X is for Xandria - Part Two

So a closer view of the little pile of Xandria (or related) loveliness from Theo, a while back now, and you can see a couple of the Thunderbirds one, Tracy was missing his gun, but Lady Penelope just needs a clean, her shoes have that gold paint made from brass-filings which goes green if it gets too damp, so they may need a re-paint!

The rest we are going to look at now, and apart from the two Gerry Anderson characters they were mostly quite clean . . . PVC does have a tendency to collect dirt in a way no other plastics do, Yogi needed a clean, but didn't get one until I'd shot them and there appear to be two grey boots or paws sticking out of the pile, belonging to someone who is in neither post?

I do remember one figure having a  loose component at buckle/belly level which I had to de-gunge and re-glue, it must have been put to one side and not shot, but it will re-appear at the other end, and can star when we return to these, which I know we will.

We've seen the policeman/dog yesterday; the comedy policemant Bromsnor  from TV series Swiebertje and the De Betuwe jam premium's Agent Bulderen  while the other two seem to both be from the Pixie line, the thin guy on the left might be advertising a local Dutch tailors, or just wearing a sticker to explain his Grimm's fairy tale character; Het dappere snijdertje (The brave cutter) ['Zeven in één klap'] (Seven at one strike); the tale of the tailor who kills seven flies in one go and gets dicked into tackling Giants by a dodgy King!

The fatter chap has lost a sticker (you can see some glue remains), so I don't know if he was advertising something, explaining his own character or just had some fancy paper undershirts, like one or two in yesterday's post! Indeed the sticker on Bromsnor's hat has mostly had it's detail rubbed off and is loose, some of the stickers are 'vehicle-vinyl' and the glue turns to a sticky liquid under the onslaught of the substrate PVC's free radicals, a problem with the Thunderbirds set too.

The Indian, I have a feeling Theo did explain him to me, and that he might be connected to the similar non key-ring ones from the donation posts the other day, but I can't remember or find the relevant eMail, so we may return to him at some point.

And while I said the clown probably wasn't Xandria, forgetting it was in yesterday's post (and below!) I then said I hadn't seen any Hanna Barbera ones, forgetting Yogi was here! As I said; I could forget something if it was glued to the end of my nose!

And; like the Disney Pete yesterday, fully marked but on his back not his foot, so the chances are other franchises got the Xandria, multi-part PVC treatment?

Not that he's necessarily Xandria, even if the rest are; his ring, chain and loop are all different, and his collar & tie are polyethylene, but so are Lady P's pearls, as other accessories on other figures also utilise the harder polymer!

These are all from the jam maker's Flipje Betuwe set, and from the left are; Klaas Ram (Claus/Klaus?), Sjoerd de visboer (Sjoerd the fishmonger) and Schoorsteenveger (chimney sweep), and again we see Klaas wearing a sticker to represent his nautical-themed jumper, while the sweep has a PE ladder.

These two are damaged, but interesting nevertheless, the clown is in the style of Xandria's output, but not configured as a key-ring, therefore without a central core and so all glued together rather than stacked like most of the others, while the Santa Clause is all polyethylene, and over-moulded just like Timpo figures. Again a very different loop/ring arrangement, and no chain, suggests a copy-cat/rival, maybe even in Hong Kong? Perhaps he was sold as a tree-decoration?

On the over-moulding; it would be interesting to know who did it first, now we know George Musgrave at Gemodels was wrestling with the technology, and swoppets came before over-moulding at Shotts (the cavalry/ACW were the first with true hot-polymer over-moulding I think), while some of these Xandria's are from the 1960's, it's more questions without answers!

These are lovely figures, rather opening-up a whole 'new' field to study (four winging their way here in the post as I write), and many thanks to Theo van de Werden who sent me to the Flipje Betuwe site (which has gone now, but I copied the two relevant pages), and for sending the Blog these for us to look at - Thank you, Theo - job done!

