1968; [WWII] British Commados (1st/4th Versions), S32 / 1732 / 01732 / 01732-3 / A01732 - HO/OO / 1:72

From the first time I saw these (a mate's big brother's Pontoon Bridge assault set), I thought they were a pretty poor set, it's all down to the headgear . . . what are they wearing on their heads? It's supposed to be the sealed woolly tube or "Cap, Comforter, Helmet-lining - for the use of", issued to most troops at some point and was more commonly used as a scarf - the predecessor of the face-veil - but looks more like the little pill-box hat still worn by several commonwealth armies/units or Gurkha soldiers on parade, or even a badly-sculpted side-hat! Face veils were also issued in WWII, from 1942, mostly to airborne troops in a green with brown-blob overprint.

The poses were also rather lack-lustre, while the boat is really nice, and the carriers could be employed to carry the boat (either way up!) or a ladder (...or two!), but the other poses? The officer looks like he can't be bothered to fire his Webley, the wounded guy looks as if he's just remembered he left the gas on, The grapple-thrower could be playing magnetic-fishing (and clearly isn't under fire or stress of any kind!) and most of the other poses seem to be being forced to dance by the Tommy-gunner! Just . . . not nice . . .

Once the - much better - replacement set's mould had been scrapped by idiots in France, the new parents of the old mould then added insult to injury by re-producing the awful poses...in an awful colour! I mean to say; What TF! 1st Battalion, Cadbury's Own Chocolate Commando Regiment, anyone?

Well...this is what you got for your money...hopefully it was some well-meaning parent or auntie's money...not yours, would you? Really. OK, enough attacking the set...it's got two useful bazooka's and a pair of radio-operators, who could be given helmeted head-swaps!

Being one of the later sets issued in 'Airfix Green', this set doesn't have all the darker shades of olive-green and olive-drab you find with the Infantry Combat Group, US Marines or British Paratroopers, so colour matching to make sets from loose examples isn't so problematic, then there are the...err...shit brown ones from France! There have been better colours in recent years...a pale-tan, for instance.

Other bugger's efforts, the grenade thrower looks like one of mine from the early 1970's, but I think that's just coincidence, there weren't many colours to chose from then and with Airfix only having a couple of 'Army' greens and 'Khaki' browns in their range, a lot of figures got the same scheme around the nation!

The blue and black guy is probably from a 'private army'...back in the day, various 'Bond movies and similar big screen extravaganzas had us rushing of to create wildly coloured secret armies, space armies, future armies of good guys and/or bad guys ready for final scene dénouements! My Brother had one in 1:32 scale, Germans, Americans and the Paratroop officer pointing were brought together with a fetching set of yellow pyjama trousers and black jackets with red headgear!

I don't have many OBE's for the Commandos as I had a big paint-stripping session a few years ago...well, I say a few years; probably 20-odd years ago...where does the time go!

 

The vastly improved replacement set, waits it's turn in the limelight, they will get their own post, so I won't dwell on them here, but don't you want to slide them out from underneath and forget the subject of this post all together?

Assault ladders; The only real difference - to the naked eye - between the 1st/4th and 2nd/3rd version Airfix is that the cross-rungs on the 2nd version were finer, which causes it to look a little wider, but actually it's pretty-much the same width and length as the 1st/4th version. The only real fault with the Matchbox set IS the ladder...a short, chunky thing you might use to clear the gutters on an outhouse, but not much use for assaulting 'Fortress Europe'!

A full set comparison, the four figures bottom right (3 matchbox 1 Airfix) having no real opposite. The Matchbox are a lovely set of figures and go very well with the 2nd/3rd version Airfix, but they make the 1st/4th versions look like the toy clowns they mostly are! Fair shout though . . . I prefer the canoe to the wet-weekend-in-Margate's rubber-boat of the Matchbox set.

Nitto had a stab at copying this set - or at least one pose of it - for their US Infantry...the mould-tool for which is now owned by Fujimi. They gave him  a helmet and then cut his arm off...I'm sure I should have one somewhere, but couldn't find it for this photo-shoot, so when (if? It may never have been on the runner?) it turns-up I'll re-take the image.

It IS all about the headdresses though, isn't it? He looks quite good with an M1 helmet, yet the original looks like a loon escaped from Rampton* with a carved rake-handle...and a sword-bayonet he stole from a museum!

