#1084 FIGURAS EN ACCIÓN (F.E.A.) Nr. 33 + RACK TOYS. CHEAP CRAZED PLAYTHINGS

Another year comes to its end and the newest issue of Figuras en Acción is out for everybody to enjoy it. This time, the articles deal mainly with toys from the 70s, with some bits of 80s and 90s toys as well.

The cover article deals with the figures of Hercules The Legendary Journeys by ToyBiz. In it, we  review all released figures including variants plus some other related toys. This article is followed by a shorter one dealing with the 80s bootleg crossover between Masters of the Universe and the Ninja Turtles called Amicable Herculeans.

Spanish Toys are also present this time with an extensive article on the history of Juguetes Rico and his most iconic toy: the Mini-Sanson truck, which is based on the Tiny Tonkas made by Tonka. But was it licensed or a mere knock-off? We discuss this issue as well.

The following article is another superextensive one dealing with the egg-shaped children figures Weebles, with a focus on the Spanish Weebles (made by Brekar), but commenting as well those from Hasbro, Airfix.

Finally, we analyse the Transtech concept of Transformers, what should have been in the early 2000s but it finally wasn´t. 

There are lots of other smaller pieces and sections that you will also enjoy. And remember that the magazine can be downloaded for free, as usual, as all the previous issues in our blog.

figurasenaccion.blogspot.com

Rack Toys is a book published by the Plaidstallions website and the Nacelle Company. The object of the book are cheap rack toys from the 70s and early 80s, and most pictures come from the collection of Brian Heiler, whose father used to be toy merchant at that time and made business distributing this particular type of toys.

The book is divided in several chapters, such as superheroes, monsters, TV shows... but the toys shown are so different from each other, that it is a pleasure to pass the pages and let you surprise for whatever comes next. Most of the brands that made these toys were unknown to me, I had only heard about Imperial, AHI, Lincoln or Fleetwood Toys before, and not much about each of them. 

The book has almost no text (just the introduction by Brian Heiler and a prologue), and the toys are commented in short captions. This is not very annoying, as the pictures are descriptive enough and there is not much to say about them, but there is something I disliked about the book, and it is that they only focus on very popular themes, leaving out everything else: for example cars and vehicles of any kind (except Batmobiles and co.), starships that do not belong any TV series or dinosaurs. I guess they just wanted to attract the broadest group of toy collectors and chose the most mainstream topics, probably also leaving many other pictures for a second publication.

#1052 MINILAND – ACTION´S MEN (Around 1990)

This is another summary of an article that appeared first on the magazine Figuras en Acción, around 3 years ago. Miniland is a Spanish brand famous for their plastic figures, but which was also involved in other types of toys, such as action figures. Today they are still active and focusing on very high quality pre-school toys and dolls. Some of them very interesting and unique.

What I´d like to present today is their toyline Action´s Men, a rare knock-off of G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero using a cast which is reminiscent the Star Wars figures by Kenner in the 70s and the 80s. I bought this panel several years ago and I like the figures very much. I had some loose ones before buying this, so I didn´t miss the opportunity when I saw this exclusive article in auction.

The collection made by Miniland is actually a bootleg of another toyline from Hong-Kong called Military One by a company called Porto Play, rather unknown even to the specialists in the field of military action figures. From the big asssortment of figures made by Porto Play, only five were made by Miniland: the pilot, the soldier with a Beret, the parachutist, the soldier with sailor bonnet and the infantry soldier (with helmet). The plastic is a bit too soft, and the figures are not great to play with. The movement of arms and legs is difficult to place in the position you want. After some time without use, they stuck and it takes some minutes to make them articulated again.

Still, they are very rare and are slowly becoming better known worldwide. There are rarely available for sale and they reach high prices. I guess some foreign collectors of G.I. Joe and similar toylines have discovered Action´s Men and grabbed everything left on the Spanish auction sites. They were also available in single packs and gift packs with 4 figures plus some accessory. If you like G.I.Joe and the bootlegs made of them, take a look at the original article on the magazine. Search for the download link here: https://figurasenaccion.blogspot.com/2022/05/revista-numero-26-mayo-2022.html

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: Five different casts with different colours (all unnamed)
• Toy Line: Action´s Men
• Year: Around 1990
• Company: Miniland (Spain)
• Size of the figures: Approx. 9 cm tall

#1020 GUISVAL - CENTURION MK.III TANK + KNOCK-OFF (1977 and Around 1993)

MONTH OF THE BOOTLEG AT TOYS FROM THE PAST

Today I want to show two small toy tanks.

The first one is made by Guisval and is a Centurion MK.III model, which appeared for the first time in the catalogue from 1977. There were several versions of it made those first years: in green (with british or Spanish roundels on one side), in light brown (with Spanish roundels) on and also in light brown with dark brown stripes (with a green flag and a crescent moon, which, to my knowledge, does not represent any real country).