X is for Xandria - Part One

I can't believe I hadn't used that title before given the paucity of X's to choose from, but I hadn't, so now I have. In the US, we know they were credited to a Xandria - Holland, and have to assume in Holland it was just plain Xandria, or at least, I think it was, there being nothing solid in the archive.

And I don't have to eat a terribly large slice of humble pie, as I corrected myself at the time on Moonbase several years ago, and have since established them as [Dutch] Xandria here too, although it is conjecture as that confirmatory evidence is still missing.

I have nicked the previously linked-to image from Kirk's site, purely for research purposes (http://secretfunspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/vintage-ad-sheets_28.html) in getting it all here at the same time, but have sent people there in the past and would recommend that you visit, it's a long post with tons of fascinating stuff; a Britains point-of-sale Ad', Monogram Luminators, toy filled promotionals, Lindburg.  (sadly no Verity or Una pens though!), somewhere I'm sure I have a non-promotional/un-branded version of the ice-scraper in the second image! And his farewell post (click on the header image to 'go' home) has cool stuff too.

Anyway, these (above) are mostly the Pixies, and I've told the tale of Auntie Ruth or Margaret giving us four younger cousins one each, one summer, and we will look at a few in this and the next post, but Xandria also did specific promotionals, Disney characters, TV related figures and other stuff. And it seems that - in the US at least - they were sold in little blister-cards.

Now on the day, way back when, I remember the dog tramp/hobo and the gopher/rabbit chef, one of which must have been my brother's, but I can't remember what the fourth was? The pig looks a lot like Podgy, from the Rupert Bear strip in the Daily Express (ad the lovely annuals, with their self-colouring pages), but is actually a named character from one of Xandria's promotional series.

You can also see fairy-tale characters like Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, Jack of the beanstalk, stealing the Golden Goose, Hansel & Gretel a frog-Prince, witch,  the Pied Piper and a naked emperor!

My Xavier mouse, his tale was told in a previous post, but there were images left; when you find a elusive childhood memory's item, you tend to take a few shots more than you might actually need!

These three are from Theo, via eMail and his clever depth-of-field scanner, and are of a Policeman from a comedy TV series called Swiebertje (Swiper (or nicker? as in arrester?)), and the character is called Bromsnor (hum moustache), he's one of four in the key-ring line/set.

In the middle is one which Theo though might be from Hong Kong, whether because I originally though they were from there, or because it's a summer uiform, or a different material/style I don't know and Theo's too busy with Real Life to ask right now. Note the ring is a different - push/press - design too.

The third is a police-dog, obviously! He's from the large range of premiums Xandria did for the Tiel-based De Betuwe jam factory, they had a mascot (Flipje) who was actually a red fruit, although I'm not sure what friut, he may be a raspberry, or a more generic thing representing all the fruits in the local orchards (plums, cherries, apples?), he has a statue AND museum in Tiel town!

But the promotion had thirty-nine other anthropomorphic characters to collect, each with a different name and this policeman is called Agent Bulderen, he's dressed quite like a British beat-bobby, but as we've been a vague extension of Holland since 1689, that sort of makes sense! I think a meaningful translation is 'Agent Blunder'?

Two I picked up in a mixed lot, the damaged one is a Disney character (I've previously mused they may not have touched that franchise, but they obviously did!) of Pete, Bad/Black/Peg-leg/Pistol Pete! I think? He's lost his head and is packing a pistol, and you can see how the core (here snapped at the neck) of these figures runs up through the body and head to the ring-loop!

The other is a bit of a regency fop, and I suspect from the expanse of smooth front clothing/bib, that he is missing an advertising or branded promotional sticker, as several of those we will look at have.

Here they are again (upper shot) with the inset pixy from the advertising trade Ad., a grumpy looking fellow! Below them are three more which I think Theo sent me, but I may have taken it off of feeBay; a chap in a top hat, an Indian (is he the same character as those non-key-rings the other day?) we'll look at again in the text post and a clown, the clown I thought might not be Xandria the other day, I can forget something on the end of my nose, believe me! And a circus ringmaster, we'll look at in a minute, without his waistcoat & cravat sticker.