* Overseas readers need to know Rampton (along with Ashworth and Broadmoor) are where we send our REAL loons, to protect society and them...from themselves! As a kid we used to listen-out for the alarm-test on Thursday mornings which would drift over Bramshill forest and penetrate our classrooms, if it wasn't Thursday morning (or whichever morning my memory is tricking me into thinking it wasn't)...we panicked!

Thanks again to Kostas for the scans of the 1974 catalogue, which provides us with the classic 'blue box' artwork...no it doesn't - the white 'corner' boxes were being phased in at this time, and while the blue boxes make up most of the images in the '75 catalogue, all the WWII sets were illustrated in their new clothes!

A conversion I've never got round to finishing! One of the features of this blog will be a certain amount of repetition from time to time, and this is one of those times, as the same images will also have to go on the 'Aussie' page when I get it up and running.

One day I'll retake the images for one random page and paint them-up, then one page can have the painting in progress and the other the finished figures. For now...at least the legs are useful, huh? The donkey is from a board-game called Trek (I think), and while there is only the one pose, there are a whole-bunch of them, very useful for war-gaming supply columns.

The boat floats, but low in the water, it also fills-up, so a seal with silicon paste would help, or a few foam off-cuts stuffed in the hull might help it ride a little higher, but then it would probably roll over? . . . Doh!

French artwork from a recent Heller issue, from the late 1990's/early 2000's there have been so many box types I don’t think even most hardcore box-collectors bother with them, but this is at least new artwork, although I think both chaps have a certain 'Frenchness' to them!

Original white box, late 1980's blue box and two versions of the long box containing the short-lived 2nd/3rd type figures. Early blue long boxes might have contained them as well (the artwork allude to them), but mine, here, bought in 1989 has already reverted to 1st/4th type, so Heller/General Mills managed to get through two tools or two versions of the one tool, in less than eight years, from a range where some tools are still going after 60+ years!

So . . . on the left we have the original (and current) set's canoe, with a couple of the newer plastic colours (sand and dark-olive drab), they have also had the orange-brown treatment (see above and below!), while on the right are the 2nd/3rd type canoes with their very different connecting points; it's my contention now that one tool probably gave rise to both, with the canoe being the problem that led to whatever shenanigans is now lost to history?

 

My original notes to myself, apologies for spelling, typo's and general scrawl, but it has the necessary measurements for those needing to differentiate between the latter two designs, the earlier/current one is easy, it has the ledges.

An OBE - someone has taken the marching equipment from a French Napoleonic infantryman, and plonked it on a commando to quite good effect i think? The A-frame 'Bergan' ended up looking like a sack-of-spuds by the time it was filled with spare clothing, rations, ammunition a couple of grenades, a mortar bomb, 50-rounds of link and a spare radio battery!

The 'white box', with the little thumbnails on the back, they probably weren't called thumbnails then of course, that's a modern term coming out of computing, always liked this artwork, but it suggests training on the south-coast, or the Isle of Weight, rather than an actual mission!

Those 'thumbnails', all would be carried over to the [orange] long-box of the 2nd/3rd version except for the knife-man, who got replaced by the officer from the 54mm set.

From the mid-1990's box types have come thick and fast, and I really can't get excited by them all, some sets seemingly have three versions in three years, but it's worth noting that this artwork (harking back to the 1980's long/blue box) is quoting the 2nd/3rd version, but contains the crappy 1st/4th sculpts!

Which were also issued in some bloody-awful plastic colours, here a sandy-fawn and bright oxide-brown! Is it 'sitting on your laurels', or just dumbing down? Whatever it is, it's not what Airfix used to represent. But, then, it's not Airfix is it? It's Hornby PLC!

The late 80's 'Long' box, which has the same dimensions as the one which carried the 2nd/3rd version, but which actually reverted to the set dealt with in this entry.
 

1968; [Civil/Colonial/Media Related] Tarzan Figures, S33 / 01733 / 01733-6 - HO/OO

From Wikipedia - "Tarzan (John Clayton II, Viscount Greystoke) is a fictional character, a feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer.

Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan first appeared in the novel Tarzan of the Apes (magazine publication 1912, book publication 1914), and subsequently in 23 sequels, several books by Burroughs and other authors, and innumerable works in other media, both authorized and unauthorized."

 

A favourite set of mine, not as a kid though, I totally missed the issue due to age, and didn't encounter the figures until I was 16, when, having started collecting a couple of years earlier managed to talk our new neighbours out of them when we moved to a new house, they were 'football' kids and weren't that interested in their toy soldiers/figures!

