lot from a loyal reader in Finland I left out of the recent posts, so follow-ups coming!

In this lot are three nice Kinder old fashioned cars (middle left) and a die-cast from the same source, several earlier trucks (top row) some of which may be Siku, which might actually make them DS Plastics of Holland as they inherited a lot of Siku's 1950's novelty moulds.

Nice Land Rover (sans windscreen) and a teeny-tiny Transformer type with a double-barreled turret, and I think I've seen that Grand Prix racing car, either on a card, or in a board game?

This is lovely! Modern (1992) and made by Bandai, it's a near perfect 1:76/72nd scale, pull-back motor Thunderbird 4, and will look good on a shelf with those Captain Scarlet conversions from Airfix cowboys; I know they are different franchises, but one show's 20mm puppets are good enough for another's!

Almost saving the best for last, these are action figures, but they will stay, as they are plug/pop-together, soft polyethylene (think Airfix or Jean), and when I first saw them I thought either the Plasty-Airfix figures to go with the tee-pee we saw here a while ago from Gareth, or maybe Jean/Manurba.

But the Plasty-Airfix figures are smaller and there's nothing useful or obvious on Google for either Manurba or Jean, and both Theo and myself have drawn a bit of a blank. The problem being they are totally unmarked. Also they wet to storage before I measured them, so I can only say I think they were about between four and six inches.

The closest I've found is several models of Wild Bill Hickock (and a Wyatt Earp), from the Legends of the West set by Exel Toys of Hong Kong, which are apparently both marked, and dated 1975, but the figures seem to be joined/jointed with steel-tube rivets, while the donation samples are all-plastic, take-apart/plug-together?

The best I can come up with is that they must be copies of the Exel set (itself ripped-off/resurrected in 1991 by Imperial, with fatter polypropylene figures), probably by an anonymous rival a few blocks away from wherever Exel had their plant? Or; an earlier/later version of the Exel set? But any help from Action Figure aficionados would be appreciated to tie these down, or even just add a bit of background however shaky?

Many thanks again to Theo for all these, I hope I've done them justice shareing them with you, lots of interesting stuff, and we're starting to build a nice picture of DS Plastics here at Small Scale World, with gap-fillers and Kinder bits for future posts . . . Xandria next, then London, then Chris's lot, Peter, Sandown Park, more capsule updates, more other stuff . . . and canoes! Cheers Theo!

D is for Droid-hunting on Dewbacks!

As I had the Dewback rider out for the Speeder shots the other day I took a few more to add to some carded-product shots which have been in Picasa for about eight years, the pink sheet I shot them on, is the back cover of the Johillco hollow-cast reprint catalogue, which may be pertinent!

Galoob's larger-scale line of Action Fleet sets had these little Battle Packs with incredibly complicated packaging, I think the point was that by the time you'd fought you way into them you thought you'd got more for your money (they weren't cheap first time round) than a few figures and a small accessory, but who knows!

On his correct mount, he still looks more like a drum-major than a dino-rider! A dewback is a sort of giant tadpole with quadruped perambulation from giant chicken feet, and it's never made clear if they are called dewbacks because they drink or filter dew from the sand in the mornings like grazing cows, or have slimy backs like tadpoles!

The set comes with two bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back and the sneak-thief Greedo from Star Wars/A New Hope, who gets his! The Action Fleet figures are really mini 'action figures' with two points of articulation - at the hips and shoulders.

This re-issue from 2002 came with the escape pod the two comedy-droids occupied for their trip to the salubrious planet of Tatooine, I have a lose one, but it's in with the other ships and vehicles, so can wait! Obviously pushing the new name of episode one/IV; was that when the fifth or sixth film came out? Or the first DVD issue? It's all so long, long ago and far, far away now!

Other sand troopers from the MicroMachines line on the left and Action Fleet on the right, with an alternate Boba Fett also an Action Fleet figure, between them. The diminutive dewback rider (on an even more diminutive dewback - scale-wise!) has a proper lance for poking recalcitrant dinosaurs and restores you faith in the imagination behind the story-line! Note also - he has a striped black & white shoulder-board?

Another forced-perspective shot; lost in a sea of pink!