The big guy is also in the US image (with Puss in Boots) and you can see with his t-shirt/under-vest sticker how it could be easily replaced with a different sticker for a corporate logo or event, and - as stock items - even for something small like a local retailer or a village fête, maybe needing only a few hundred units?

Another gopher/rabbit type in a bell-hop's (urrrr . . . rabbit, hop, geddit!) uniform, which could be me over reading it as he's another Flipje Betuwe character, known as Trein Konijn (train rabbit), so I'm not over-reading it; he's a station hopping, bell-hop! It could get worse . . . no, he's actually a driver I think! He's missing a sticker round his hat.

The third is that ring-master and you can see, again, from the missing sticker, he could be used as an advertising hording for something else. Which [promotionals or premiums] seems to have been the driving concept behind Xandria's whole product range.

A close up of Pete's foot with the full licensing message, I have yet to find Hanna Barbera or MGM stuff in Xandria's styleing? And three more Flipje Betuwe characters, from the left in the smaller, face-on image; Juffrouw Geit van Geitenstein (Miss Goat van Geitenstein), Kapitein Rob (a walrus with a corn-cob pipe!) and Mol (mole).

Theo thinks the jam premium range appeared in the late 1960's which would tie-in with the Thunderbirds set  we looked at here also (some time after 1965/6'ish), while the US 'Branch' Xandria-Holland were registered in New York in 1971, with the 'Pixies' which would tie-in with when I was losing Xavier's cheese around 1970-72, clambering around in the hay-stack!

And they are mostly 55-60mm and PVC. We'll look at a equally eclectic selection from Theo in the next post.

X is for Xenomorphs

Seen briefly the other day, this was one of those couple-of-quid charity-shop purchases which have become an almost weekly topping-up of the collection's figure total, but - while I normally keep the figures and a couple of accessories maybe - this is staying as it is, being a rather neat little game I knew nothing about (and there's a long list of games with figures, still to find!), which can join the stack!

Peter Pan Playthings 1993's Operation Aliens board game, licensed to - or loosely based on - the second movie in the franchise, but no Newt (thankfully - pesky kids!) and a nice bunch of 1:72nd scale figures!

Or at least that's what I thought until I studied the dates? It must be off the back of the 3rd (space prison?), 4th or 5th (?) movies? I gave up watching them, it all became a little silly and Sigourney Weaver was one of the biggest names in Hollywood until she tore the arse out of the franchise she bought . . . to tare the arse out of it! In one of the ones I didn't bother-with she even did an 'Arnie' with a vat of molten stuff, but them so did that Skywalker's dad, Frodo nearly did, but at least he 'nearly' did it first!

There is a dice (or die) but the mechanism is mostly 'order' card-driven as far as I can tell, and the 'winner' table suggests the survival or escape of the space marines is a rare'ish event! This was also photographed on one of those odd days (we had one last year a swell) where the atmospheric light seems to fight with the camera's flash to produce an insipid pinkish 'glow' which doesn't make for brilliant imagery, but I suspect we'll find excuses to return to these in the future!

Close-ups, equally washed-out by the lighting conditions, but good-enough for now. You get a queen alien, four offspring and four character players; Ripley, Apone, Drake and Hicks but I can't remember which is which - I think Ripley is the yellow one? The 'baby' aliens have three heads, the mother alien has about sex or eight arms!

I've put a comparison shot on the Airfix Astronaut page (which is a better image!) and you can see they are slightly taller, only a millimeter or two, so a reasonable 1:72nd scale or a tad too small for use as 28mm role-play gaming additions.

X is for X-30 Space Explorer

Bought this a while ago, because it was cheap! It was missing something (still is) and the vendor stated that fact as being the reason it was so reasonable, but it was a metallic blue spaceship, I wasn't going to let it go, although there's another reason I had to have it.

