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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

B is for Big Blobs in Bags!

Just as the Montaplex New Zealanders had different contents, so some of the sets in the 100-code numbered series of pocket-money toy 'sobre' (surprise) envelopes had earlier incumbents prior to the better known Airfix/Matchbox/Atlantic copies, it is these we will look at now...

There is a forth set, being equally crude 30/35mm's; copies of the Blue Box GI's (possibly with a few Monogram poses to make the set up to ten poses).

Each set comes with a piece of scenery as the runner they are attached to which are missing from my collection, I'm not sure why the top set has only seven poses (there may be a clue below), nor whether there were three duplicates to make-up the total sought?

The set at the bottom were sold as Japanese, the set above them as Americans, the top set (Germans?) and the missing set (Brits?) are still a mystery to me...any ideas?

Here we see some 40mm Italian originals of the Spanish piracies, these are in hard metallic colours of polystyrene, very much in the style of the CoMa Spacemen and Galenites, although there is no actual connection known to me other then the obvious similarity?

The prone guy seems to have a control box for a rocket launcher or something (like the little Roscopf figures) and the kneeling chap (in gold) was 'using' or operating something. While I believe Serjan copied the mini-submarines (as flats), Montaplex didn't, neither did they copy the flame-thrower (damaged above), which may account for the lower pose count of the copied set?

Note how the Spanish efforts are not pantograph generated copies, but free-hand lifts, much reduced in size.

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