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)

1970-71; [Wild West/Media Related] High Chaparral (Cowboys+), S38 / 01738 / 01738-1 - HO/OO

We'll start this one with a useful link...The High Chaparral Fan Site which should help those who may have missed the original TV series. Or even those who didn't; I was a young fan, but at that age I was only really interested in that day's plot-line, not the back story, with the result I've learnt today that Manolito was Victoria's brother and Buck was John's brother...I'd always thought Buck was the eldest, Blue-boy the middle and Manolito the youngest half-brother of three siblings!!!!

The twin-figure vignette of John Cannon and Victoria Montoya, showing all three colours this set was issued in - the same colours as the cowboys, with the dark 'plain chocolate' brown arriving while they were still useing it for the Cowboy set this TV tie-in is based on. Then we get the mid-brown that represented Airfix's first attempt at reducing the number of plastic colours they were useing; a move shared by the later issues of ACW Artillery, the Indians, Wagon Train, Ancient Britons and RHA already being in the same red-oxide colour along with  the Naploleonic Accessory Set later issued in the large Waterloo 'Assault Set'.

Always a great disappointment when you realised this was just the cowboy set with a few new figures, especially as the new figures - while much better sculpts - didn't really 'go' with the Nibblet designs of the older set.

Three mint boxes of black-ended blue boxes, showing that the latter colour made it to these boxes and the latter plain-ended boxes probably only had cream figures in, the cream being the least common colour encountered with this set, and cowboys falling out of favour as the mid-70's gave way to Star Wars, Pong and Micronaughts!

On the left is a complete set of the High Chaparral, with the difference found in the cowboy set to the right, Airfix clearly considered the vignette of John and his wife to be 'two' figures for the purpose of like for like replacement, vis-a-vis mould cavities!

Paul Morehead in issue 7 of One Inch Warrior magazine pointed out that the figure of Manolito seemed to have been designed to ride a horse before ending up on a base, not something I'd ever noticed, however I had a damaged figure so took the base away and tried him.

He's far too big...but does seem to have been designed with that (being mounted) in mind, I guess once they'd decided to use the existing set and keep the horses while going with a new sculptor (Ron Cameron?) there was a miss-match in style or scale (which could equally be a pantograph error?) so a base was added and all six of the old riders survived the sprue/frame re-suffle!

A bunch of OBE's (Other Bugger's Efforts), I had in the past cleaned all the scrappy Cowboys and High Chaparral (I keep them all in one box with the High Chaparral characters in a separate self-seal bag) for set making, so these are mostly from one sample, although it is an old one and you can recognise the Airfix vermilion (was it M1 or M12?) straight-off!

The 1975 catalogue image with the 'blurb' inset, scans courtesy of Kostas, a follower from Greece, this was sharing a page with the original Cowboys set, one of Airfix's bigger rip-offs was running two almost identical sets side-by-side...their 'biggest' is probably continuing to sell the German Armoured Car with the idiot mudguards!

Buck is on foot to the left, Manolito on the rearing horse in the background and John Cannon shouting some gruff stuff in the foreground., to out-of-frame cow-hands or 'Injuns'!

Copies - Baravelli (Italy) above and Montaplex/Hobbyplast (Spain) below. In the style of Hong Kong, these are both pretty crude, with the Spanish figures particularly poor and 'underfed'! The envelope on the left having one 'set' of figures and a wagon, the one on the right, two sets of figures and no accessories, all in an insipid semi-transparent flesh colour.

Close-up of the character figures, less John and Victoria who are at the top of the post. It's a pity they didn't re-do the whole set again, as these are really nicely sculpted figures. Across the top I think they are; Buck to the left, Manolito and Blue Boy on the right...or is it young Blue on the left with a rifle and Uncle Buck with a firm grip on his whiskey?

The Marx figures for comparison, in this case via Rado (Ri-Toys) and from Marksmen. They are not that bad next to the character figures, but dwarf the rest of the contents, as you will see on the Cowboys post.

Unused box-art which appeared in the catalogue to herald the issue of this set, clearly a stock photograph used by the art department to get the catalogue out on time, it contains no hint to the contents and none of the recognisable characters from the TV series!

A useful accessory for this set was the Fort Apache, originally available as a soft polyethylene model, by the time the High Chaparral was on sale it had been redesigned in hard polystyrene, a few millimetres larger! Although I'm not sure if this type of fort was built in the arid prairie region where the show was set? Note how the artwork on the box is reversed.