S is for Skinfighters!

Fighting skin wherever it's found!

The Larami overprinted import (LIC = Larami International Corp.) in my collection came with divers although I'm sure they would have had the mini-subs (see previous post) as part of an assortment. I've also seen the Larami card with larger single -moulding divers in black, sort of Lone Star clones.

The eponymous 'skinfighters' and their aquacar! Pretty poor stuff, there's no effort gone into these and this level of HK stuff is a mystery to me, why produce a heap of crap, when you could make the thing more realistic for the same money? The cost is in the sculpting and the tool-making, you could make a more realistic (but just as simplistic) vehicle for the same cost. This is lazy and careless.

The artwork (a bit James Bond - probably the market it was chasing) actually shows the better underwater 'sled' also available from other HK rack toy guys, which looks like a shark. I have some somewhere; I'll try to dig them out.

A comparison between the Larami, the Skinfighter and another HK diver. The yellow one is similar to the Skinfighter, but slightly better quality although missing his scuba-tank. He'll be the one 'skinny' is cloned from, and I think he also goes with those odd-looking landing-craft / washing-machine / mine-clearing flail things which turn-up from time to time - I think I have some of those here as well, I'll try to do a follow-up!

In fact, I think I've a carded one in Picasa . . .

[Time passes away from cyberspace, a whole few dozens of seconds (over a week ago)]

Yes, I have, and no, it's a smaller, blobbier, late copy figure with large hand spigots and a smaller scuba-tank! The hand spigots are far too large for any of the holes in the, err . . . 'veh'hick'ull', presumably he's been 'borrowed' from another toy to fill the bag! Despite seeing many of these over the years, I've never seen anything mounted in all those holes (except the front one), they look like they should have the little ex-Airfix/Minitanks riders you get on some other rack toy stuff.

We'll be returning to a lone (or loan) mini-sub in September.

Couple of hours later (the magic of the cyberworld!) and I dug the other bits out. The sharky things, a couple more 'landing craft' - both slightly different - and some more spear-guns; one damaged.

The landing craft would look better with the two shell racks (?) removed, along with the angle-iron frame thing. Stick a mortar crew in the pit and you'd have off-shore fire-support, but all very fictional!

M is for Mini-Subs

We looked at these once before but as I shot them again, and as it's Rack Toy Month we might as well look at them again.

The fleet has grown, mostly riders who've come in with odd-lots, but it allows for a full complement of crew!

Off to look for British Battleships in the Med' I fear! I love these, can you tell! There was an interesting development on these shown on Moonbase Central the other day; "Ah, Perkins, we need a futile gesture, it’ll raise the whole tone of the Blog; take the mini-sub, have a shufti into space, blow something up, don't come back . . . " (with more than a nod to Peter Cook!).

A couple of divers waiting for boats; normally when trying to date early Hong Kong stuff, you'd go with painted being typically earlier than unpainted, but the unpainted one here is of a much better quality (despite the mis-registered mould halves!) than the clone with paint remnants.

The paint, and the feathery silver plastic of the latter figure resemble the work of that little group [of companies?] known variously by their base-marks as ABC, CM, CMV and HK, I wouldn't be surprised if he was by [one of?] them.

U is for Underwater

Only the one photograph, but a lot in it. Centre top is the lose Mini-submarine from Manurba with the driver/pilot underneath, to the left is the same machine issued as Scuba Diver Set by Gordy in the US (another company that remains unsung under Giant's shadow, despite producing a similar sized range of similar products?), while below it is the more common Hong Kong copy, note the full-round cross-section. This is a hard plastic model with soft diver, the Maurba one is all soft.

To the right of the lose ones we see the carded presentation of the HK one, entitled Frogman Set with colour variants below.

The bottom of the picture shows from left to right; Baking-powder divers from Manurba (these are different from the Kellogg's one's and I will look at them all later), while next are a couple of Hong Kong Mini-sub's in soft plastic that have kept the Manurba hollow hull, and came in Christmas Crackers, Sobres etc..

Finally, the same card as above, but with different contents and marked L.I.C. (Laramie Industries Corp.) Philadelphia. In the very centre is a Manurba rubber boat (sans engine) to compare with the HK copy of the Airfix US Marines boat.