F is for Follow-up - LB Spacetronauts!

I picked this set up in the November toy fair at Sandown Park, and it's interesting for a couple of reasons, one wouldn't necessarily get from online images, or, without the benefit of poring over it and comparing it to other examples.

 

Whole set.

 

Full extant of the graphics.

 

Card slid-out and opened-up.

 

Moon-shot landing module, and this is the first interesting aspect. Obviously it's missing its little antenna-dish, but I think I have a spare one, possibly in white, but there may be a chromed one kicking-around somewhere, so? And, if I only have a white one, you can get this media in paint-marker pens now, the Ad's keep appearing in my Faceplant feed!

 

However, you can see from the off-white at the hole, this seems to be the same lander which came as a cake decoration with the late NASA suited pair & flag, from Lik Be (LB), via Culpitts, which matched the robot aliens. Something that may not surprise the average viewer, as the figures look to be the larger LB figures?

 

But, as you can see here, they are actually the smaller ones, which were new to me with the little chromium-plated one we saw last time we had a catch-up of these old favourites. The original is on the left with a dodgy paint-job!

 

And, as a reminder that there's no fool like an old fool, a friend picked several of these out of a bowl I'd already ignored at a show (actually the September Sandown!), because I thought I had them all, but then I looked at these two remaining ones, and under the show lighting, they looked to have different paint, so I grabbed them both slightly chagrined I'd missed the other six, only to get them home and realise in the cold light of day, that the red, the gaiters and the silver on the rears, are all some other Muppet's home-painting! Hay-ho - a full strip awaits them!

 

But, by the time I realised my mistake, I'd already shot this comparison with an Athena spaceman from Greece, a UK knock-off of Premier's fellow (I don't know for sure, if the paint is home or factory, but they do turn up like this, occasionally) and one of the diminutive copies of Ajax/Archer, both of which may be Tudor Rose or Kleeware? All of which, I picked-up at the same show.

 

This all, above, led me to shoot a couple more comparisons the other day, and here, only from the stuff which has come-in over the last 24-months or so, we can see various treatments of the LB (for Lik Be!) and clone figures.

 

Of note here is that the hollow-based copy (forth from the left, is copying the earlier LB paint, which extended to the rears, and was dropped (probably as a cost-saving) on later LB issues, before all painting was dropped around the time the robots/Aliens were converted to chain-hangers.

 

While the yellow issue is a solid based version, despite hollow based monochrome examples also existing in yellow, and the small chrome chap (middle-right), is the same as the painted trio in the new set.

 

Coming with the lander, there is a strong possibility that it/they (set/figures) may be later, reduced-scale production from Lik Be, for a specific client/contract. But equally, one has to maintain the possibility that a pirate just bought-in some LB landers? Until I've compared with the known Culpitt stuff in storage, I'll sit on the fence!

 

The robot/Aliens, we actually had a very similar shot, not that long ago, but with 90%  of the LB & clones in storage, since before I shot the space-tanks, it's only the recent stuff I have to work on!

 

In both cases I've used the same sucker on the jumper and while previously seen here as a clearer HF, on this one, it looks a bit like it could be a poorly registered HE, so I've annotated both images to that effect! Personally, I think it is HF, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Every time I post Lik Be (LB) stuff (or even mention them in the text), one of two or three individuals will post an 'LP' article, usually within two or three days, as their stubborn refusal to accept it's an LB logo, apparently knows no bounds!

 

Their logic being backed up by the fact they think (with no empirical evidence) that it (the 'LP') is arrived at from;

The Lik Be Plastic And Metal Factory Limited,

 

. . . which totally ignores all the rules of English, and/or abbreviations, acronyms, initialism or shortened form/shorthand! By their own logic it should either be LPM, LP&M, LBP&M or LBP&ML, it's not any of those, because it's LB for Lik Be, but stupid is, as stupid does.

 

Just as it's not [technically] Spacex, but LB for Lines (Triang-Hornby and Raphael Lipkin), or LB for MPC, or LB for Ward, Sears, or LB for whoever, and Lik Be went on to produce many other versions/formats/packagings, with other Hong Kong numpties responsible for all the many copies, some also bought-in by Western branding's. Lines, Multiple, Culpitt, Clifford and co., just bought-in limited parts of the range from a catalogue, or, after a sales-rep's spiel, from Lik Be, from a Lik Be sales-rep'! well, Clifford might even be an LB branding, or partner?!!

 

One of the 'LP'-stubborn brigade has even used one of my clearer LB images (with the heavy corner where the bottom of the B's lower loop is), without permission, to try and maintain it's an 'LP'! But stupid is, as stupid does, and it's LB.

 

The new boxed-set with the more recent carded LB and other acquisitions (the hollow-based yellows are in the Space Patrol set).

 

You can copy all the feebleBay, Worthpoint, Scalemates, SAS, Vectis or wherever, whoever's images you like, but if you're not holding the stuff, looking at the stuff and comparing it in the palm of your hand, you're pontificating half-blind. . . Sigh!

LB is for Like Bullets!

Or at least, they would leap like bullets if they weren't missing their baseplates and springs, for now they are rather stationary but these LB follow-up's by HF had to have an iterative trope in the title and that was all I could come-up with!

 

We have seen these before and two of them were complete, with a spare spring on the third to boot, so they can all share the bottom pieces for any future jumping competitions!

