#1063 SCHMIDT SPIELE - MOTORWELT (8329) and SPEEDWAY (8338) (Around 1989)

These two sets were made by Schmid around 1989, although the interesting part is that one of them includes a title card with the Berliner Spielkarten logo. I don't know what was the relation between the two brands, I think the company Berliner Blatz Group is the owner of both brands, but I'd like to know more about the relation between both companies. 

The first deck is Motorwelt, and includes 32 cards with cars available at the end of the eighties. There are cars in all price categories, from a Renault 5 to a Lamborghini Countach.  The Spitzen-Trumpf (the most powerful card in the deck) is the Porsche 959, which wins all other cards in several categories.

The cover card indicates that there is a Battleships game on the back of the cards, which is something I do not quite understand. I have other sets with this game as well, but If you play this game, you´ll have to write on the back of the cards and, this way, spoil the deck. Or maybe this was intended, so children buy the next quartet game?

The second deck deals with motocross motorbikes. The most remarkable feature of this other deck, is that each card has a piece of information about the machines in the photographs or about the sports in which they are used. Honestly, I am impressed by some of these racing events, like the speed race in snow or the others with sidecar. It must be very impressive to have seen that live. I am not sure if these competitions are still hold or not. Unfortunately, there technical information on each card refers to the motorbike, not to the pilots/drivers, which would have been very interesting too.

Again, the Spitzen Trumpf is a BMW motorbike with Sidecar. Germans are, of course, favouring their own brands against foreign ones. 

FACTS AND FIGURES

• Name: MOTORWELT (8329) and SPEEDWAY (8338)
• Year: Around 1989
• Company: Berliner or Schmidt Spiele (Germany)

#1062 HOOK - SWASHBUCKLING PAN and LOST BOY RUFIO (1991)

Slowly and with great difficulty, I managed to get and complete further figures of the Hook toyline. It is a minor toyline that includes many accessories and small pieces that are very hard to find. Maybe not very expensive but scarce. And with the current shipping costs it “hurts” to pay to get them. I have to wait for certain opportunities and/or combined shipping which only happen rarely.

I'll start with Rufio. This character is one of the lost boys and also one of the coolest figures on the first wave, because it came with a windsurf-skateboard minivehicle, whose sail part can also be used as a delta-wing or something similar. This accesory looks great and is a lot of fun to play with it.

That sail part has a sticker on it which is sometimes damaged. The figurecan be attached to the board by means of pegs that fit in its feet and stays firmly on it, so you can play jumps and other stunts. The figure itself is mostly black, but has nice paintwork details in red.

 

I bought this figure in its blister, but the packaging was in very bad shape. Later I got another figure, complete, in good shape and with its original cardboard, so I decided to resell the blister and keep only the loose figure. This was the blister.

The second figure today and the second figure of Peter Pan that I show in this blog is also quite cool. It carries a green and black outfit, which is not it´s most iconic one, but still looks nice, and includes a sword that the figure handles and sweeps in the air as you twist the body of the figure. That is its action feature. It also includes a scabbard for it (not practicable, it is just a piece of plastic) and a small knife. The accesories were attached to a plastic frame or sprue, although, this one is nicely done and resembles wood. I guess some imaginative children found an use for it after removing the accesories.

  

Both figures belong to the first wave from 1991, which is the only one still affordable and broadly available in second hand markets. Have presented other figures in the past, but I still have more to show. See you next time!

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: SWASHBUCKLING PAN and RUFIO (LOST BOY) (Ref. 2849 & 2818)
• Toy Line: Hook (Wave 1)
• Year: 1991
• Company: Mattel (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: Around 12 cm

#1061 FIGURAS EN ACCIÓN (F.E.A.) Nr. 31 + OTHER PUBLICATIONS

 

Back to work after Christmas? Maybe some entertainment will make you good. Try downloading the latest issue of Figuras En Acción, and read it. In these pages you will find interesting and well documented articles about Exin toys, Sgt. Savage and the Screaming Eagles (by Hasbro), The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers (by Galoob), promotional die-cast and plastic vehicles from Spain.

After some issues without, we interviewed Pablo García del Río, author of the published book: "Masters del Universo. Guía visual de la película", which you may want to buy if you are a Cannon Films or Masters of the Universe fan, or if you simply loved the movie from 1987. The book depicts a huge collection of merchandising and memorabilia from that movie, something worth having and reviewing every now and then.

There are also a series of smaller sections, as usual, with a huge variety of topics. The magazine ist a gift to all fellow collectors and toy or action figures enthusiasts throughout the world.

Find it HERE.

Among other publications, I have read, there are these two catalogues I received for Ferrero Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs. They are much newer than the ones I had until now, and also much thicker, they include more details and more comprehensive lists and foto collections. Still, they do not cover all Kinder Surprise toys, because there are further books to be bought. The one on the left is only for plastic figures, while the one on the right side is only an addendum to the 6. Edition.

#1060 PINMARK - VOLVO 760 (Nr. 001) (Around 1985)

This is another extreme die-cast rarity made by the company Pinmark in Poland. I found it in a flea market in Austria and I have seen it also on the Internet, although there seems to be only a few units remaining worldwide. 