F is for Follow-up - Action Fleet Speeder Bikes

I was wrong to suggest I didn't think they'd never done the Imperial pilot/trooper for the speeder bikes, and further, it seems I need two figures and some - possibly - paler brown Speeder Bikes.

On the back of my Hasbro (2002) Dewback carded set, there is an illustration for a set I don't have, which clearly shows an Imperial pilot and someone; who one assumes is Luke Skywalker, but he doesn't seem to have the black-gloved hand of the other set?

The set I was remembering (earlier Galoob branding), and of which I do have the loose figures too; they are Leia and Luke and come with seemingly darker-brown machines than shown in the previous image, which are the ones we looked at yesterday. The trouble is the previous image is publicity material, and may not reflect what was issued, or even that anything of the sort was issued at all?

T is for Tiger . . . Electronics.

Having mentioned the conversion I did on a Tiger Electronics Star Wars vehicle earlier today, I thought I'd better show it, and in doing so we might as well look at the small sample in the collection.

These three came in first, all from the 2^nd/5^th movie in a franchise I've lost track of; are we up to No-9 or waiting for No-9? How many altogether, how many are back-story spin-offs, do I care now that it's all new characters?

The two cars/Speeders from the opening scene's 'car chase' came together in a sale - at Woolworths I thing? It was a long time ago now - while Jango Fett's spaceship was a separate purchase, I seem to recall.

The electronics were a simple set of sounds from a slightly raspy speaker, triggered by pressing a button.

This came out a year or two later, and had a handle attached so you could 'fly' it about while making noises, the removal of which I refereed to earlier. It'll need to be filled-in one day, but as you can only see it if you turn it upside down it's not an issue and it looks far better than it did with a handle attached!

Also Tiger and roughly scaled with the other one-man fighters from Galoob's Action Fleet line, it's a nice addition as I don't think we ever got 2/5-movie stuff for Action Fleet after everyone got their fingers burnt with the 1^st/4^th.

A comparison between the Action Fleet Bobba version from Galoob shows up the smallness of the Tiger Electronics one, they were 'header-card' scale! Which makes the speeders perfect for Micro Machines, but leaves Jango's ship needing some muck it its boots. Why they didn't use the Galoob one - when they had previously used the Action Fleet AT-AT for their battery-operated effort - is something to ponder?

N is for New Arrivals III - Star Wars

After yesterday's waffle, I can keep this short, especially as I'm somewhere else! While I was back at the Toysaurus, I picked up the last of the reduced for clearance Micro machines from Hasbro . . . these are they!

These are the only other sets with figures as far as I know - I did get a look at a transforming head play set in Basingrad last Friday and they do have 'unique' figures but I'm not paying what they're asking for them, even on clearance!

This is all the figures, or figural I know of in the recent line, less the 3/4 in the play sets.

I bought one of the blind-bags; just for archive.

But . . . I also weakened and got the die-cast 'First Order Snowpeeder' in Action Fleet scale, it was a quid less than I thought, and isn't it nice, they don't have hand-held, wirless, mobile technology far, far, away, but they do have flying machine-gun nests - gotta' love the Military Idustrial Complex sometimes!

Comparison between the two.

 

SAS is for Secret Army Supplies

A follow-up to this post which I published only a few weeks before I got this at Plastic Warrior's show in May, and it serves to show not all rack-toys are 99p or a dollar! Both Arco and Larami (among others) had price-positioned lines in 1, 2, 3 and 5 dollars, through the '70's and 80's.

I'm pleased to see that the shortage of poses for the 'enemy' force is as obvious here as it was in my sample, so it's not that my loose example was slewed, rather that Galoob decided to cramp the enemy's style!

Interestingly the set's code (5220) is the same as the Army Gear set, only with a different backing card and like the other card, it shows the unpainted figures coming with the accessory sets, while the 20-figure set has the camo-painted chaps. With the possible exception of the Army Gear medals, both lines seem identical.

The Rainbow Toys tie-in probably has something to do with it, did Galoob buy Rainbow and re-brand to Army Gear, or did Rainbow keep Army Gear going with a rebrand?

The flash has rather hidden the little rubber bases which are in a little compartment down the bottom left of the card, they are also in as short supply as my loose figures but with ten bases for 20 troops, that too was deliberate - sometimes you don't require hindsight to see why a line failed - what were they thinking?

