#538 FUNRISE – MILITARY JET PLANES and GROUND VEHICLES (1988)

MONTH OF THE BOOTLEG AT TOYS FROM THE PAST!

Some companies started producing knock-offs of other toys and have become big companies with the time. In these cases, all companies hide this early history in their webpages and it is difficult to find information about it. The case of Funrise is one of them. Today, Funrise is a big toy company, but we know nothing about their origins.

No matter what, one of the first products by Funrise were a series of small plastic cars in the Micro Machines style. They were the most serious competitor to Galoob, from the dozens of manufacturers that started producing micro-vehicles. They had the largest number of vehicle casts, and even got cool licensed series, like one from the movies "Back to the Future".

The Funrise products were much cheaper than Galoob´s original MM, and so they tried to compete against the strong advertising campaigs from Galoob. Unfortunately, Funrise could not replicate the many different series with so distinctive feature by Micro Machines (like vehicles with lights, colour changing paint, battery operated...) which was also one of the anty-copy features from the "genuine" Micro Machines. Just one note... I think Funrise also has some changing colour vehicles, but I´m not sure about this.

As a kid, I got/bought a pack of military ground vehicles, that I am showing in this entry, and around 7-8 months, I got these two jet planes collections in a lot. At first sight, the military ground vehicles could perfectly be original Galoobs, they are beautifully done, with accurate details and decent paintwork.

The planes however seem to be a bit newer. They are also nice casts, but the paintwork is much worse. They all have a base colour (colour of the plastic), and just a few emblems are printed on them. The colours chosen (yellow, pink...) are not very realistic, so somehow I find the plane collections not so cool like the ground vehicles, or other collections that I have seen on the internet.

There seems to be a colour variation of these planes. I found the images below on eBay:

 

 

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: MILITARY JET PLANES and GROUND VEHICLES
• Scale of the cars: 1:150 aprox.
• Scale of the planes, trucks and tanks: Unknown
• Year: 1988
• Company: Funrise (U.S.A.)
• Size: approx. 2 cm