I did manage to pick-up a set in a car-boot
lot in the late-1990's and while later passing-on the rest of the bag, had
already painted these up and stuck them in (on) the 'cabinet of curiosities'
where we looked at them briefly (and fuzzily) about ten years ago; we'll be
looking at them again, in a minute, below.
I should have an undecorated human male,
but can't find him so for now it'll have to be Ensign Jeffrey standing in.
Seven poses, and they were an odd selection, seeming a bit dated, yet actually
referencing various tropes (or troops!) that were in the public or cultural
conscience in the late 1970's or early 1980's.
This is the numbered contents of a set, and
numbering is pretty clear on all sculpts on the upper side of the bases, so
anyone buying a boxed-set described as 'mint' or complete, but lacking the
sealed, poly-foil outer wrapping needs to have one each of all the above;
numbered as above.
Examples of base numbering on figures 5, 7
and 13, you can see how clear they are and all 14 will be needed to 'make' a
set. Equally a set needs to be either grey (early, getting scarcer), and
matched-grey at that, or silver (later, commoner), not mixed together!
The pose quantities were also a bit odd, as
it's no lie to state the two worst poses are the 3x's (padded cricket/baseball
body-armour and 'Frisbee' man) while the two single issues (Romanesque humans) are
among the best sculpts, with a fourteen-count, two of each would have been the
best way to go, indeed - the obvious way to go!
Playing with a mirror, not as easy as it
looks, you have to hold the 'background' (which is actually between you and the
camera) in one hand, aim and fire the camera with the other hand and ensure the
flash-reflection doesn't show; you can see it slightly in the top left corner
of a couple of the shots!
You also have to keep one eye on the
camera's screen which is away from you and held at an odd angle, to ensure the
'background sheet' covers the whole of the figure/likely crop-area. Weirdly;
the mirror steals some of the light, so the reflections are a bit darker, and
not because it's the back-side, the bases are darker too?
We'll start with a look at each pose, begining with
the 'Disney' characters!
Ensign Jeffrey
He's adequate enough if you're looking for
an over-enthusiastic junior officer to blame in a crisis, but you don't want to
be relying on him in an emergency; what he carries in geldt he pays for in missing
'grey-matter' if you know what I mean.
He's a bit of a clicktivist, more
interested in his comm's gadgets than his guns; his father was Lord Hetherington
Fothergill Cholmondeley-Fahqquar-Popinjay (two 'Q's, no e, hyphens added to
inherit), the third Earth Emissary to Alpha Centuri, which explains everything!
[Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Lando
Calrisian (was later?), Blake's Seven?]
Grace
Sexy, spunky, space-babe, what's not to
like? And she's a better shot that Jeffrey!!
[Wilma Deering, Princess Leia, Blake's
Seven, Logans Run?]
Busso Bad Bot
That's all you need to know, isn't it? He's
not called Busso Bad Bot for nothing! He's as mean as his sheen and can use
that Mk.4 sonic-katana to carve an ice-swan or a butterfly from a watermelon in
2.6 seconds, but he'd rather carve something out of your head.
He's wanted on seventeen alien worlds,
forty-seven Terran-fed worlds, and sixty-two independent or non-aligned human
worlds, he's also being hunted by five of the six largest crime syndicates. His
rap-sheet has no empty tick-boxes and his last (empty when found) hideaway was
located in the outer mantle of a large star.
[Features of any number of bots, Shogun?]
Darth Gaylord Condominit
His suit of the finest pharmaceutical grade
Dildastatesman silicon, his hood
manufactured from hypo-allergenic synthetic latex with built-in gimp-mask, he's
armed with the very latest vaginator upgrade for his Penetrator Parabellum, which
is tooled in Venusian jade-crystal, he fights for Luurve against the haters of
Hate, the Walrus of War cums to save us from ourselves!
[Darth Vader, Blake's Seven?]
Grod from Krud
Unspeakably awful, but a very useful mercenary,
his diet is basically carrion, but he will fall back on other animal's
droppings if he gets really hungry and he's not fussy as to species,
consequently feeding an army of them is not much of a problem, cost wise,
indeed the more fighting's involved, the lower the messing-bill!
Which brings me to their motto; "Kill them all!" you won't be surprised
to hear this means they are quite easy to hire, at the lower end of the
budgetary-constraint scale, for jobs that are likely to include a lot of
killing, but they aren't the brightest buttons in the box, so no complicated
missions - they are best employed on slash & burn or full planetary-invasions.
However they do need to be barracked a long way from other buildings, preferably
- off-world . . . the smell, you see.
['V', Dr Who?]