A is for Army Gear

The Battle Squadfigures we looked at the other day were (along with their Star Wars 'Action Fleet' brethren and the Starship Troopers/Expanders lines) seem to owe their ancestry to these chaps, who were The first of the little chaps from Galoob as far as I know.

The original figures are in a hard polystyrene (or polypropylene?) with a stab-and-hope paint-job consisting of blobs of flesh and camouflage along with weapons being painted in. The upper image shows the body poses of the bad-guys (in grey) and the good guys in green, there being two duplicates, although this is only my sample and there may be other grey poses/duplicates?

The lower image shows the leg poses of both, I know there are grey versions of the kneeling guy in grey, so again this is only a guide and not definitive, although it's obvious from online images that the greens do - consistently - get better pose variety (per set) than the grey.

So far I have found them in the hard, painted plastic (left), unpainted in the same plastic (middle, with a green version of the bad guy) and in a softer vinyl/PVC, also unpainted (right). The unpainted ones seem to be from a second line Secret Army Supplies ('SAS' geddit!), but there's an end-of-line 'can't be bothered to paint them' look to the figures so they may well also be from foreign-market/other end-user sets - Ideal, Gig or someone like that?

 

The problem with these is getting the little plug-on PVC rubber bases to make them stand-up. This was sorted on the later decendents with most getting better bases, although the tiny bases for the Action Fleet and Battle Squad being not much better than no base, but the Starship Troopers and Expanders both getting proper bases.

More here with checklist

L is for Landspeeder

According to the predictions of the 1950's we'd have had anti-gravity vehicles by the year 2000, if not the 1980's, yet we are still waiting! And despite various 'mag-lev' train systems (some of them dating back to the 1950's - I think? 1970's?) and the recent announcement of a floating skateboard; there's still not much sign of Landspeeders, or plain-old 'Speeders' any time soon...

 ...luckily George Lucas took care of it in 1977..sort of! On the left of each pair above is the original Kenner toy which although dated 1978, is probably based on pre-production artwork, as it's not exactly accurate.

On the right is the Galoob 'Action Fleet' version, a much better rendition, which although almost the same length is a smaller scale. I'd say the Kenner effort is about 1:48, the Action Fleet model being around 1:56?

A few comparison shots, it's interesting to see Kenner described as a division of General Mills (who went on to buy the rump of Airfix), what might have been huh? And Kenner went on to give Hasbro a run for their money...for a while, only to be swallowed by them!

Quite a traffic jam of Speeders in down-town Coruscant, the plastic Galoob being joined by a later die-cast - technically from the same range - of a Royal Naboo Security Force patrol/staff car (?) and two Tiger Electronics 'Real Sound' models of the opening chase scene's vehicles in the 2/5  movie.

The Naboo machine is scaled more toward the MicroMachine end of the spectrum, and a small part of Kenner's problems was likely the clear failure to control the brand franchise when the three new movies came out. If they hadn't had two similar yet partially incompatible ranges (MicroMachines and Action Fleet), if they hadn't had various sub-contractors and subsidiaries producing bits and bobs (like the solid-window Tiger Electonics car), if they hadn't experimented with die-casts (twice), pre-production prototypes and other nonsense, if, if, if.

If - instead - they'd stuck to one range and expanded it into a gaming system (before Wizards of the Coast did exactly that with a third scale and few vehicles) at toy prices with a broader range of figures and vehicles, the range might still be with us, even though; under Hasbro's name. With the subsequent demise of the Wizards range, we are still waiting for a decent set of small scale Star Wars figures and accessories from the expanded universe!

As a postscript...the 54mm people are also still waiting, as Paul Stadinger was saying the other day; new range of figures in that size is being scaled-back after less than a year! It was the same with Horrible Histories...the manufacturers don't give them a chance, like Spartan babies - if they don't turn an immediate profit, they get the chop!

A is for AT-AT and AT-ST from Galoob, Kenner, Hasbro

I'm not some Klingon learning died-in-the-wool sci-fi fanatic, but I do have a soft spot for the "Increasingly inaccurately named" (to quote Douglas Adams) Star Wars Trilogy, and like most aficionados; The second film (The Empire Strikes Back) with it's set piece arctic battle on the frozen ice-planet 'Hoth'.