 

 

The 1975 catalogue image, courtesy of reader, Kostas, I knew the set from the catalogues, but had never handled the figures, none of our friends had them, and it seemed a silly set to get because there were no 'enemy', of course the enemy are in the box if you have half an imagination!

 

Boxes, back in the late 1990's/early 2000's these started to hit silly money on the fledgling evilBay, but they have settled down, now all the main collectors have found a good one, and what was £50-75, has become 25-40 quid, but that still steep for a shilling's worth of little toy figures!

 

Two slightly different box-issues, with one having rounded ends on the tuck-flaps, the other angled ends. Probably just a case of two print-runs, with a new cutting-die prepared between the runs. The window also has slightly sharper ogee radii on the corners, I think? And the yellow has washed-out slightly, giving it a more pallid artwork.

 

Licensed from Banner Productions Ltd., whose details appear along the bottom of the box-backs, by way of acknowledgement of the licence, the set was tied to the US TV Series. Note they are both 50-cent 'export end' boxes.

 

Contents can be broken-down several ways, here it's native warriors, unnamed animals and boat, with named characters and hunters in the lower image. But the hunters aren't specific characters, and can easily be the enemy!

 

OBE's; These were very useful among war-gamers, as ancient warriors, or native levy in colonial games, Tarzan and Boy forgot the sun-block, Jane has over-done the tanning bed!

 

These were what I did with mine (upper shot), I conscripted them into my Egyptian Army! Although at the time (1981-82), I was collecting the Atlantic ancients from Tangley Model Workshop in Guildford, I only ever got the Greeks and Trojans! So my Ptolemaic army was these and the American Indian conversions seen on that post!

 

Some more of my Egyptians! They had their shield-studs removed to make a wild skirmish-line in front of the more serried rank of standing chaps and drummers!

 

Comparisons with the similar animals from the Zoo Sets (lower pair), and a HäT colour-comparison (upper image). I love the heavy Nile crocodile in the Tarzan set, while Cheeta the chimpanzee wouldn't be allowed anywhere near a baby gorilla by a big silverback!

 

The lions from all three sets (Tarzan and Both Zoo sets), with the stable block from the Zoo play set, giving a 'Lions of Longleat' vibe! I don't know why after designing all the lovely new animals, they reused the other lion, baby elephant and a zebra?

One each of the animals, above, the panther (melanistic/black leopard - I saw one once, in Savo East National Park, Kenya) is another nice sculpt, a complete set's contents, bottom-left and a HäT/Airfix crocodile comparison, bottom-right.

 

Various shots of the very delicate cheetah sculpt.

 

HäT Industries box-art, I'd like a set with those African warrior sculpts!

Plasty, a German partner Airfix would later take-over and consume, leaing nothing for Heller to gloat over, also had a stab, with what would have been the Airfix set in a Plasty tray, I imagine, I've never seen one, but it gives us;

• S33 - Airfix - 1968-72
• 1031 - Plasty - 1968/9-72?
• 01733-6 - Airfix - 1973-75
• 7018 - HäT - 2002-06?

Contents of the HäT reissue.

 

1x Tarzan

1x 'Boy' (Jai, the orphan adopted by Tarzan)

1x Jane (female figure)*
1x 'Cheeta' (chimpanzee)**

1x Cheetah (big cat)

1x Hollow log-canoe
1x Paddler for the canoe

1x Zebra (sculpt from Zoo Set 2)
1 Baby elephant (sculpt from Zoo Set 1)

1x Lion walking (sculpt from Zoo Set 1)

1x lion leaping

2x White Hunters with rifles
2x Crocodiles

2x Leopards (sculpt from Zoo Set 1)
2x African Tribesmen beating log-drums
4x African warriors standing 'sentry'
4x African warriors waving spears
4x Shields (for the above figures)

* Although painted-up by Airifx as an African, the sculpt (compared to the natives) has Indo-European features, and is clearly meant to represent Jane, who was central to the core Tarzan story, and present in most of the other material pertaining to what, by the 1960's, was a well-established franchise, so she would have been known to the buyers of the set, but she was absent from the Banner production.

** It should be noted that neither Cheeta (earlier Johnny Weissmuller movies) nor N'kima (origianl books and comics, a kind of macaque?) appear in the TV series this set was licensed from, but, like Jane, would have been known to the buyers, and expected in a 'Tarzan' set.

 

First appearance in the 1968 'Latest Additions & Price List' leaflet/flyer.

Pre-production artwork.

