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?
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The upper photograph is not to 'show off', but rather to indicate to those who would argue the toss from a position of ignorance from the forum pages of the Wibbly Wobbly Way that actually I do approach the subject from a position of being 99% sure about that which I feel qualified to comment on!
Both sides of the standard 'Blue' box with artwork by Brian Knight, the original sketch of which can be seen on page 5 of One-inch Warrior magazine; volume 9.
Comparison shots of other makes Colonial Period Arab warriors. The Marx/Marksmen/Ri-Toys Arab is far too big, but both the Esci 'Arabs Warriors' and the Kinder figures fit in very nicely, indeed I'd argue the Kinder camels are superior, particularly the large plate-feet for negotiating sand. The little orange one is part of a Kinder Toy
The Montaplex take on the war in the Western Desert...a handful of mounted figures and a scout in Aladdin slippers have managed to torch a fort! Brilliant!
Montaplex were beaten to the act of piracy by those naughty boys at 'Empire Made'! and here we see two different sets and some loose figures from the second (right hand) source.The main identifiers between Montaplex and these are the mounting spigots on the camels and the holes (which run right through) on the horse's flanks. Both sets are dated 1968 by James Opie.
A small collection of conversions I've picked up over the years, or - in the case of the half-painted sand ones - produced myself, mostly just adding pin-swords and pin-spears, plus the odd shield from a thumb-tack/drawing pin.One artist has crudely converted robes into loose trousers, while the shield design on another betrays his recruitment to a Greek or Ptolemaic army.
The final incarnation of the Montaplex moulding (to date!) is this set by BuM, with four runners; two each - Arabs and French Foreign Legion.11.jpg)
Better images of the box above, I could have deleted/replaced it with these, but at the risk of repeating myself; scrapbook nature of this blog! One of the busier rear-panels with all six mounted figures illustrated?
An all-green sample of the Hong Kong ones seen above, single colour could be Petrel, or the generics in the little boxes, so no real clue there, and they will be sorted into whichever of the two or three types (now) they most closely match. And thanks (2023) to Chris Smith for these, I think? He has been sending all sorts of odds to the Blog since these pages were last updated, and I bet these were in one of his donation lots?