The AT-AT is the main mode of transport for the ground troops, a sort of mechanical horse/APC, and here are the three main versions of the 'Action Fleet' AT-AT. On the left is the first issue, then a motorised version (which needs the flattest of surfaces to move an inch!) which was by Tiger Electronics - if memory serves. Finally the re-issue by Hasbro with it's daft snow 'weathering'.

One of the Micro-Machine play-sets by Galoob had this 'dead' AT-AT, I've cut a couple out and given them a bit of work. The one on the left is a work in progress, the one on the right is as good as finished. I had to pare-down the blobs of snow that were all over them, and with the earlier one went on to fill some of the seams on the roof, I wish I hadn't now, but like tanks today, there would be many variants, so; hey ho!

Galoob 'Walker' behind, with the Tombola 'prize-egg' premium in front. Sandwiched between the two is the Pizza-Hut premium.


In the final film (The Return of the Jedi) we met AT-ST's, smaller two-man reconnaissance 'Walkers', and it's likely a few of them would have been operating as a screening force on the flanks of the main snow troop attack. Indeed, I think George Lucas retro-fitted a AT-ST into the re-mastered version of the original Star Wars movie during the huge hype when the new films were announced and various boxed sets of the old films were issued on VHS, just as it became obsolete. Lucas may be a good film maker, but he's far better at getting the pounds out of peoples pockets

In front of the Action Fleet ST, is the standard Micro-Machine version, and the two Micro-Machine AT-AT's to the right. One of the things I hate about these series are the complete inconsistency of scale, adherence to scale or compatibility. It's visually OK to use the wider range of figures in the Micro-Machine range with the Action Fleet vehicles, but for a realistic AT-AT you would have to use the 6" Palitoy/Hasbro Action figure AT-AT for true accuracy, remember the Land Speeders flew among the legs of these things.

Or...You could get the far more accurate Wizards of the Coast AT-AT, but get a credit card first, you'll need it, And that range is for another day!

S is for Star Wars

Here are a few not so much rarities, as just unusual items from the Galoob stable, now fully taken over by Hasbro.

The first is a group of three Micro-machine sets issued to tie-in with the paperbacks of the same title, dealing with what the dedicated Star Wars fans call the 'Expanded Universe' that is the universe containing all the characters, and events from, mentioned in or referenced by ALL films, comics, books, animations, toys etc...ever.

They (the dedicated ones - Love Star Wars, hate what the geeks have done to it) have tied themselves in knots on more than one occasion, not least when the money-grabbing one (aka; George Lucas - Love Star Wars, hate what the originator has done with it) brings out a new film or cartoon ignoring something already 'established' the the 'EU'.

Each set contained three EU characters and the ship/vessel most closely associated with them, if I could brake-off learning Klingon long enough to give a stuff about this nonsense I'd further explain, but suffice to say that for a small scale collector, the only thing of interest is that you can get Iberian packaging variants with Gig or Ideal logos!

Here we have the original Galoob 'Action Fleet' Naboo fighter on the left and the Hasbro re-issue of a couple of years ago on the right, note how the re-issue has an enhanced paint finish, with 'weathering' flowing back from leading edges, gun ports and blind-spots and has a chunk of battle-damage. Similar changes were evident in the decoration of the other re-issues, such as the X-Wing, the only one where it caused a problem (in my jaundiced eyes) was the AT-AT walker, which was given a snow-splatter that made it stand out like a sore thumb next to the old ones.

It's one thing to have a couple of aged tatty fighters in a squadron of cleanies, but it's quite another to have a battalion of AT-AT's with the reasonable weathering of the originals, joined at the front by some that seem to have lost a fight in a paint factory with the marsh-mallow man!

These are late production Galoob/Kenner 'Action Fleet' figures as issued in Japan, where they are collectable premiums like Kinder, but often without the chocolate, although with some sort of edible addition. The sets are sold in card boxes and usually one is a secret issue not included on the card/publicity material. In the case of this set from the small capsules Tomy are increasingly selling over here, it would seem that only the seven figures (two; paired and three; large/with large equipment piece) were involved and all are on the card.