This is the little beast...on the launchpad! A Google image-search reveals it's basically a generic (although I believe JR21 carried it at one point), coming either Hong Kong boxed (no.230) or carded, in two versions: as mine (mostly carded) or with gold/dirty-silver painted nose and side-nacelles (boxed) and it's numbered 303 on the base, just to confuse!.

There is a second model with a similar name made by Lucky Products ('LP', No. 103) but with smaller turbines over the wheels, these tend to be pale blue or red, also boxed or carded (with four of their spacemen).

The other reason I had to have one...it's got a dog! An HO-OO'ish, space dog...there's a dog in the cab, with its own seat...how cool is that? Too cool for school, that's how, so go to space...did I say it had a dog...Look! There's a dog in that Space Ship, somebody give it a seat-belt! Pre-dates Wookies...

If you follow some of the links from the image-search, you'll see that the missing piece is a revolving antenna thing (nuclear engine?), anyway, it's a bit naff, very breakable, and the LP one uses a simplified one that looks like a jack from the cheap rack-toy Jacks sets.

Do you know - I managed to get through my entire childhood without ever knowing how to play Jacks. This despite the fact everyone I knew (including my Brother and I) had some kicking around somewhere? I've even watched people playing it without paying attention...you chuck them in the air and there are dice? A dice? Too late now!

So That's what I'll do with this (an idea from Woodsie or Wotan over at Moonbase Central (destination of several of those links)), but I know I've seen little bags of plastic jacks from Christmas crackers with an anodised-chromium type finish in metallic pink, purple or blue, one of which I think will do the trick nicely, so I'm holding out for one to turn-up, if not I may have some in a 'spares tub' in storage!

X is for.....there isn't one really is there....?

Xachma
X-Acto
Xan Miniatures
XB9 / xB9 Games
Xcel Concepts LLP
X Concepts    
Xebic Toys
Xeno Games
Xenos Minis / Xenosmini / Xenos Miniatures
Xiloplasto / Xiloplast
Xion
X-O Facto
X-Otic
X-Plus
XR
Xth Legion (10th [Tenth] Legion)
X-Toys / X Toys
Xtreme Hobby
Xyston Miniatures

Have I missed any?

X was always going to be harder than Q, and Q was always going to be harder than Z, so looking at the bottom of the tag list, I think I've managed quite well, but we'll put X to bed for a bit. One day I will do listings pages, and at the moment the above is the list of X's to be covered, seriously...have I missed one!

X is for Cross-shaped Wing-form Star-fighter!

I've been following developments over at Rob's shipyards with some fascination in the last few days, not least because the system is too small a scale for figures so I'll probably never partake, but they are lovely models and what Rob's done with his spare Millennium Falcons is superb.

In the Galoob stuff I found this morning were some Star Wars bits, and while most people are familiar with the Action Fleet toys from Galoob, I though the comparison with a lesser-known X-Wing was worth a short post...

Estes solid-fuel tablet rockets with parachute - the parachute is hidden from view in a little compartment like the old Quercetti catapult-rockets. Compared to a Galoob 'Red-Five' (red? they're both orange-fives!), you can see there's very little in it size-wise, but the engine nacelles are a bit different and the rear of the main compartment is very different due to need to put the fuel tablets somewhere.

I would like to open this and 'muck-about' with it, but I'd need a second one first, and they are bloody hard to find and tend to go for a premium when they turn-up...too many sub-branches of collectors after the one thing! One day I'll just think "F-it, other collectors must have carded ones, lets get it out!".

The other obvious difference is the solid canopy.

Galoob's Red-Three and Red-Five; a few years apart and a few variations in decoration, also - I'm assuming it's later production - the 'five' has no cockpit stickers?

X is for X-400 Space Explorer

A family tragedy means no urge to write for a few days, this will have to do...