 

This was a short-lived set, technically available from 1968-1975 (eight years), in fact, by around 1974 they were no longer to be found in the stores and only briefly got a round-logo box, with no 'white' box, although versions with a left-hand window, central window, or no window were produced.

The artwork is quite close to the Brian Knight final submission, so this may well have been his 'aproval' preliminary version?

The 1969 catalogue image, it's actually a pre-production/art room shot, with the monkey ('Cheeta' to you and me, but not present in the TV series) represented - for the photograph - by the baby gorilla from Zoo Set 2, he would eventually get his own sculpt, which was on the shelves by the time this catalogue hit the model shops, or Woolworth's.

 

There are no tigers in Africa! The catalogues for 1970-through-72 all continue to use the incorrect image with the baby gorilla, and the page layout (placed after the HO-OO range and the larger scale sets/figure kits (a sort of civilianised 'girls' page, this WAS the 1970's!) remained unchanged for all three editions - Sixth, Seventh & Eighth.

 

Obviously, they may have been tigers in the Zoo Sets, but here would need to be painted-up as the similar (but normally slighter) leopard, a black leopard (shades of Shere Khan from The Jungle Book!), or even lionesses, at this scale it's a moot point!

Instead of re-shooting the 'full line-up' image with the correct simian, Airfix reverted to the baox-art/image for the last three outings, using a 59-cent 'export' ends box for all three catalogues, in contrast to the new, longer stock codes, which were first issued in 1973.

 

The Airfix figures compared with the few contemporary or near contemporary figures of similar ilk. The upper shot shows soft plastic 'Jungle' figures from the later window-box mini play-sets from Marx's Miniature Masterpiece range. Bottom left has the playing piece from Waddington's board-game 'Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs', to the right are two generations (larger, painted, 1st and smaller, unpainted, 2nd generation) of Hong Kong copies of cavemen based on figures by....hummm...I used to know! MPC? Tim-Mee? I'll get back to you on this one! All much bigger, so Airfix were out on a limb here with the Tarzan subject matter.

 

 

Comparison with the contents of Spear's Games 'Trek', which comes with a near HO jeep (several actually), enough crates for a WWI crate-mountain and lots of very useful pack-mules, sadly, all in the same pose! The explorer/hunters are a bit big.

The four coloured figures were also used in Spear's Wild Life, the black and white characters being dropped for the four-player game.

 

Can't remember the name of this board-game? I've got it somewhere, so I'll update when I remember/find it! Later - Zoo Quest by Ariel, by arrangement with the BBC, Zoo Quest was a BBC nature programme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_Quest

 

Comparisons with Preiser's circus animals - technically, a black big-cat in Africa would be a melanistic variant of the leopard, not a tiger from Asia, but it gives you an idea!

Cheeta's been a busy boy then! The wives have left him in charge of the nursery while they go hunting fruit and talking hair-dos! Also Preiser; these are the circus chimpanzee troop! 

Anglo bubble-gum shared the licence (among others), and here's one of their contemporaneous cards with Tarzan and one of his Mangani super-apes!

Both sides of my original (40-odd years ago) index card 'manuscript notes', when I decided to take the cards from their alphabetical box, and add them to the leaver-arched file archive, I had to photocopy one side of each card, before I could glue it in!

 

It highlights one of the quandaries of collecting, that of classicfication - is the monkey an animal (you should see it at mealtimes!) or a character? In the context of the set's license, it's just an animal, but we know it's really a character!

 

A more measured and succinct manuscript note from a contributor, also in the archive. We both, independently and years apart, chose to describe the plastic as 'cream', because it's cream, not yellow (lemon or 'permanent'), not light-yellow (primrose) and definitely not dark (Cadmium) yellow! It's not even pastel-yellow (nickel-titanate), more white-with-a-hint-of-tan. If you were a pedant, you could call it magnolia, or ivory would do, but only an idiot would think yellow's involved! A mass of simpletons are actively destroying the human race, right now!

 

Good-old Worthpoint! Having ranted about colour, let me rant about this abomination! A totally fake box, created - I think - by a Frenchman of dubious free-time use, filled with Polish 'kiosk' copies, off the runner, and offered-up, buy-it-now, on evilBay, as a what? A fantasy set? Nuts! There's more to collect, than you cn find in a lifetime and yet, some idiots are inventing things to collect?

Links

Airfix Tribute Forum (ATF)

Britmodeller (colourful)

Imgur (lovely set)

Modelversium (German language review)

Pauls Bod's

Plastic Soldier Review (PSR)

Late to the party (and mostly other people's images)