I have seen pictures of this model in red or pink "Straz", green "Police" or white "Red Cross", but all of them with holes in the roof for a couple of sirens. This other toy that I have does not present the holes and comes with two stickers (one on the roof, another one in the bonnet) which are a racing number (RN34) and Pirelli logos, a bit in the style of rally cars. It is the only one of its kind that I have seen so far. The packaging (an important source of information) is unknown so far, so I cannot provide any remarks about Pinmark, the company that made them. The car is marked with number 001 in the base. Were there other models available? Was the numbering system (001 to, hypothetically, 999) a bit too ambitious?

The paintwork seems to be of very low quality, all cars I saw on the internet (except one) are playworn, and the interior is hidden by dark green windows. At the same time, the opening trunk is a sign of quality and the metallic base gives it some weight, which makes it looks like a more qualitative product in your hands. It is also noteworth that the base is painted black, when it would have been cheaper to leave it unpainted.

When it was new, I guess it looked great. We have to consider that, when it was made, Poland was still under a communist regime with limited access to foreign goods and raw materials, everything was done inland for the national market, which was closed to every other foreign toymaker, except maybe those of other socialist regimes. 

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: VOLVO 760 (Nr. 001)
• Scale: 1:64
• Year: Around 1985
• Company: Pinmark (Poland)
• Size: approx. 7 cm

#1059 RONSON - RONSON REPEATER (Around 1922)

Ronson is, in principle, not a toy manufacturing company. They are world-wide known for making cigarette lighters, being one of the most important manufacturers by quality and market share.

My father collects gasoline lighters and he bought this one by mistake, thinking it was actually a lighter, but it is not. It is a toy gun that works with the same powderstrip that some kind of lighters also use. It produces a red flash and a soft sound and it seems to be the predecessor of the guns I knew as a kid which worked with plastic powder caps, and which action figure collectors may know from Thunder Punch He-Man from the masters of the Universe.

It is a very old gun, I have seen marked it in professional auction sites as mid-30s, but I have also found newspapers adds from 1922 or 1926, highlighting that it is completely harmless. The price in 1922 was 25 cents of a dollar, and you could get 1.000 shots for 1 more cent. For some reason, this product (and other similar ones) were broadly advertised on the newspapers, a simple internet search revealed dozens of pages like the following.

I can imagine, it was a great success at the time (the advertising says, they sold 100,000 a week before they started a national advertising campaign for it), there must be millions of them still around that have survived until today. So, it is not a complete rarity, but it is still around 100 years old. This makes it one of the two oldest toys presented in this blog so far. Despite the age, they are not expensive to find today.

Back to the product, the gun is completely made of metal and painted/lacked in black. The metal casting increases the detail level and it is also used to mark it as a Ronson product. My gun is still in a good shape, although the paint has been scratched (and is now partially lost) when playing with it. At the time there were no restrictions on toy guns, and, for example, the tip of it did not have to be painted red, so it really looks like a real gun. Other models I have seen in the Internet are in better shape.

 The body of the gun is marked with patent indications, as you can see in the next picture.

 

I didn´t have the chance so far to test it with the appropriate powder caps, as they are very rare nowadays, but it fits well in my hand. For adults, it looks like one of those lady guns that often appear in detective movies from the 1950s or before, which were much smaller than the male models.

This was one of the original boxes in which it was sold (picture taken from invaluable.com)

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: RONSON REPEATER
• Year: Around 1922
• Company: Ronson / The Art Metal Works (U.S.A.)
• Size: Around 14 cm

#1058 MOTU NA – ARTILLA/WEAPONSTRONIC and STAGHORN (Ref. 1639 and 5804) (1991)

It is a long long time since I talked about this line for the last time, so it is now time to take out some of these figures and take nice pictures of them. We have selected this time Artilla and Staghorn, two characters from the third wave of the toyline, still easy to find, and not especially expensive, although rarer than other figures from wave 1 and 2. If you are looking for them carded, then, they may be worth a lot of money.

Artilla / Weaponstronic (Ref. 1639):

I put these two together because they are kind of difficutl to play with. Artilla has a strange position of the legs, and a lot of weight on the upper part of the body, so if the figure has been played with and the legs are a bit loose, it is very difficult to pose in a given position. Also the position of the arms is not the best choice. 

On the positive side, the figure came without accessories, or, said in another way, integrated on the body or head. The action feature is cool, no complaints about that. The missile on the left hand is not detachable, it is more like a ram that only goes a few centimeters out of the fist. The weapon on the right hand is only hidden below and has to be turned to the front, and, finally, the head rams to the front, but, again, only 1 centimeter more or less. The character is also quite cool, as a robotic master of weapons and technical helper (maybe a mechanic) of He-Man´s team.

Staghorn (Ref. 5804):

Staghorn is also less poseable than the average figure, as his legs are bent on the knees and also the arms are bent on the elbows. If he is wearing his mask, then in is even less poseable, as it interferes and crashes with his arms or the axe accessory. I do not quite follow what is the intention behind that action feature. According to the backcard, the spikes of the accessory are intended for hand to hand/close range fights, both for attack or defence. Maybe the intention, if I interprete the text on the packaging correctly, was that the mechanism could lift an enemy figure and throw it into the air.

In this case, the design is also OK, Staghorn could be some kind of ogre, as there were many in the original He-Man cartoon series or comic books, only with a futuristic twist, as everything in this toyline has.

So, not the best designs, but they look nice in the shelves with the rest of the team.

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: ARTILLA/WEAPONSTRONIC and STAGHORN (Ref. 1639 and 5804)
• Toy Line: He-Man (also New Adventures of He-Man) (Wave 3)
• Year: 1991
• Company: Mattel (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 14 cm