Clonecorpsman
The galaxy's sonic-cannon fodder,
genetically engineered to do what they are told, you can send them as fast as
you can grow them until the job's done or you find something more interesting
to do elsewhere! Basic sonic-lance, basic body-armour with basic HUD, basic
breather-kit . . . very expendable - but they just don't mind!
[Dr Who?]
Chinpol Interplanetary Investigator
Once Trump had taken the US off the world
stage, and following the Sino-Russia war of '37, China became first the world's
policemen and then the Galaxy's main police force. These interplanetary
officers are fully trained (brain-jack immersion-learning) in sixteen martial
arts and are to be found throughout Terra's spiral arm, operating in the Galactic
core, providing support on most transit routes and the intermediaries or hubs,
as well as operating in small teams out on the rim, hunting down the Galaxy's
most wanted.
[THX1138, Dr Who?]
Scale comparator with the contemporary Britains-killer; they all match-up, if
the Airfix are all given the same
idiot-base the Britains figures have.
You can also - of course - take the idiot-bases off the Britains figures, but then they are left with very silly shoes! The
idea that the range may have contributed to the demise of Britains is no surprise really, when you think about it!
I will get a load more comparisons done in
the fullness of time; the beauty of sci-fi/fantasy is that anything can
technically go with anything else. While, less wacky or outrageous pairings can
be achieved between most other sets and - at least one of - the Airfix sculpts, given the spread of
subjects/genres covered by the seven sculpts.
Some old evilBay sales images of mine from
the Berkshire days I found and used for playing with the heat-map tool in
Picasa - 1970's psychedelia - groovy man!
A couple of the Airfix figures giving size to two Marx which I think are US issue/Reissue on the left and Swansea
production in metallic blue? Also one of the really rather daft figures from Cherilea!
The Remco
diver is from Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea movie tie-ins, the same figure was employed in the Lost in Space board game, without the package locating-spike, which
is how a diver gets here! The pink colossus is a Gort figure from Argentina, main character from the old Black White
movie - The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Two Bonux
premiums from France tower over the Airfix
figures, available in black or silver, there are some smaller other-coloured
copies somewhere-else in Europe, I think . . . I can't remember!
Cereal premium on the left, Klutz spaceman on the right, the NASA
type was issued with Weetabix 'Weetos'
in 1994 while the Klutz figure added
playability to an interactive card construction book/toy more recently.
Single-figure comparison between a late,
probably Poplar Plastic Products
polyethylene figure (ex-Thomas Toys
tooling) and the Airfix reveals a
slight smallness on the part of the later figures.
The Terran Federation's Security Service
worked closely with other agencies to keep the developed universe as safe as
possible (when organised crime could base itself on uncharted planets) and here
we see two agents on exchange/secondment going through one-to-one mentored refresher
training in urban CQB, at Spectrum's HQ
in leafy Surrey!
While a lot of sci-fi styling is 'of its
time' and can become quite dated, the Captain
Scarlet uniforms still manage a futuristic look - here from Timpo - years after they left the popular
stage, to join the nostalgia club! The gull-winged jerkin with side zip and
bi-coloured lumber-jack cap being still quite distinctive; not so sure about
the Mary Quant booties though!
Lik
Be (LB,
formally 'LP')'s spacemen/astronauts look a bit out of place next to the Airfix
figures, taller, less animated and slightly underfed, they are doing a good
impression of gawky kids on the dance-floor where the guys from Haldane Place
have popped an E, downed a few shots and let go! Wer-wer-wer-whyyyype'ouut!
Robo-friends and fem-bots; The
[possibly/probably] Hing Fat figures
of the believed 'BraveStarr' Galaxy Rangers robot 'Cowboys & Sheriffs'
(link to the home-blog post)
are a little small, but being robotic can be any size, a minor stretch of the
imagination and they can be quite-compatible!
Definitely Hing Fat on the right, generics on the left and surprisingly not as
small as I thought they'd be, nor that incompatible animation-wise (as I was
also expecting) when placed side-by-side with the Airfix, so really only
styling which keeps them in separate universes!
Torgano's figures are huge, but style-wise fit in quite well, albeit with a
slight two-dimensionality. These are I believe - the third version of this
Italian maker's figures which began with a polystyrene iteration glued to
separate bases, then an integrated base design (which may be someone-else's copies)
and finally; these heavier, softer polyethylene sculpts.
Also from Italy and produced around, what;
thirty years earlier (?) than the Airfix
release; Chromoplast's synthetic
PVC-rubber figures are quite similar (ignoring the leery paint-job)
fashion/style-wise, but thinner, taller and a bit two-dimensional.
I've posed two
pairs with similar features, 'hood, gloves & cloak' on the right, with - on
the left - several similarities from the Roman Gladiatorial'esque 'Thracian
helmet' and heavy collar, through to the bulgy-weapon with weird disc feature,
via the padded-underpants/leotard.