 

In the order they arrived; so, that's six now, two Vichy robots giving-up before they've got going and four of the 'officer' with pistol, so it's starting to look like only the two poses were used, but I'll keep half-an-eye out for more - poses or colours!

J is for Jumping Jazzberry Jaguar

I picked-up a nice mixed lot of jumpers a while ago, I think we've seen several now already, but there's a couple of 'jiggler' type monsters still to come, in the meantime and as a continuation of one of the side-collections, there was this Pink Panther.

Not a lot to add to the pictures, but you want to try and get three lines out of it to keep the Google-bots happy, so extra images for colour variation against different backgrounds and note he's wearing PE-kit of 'singlet & shorts' and looks happy anticipating his violent acceleration along a random trajectory with a 50/50 chance of landing on his head!

Marked-up to Hong Kong with a haloed globe and the letters HF (heliotrope feline!), I test fired him and he leapt about three feet . . . and landed on his head! Testing was in the interests of research of course, I'm a grown-up, I don't play!

This chap came in with a mixed lot at some point, I think. His natty jacket and hat also happen to match the sucker-pad on the one above, colour-wise, and I thought I might have him in the four we saw a while back, but he's new (there was one with a top-hat in that other set), and is probably from another set of four from the same source as last time.

T is for They Keep Turning-up For Duty!

Those who have followed the blog since the start will know I like any excuse to return to LB's space sets and derivatives, and while LB is still contentious as a title, time will tell, and those still using LP will have to come-round in the end.

Funniest was someone still using IDL till well after last May (2020) who then quietly switched to LP and within two months was lecturing Erwin on Faceplant as to why it was LP as if he hadn't spent the 20-odd years since LP was coined, continuing with IDL!

He's trying to hang it on the Lik Be Plastics' hook, but it's Lik Be Plastics and Metal, so would be - under any rule of nomenclature - LPM, LBPM, LP&M or even LBP&M, it's none of them it's LB for Lik Be. Only for Erwin - a few months later - to lecture someone else on LP as if he'd known it all along! They are awful, that PSTSM-lot are awful!

Anyhoos, four lots of LB recruits have come in the last 12-or-so months . . .

. . . including a new Moon Exploration bagged set (from the Antipodes - I think he's still listing one), four more chromium-finished chaps and two pop-ups . . . we've seen the erasers already but they can be the fourth! Bag is LB marked and - along with the four loose figures - contents all have the usual LB base-mark, the others are derivative/pirates.

I'm not opening these yet, but a few shots to show that you get all eight astronauts in plain white and all six robots in 'atomic-green', all in soft polyethylene and all carrying the full base mark, but of interest is that the robots have all have their conversion to hangers for key-chains and the like, as have the pink ones in the blister-carded set seen here previously, so the key-ring iteration (see Wotan Bill's posts on Moonbase) was definitely an interim phase.

The four loose ones were in a mixed lot with some other stuff which I was more interested in (even though I couldn't now tell you what that was/they were as it's all been sorted away in the chaos here at the moment), the lot only added one figure-pose  to the chrome sample (upper row), but I stripped the paint off the other three to add to my 'plastic variants' sample, and the lower row is that sample, now.

Because these are coated with a powder (probably aluminium or a zink-aluminium alloy?), when you strip them (which takes about four seconds on immersion in concentrated ammonia - TFR [Traffic Film Remover] or Silver-dip), they leave the varnish/glue coating with which they were covered before coating; it  doesn't show so much on the dark figures but which is obvious on the paler ones.

I know people bang-on about 'vacuum-coating' but that's a different process found on more expensive toys from big-brands and which peels in sharp-flakes, this is more akin to flocking, but with a substrate which is naturally polished (as granules or molecules) and settles in a shiny coat, to the human-eye. I've said before - you can get a similar product ready-mixed in cans as an aerosol.

Upper row are the new additions, lower row are some of the variants of the same pose. Except, the new ones are actually replacing my older samples as they were worn, through handling, while the incomers were pretty mint, so it was all change of the old guard! Although the full sample is larger as I've kept a few each of the chromium ones and the brushed-aluminium-looking ones over the years.

If you think I'm cheating by counting the erasers as the fourth addition when they've already been seen here before, you can count the middle guy here as the fourth-addition instead, but he was actually in the 'Unknown Space Men and Humanoid-Aliens' box, where he's been for years! He's missing his base-section.

The other two, a paler pink - came in with a mixed lot of identically-mounted rubber-jigglers (also marked HF) and a couple of Imperial Toys-marked similar rubber stuff, all-else of which we'll look at another day. Clearly they are 'after' the LB sculpts, both robots and spacemen, but how many were so copied I don't know. And you can see that without finding the more-obvious robot, the astronaut would have languished in the unknown's box for a while longer!

All three of these are hollowed, relief-sculpted semi-flats in polyethylene, and I doubt the HF is for Hing Fat . . . wacky novelties? Not really them; they have nailed their colours to a different mast, and anyway, I suspect these pre-exist Hing Fat's dates by a decade at least, however I don't have another candidate yet?

19th June 2021 - Correction! The other - darker pink - one had only been in the unknown box since December (possibly why I didn't remember having him!) and had come from Chris Smith as my mind was on Mum's illness over Christmas, so apologies to Chris, they all came in quite recently!