Later reissues would also use new decals, like a British flag, and the last known issue is a completely white version from the United Nations, which I find quite original and I would like to own.

All of them have turning turret and the cannon moves up and down.

The second toy tank shown in the pictures is a low quality knock-off of the Guisval model made by an unknown company much later. The model is unmarked, except for “No. 462”, and it is almost identical to the Guisval model. The cannon is slightly longer, the plastic base and wheels and different). The metal and paintwork used are of lower quality, the paint scheme shows a green/yellow camouflage pattern and the stickers on the side say "U.S. Army".

Does anybody know about it? In any case, it is a very curious one, although the quality is very low.

 FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: CENTURION MK.III and KNOCK-OFF
  
• Scale: Approx. 1:100
• Year: 1977 and Around 1993 (respectively)
  
• Company: Guisval and Unknown Toymaker (Spain and China)
• Size: approx. 7 cm

#1008 SOHBI – VARIOUS MODELS (Around 1995)

 

I already wrote about Sohbi a long time ago, you can review this entry, if you are interested in reading a bit about the company or you want to see a nice Lancia Stratos or Two versions of a Volkswagen Golf.

Around three years ago I found a small lot of 6 Sohbi cars in a flea market, and I got Them all. These are the models I am presenting today. All of them are based on casts from MC Toy, Zylmex or Matchbox. Some of them have interesting decorations, although due to the low quality of the tampographies, these are partially lost.

E-18 - Ferrari Testarossa (MC Toy)

E-19 - Porsche 959 (MC Toy)

 

 

E-20 - Peugeot 205 (MC Toy)

E-21 - Mercedes-Benz 300 SE (Zylmex)

E-24 - Jaguar E-Type (Zylmex)

 

 

E-28 - Lotus Europa (Matchbox)

 

 

I also tried to elaborate a list of Sohbi models together with their reference numbers, using as a base the list in Swifty’s Garage and inserting one or two references from my own models.

• E-16 - Lancia Stratos (Zylmex?)
• E-17 - Volkswagen Golf (MC Toy)
• E-18 - Ferrari Testarossa (MC Toy)
• E-19 - Porsche 959 (MC Toy)
• E-20 - Peugeot 205 (MC Toy)
• E-21 - Mercedes-Benz 300 SE (Zylmex)
• E-22 -
• E-23 -
• E-24 - Jaguar E-Type (Zylmex)
• E-25 - DeTomaso Mangusta (Corgi Juniors?)
• E-26 -
• E-27 - Porsche 906 Carrera 6 (Corgi Juniors)
• E-28 - Lotus Europa (Matchbox)
  

• Citroen DS
• 11 - Ford Econoline
• 12 - Jeep CJ-6
• Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL
• Lamborghini Countach LP5000
• 32 - Porsche 911 Carrera
• 35 - Mercedes-Benz 500 SL

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: FERRARI TESTAROSSA, PORSCHE 959, PEUGEOT 205, MERCDES-BENZ 300 SE, JAGUAR E-TYPE and LOTUS EUROPA (D-E18, D-E19, D-E20, D-E21, D-E24 and D-E28)
• Scale: 1:64 (approx.)
• Year: Approx. 1995
• Company: Sohbi (Hong-Kong/ China)
• Size: approx. 3’’ or 7 cm

#972 METALCAR - RONY ROBOT (Around 1986)

APRIL IS THE MONTH OF THE BOOTLEGS and KNOCK-OFFs!

Some years ago, I published an unknown toy car that some reader helped me identify as a Metalcar from Hungary. Since then, I have as a task to write an entry about this company. 

Unfortunately, there is nothing I could find about this maker from Hungary, maybe there are some information sources in Hungarian in the net, but I didn´t found them, so I cannot talk about the company at all.

What I could find are many products made by Metalcar, where most of them are Matchbox knock-offs. This ambulance robot is much rarer, as it was more expensive to produce due to its great number of parts and difficult assembly.

The model may be familiar to many of you, as it is a knock-off of a Go-Bot called Rest-Q, released by Tonka/Bandai in 1983. It was probably made around 1985 or 1986 and it is an ultra rare figure. It was probably made in very low numbers, and its construction is not very sturdy. You can see that the paintwork is not very good, and some parts are scratched or missing its stickers.

It was sold originally in a blister pack, either with the Metal Car brand and the name Rony Robot, or in a generic blister card with the name “Transformer”. In the pictures I could find (in the-liberator.net), the blister “Rony Robot” shows a figure with red body, while the Transformer blister has a robot with blue body. Maybe they were packaged randomly, or there could have been even more colours available. The figure is completely unmarked.

Blister packs taken from www.the-liberator.net

 As a knock-off, the figure is the same size, construction and even the materials are similar. There are only subtle differences among them. The most significant is the wheels, which in this knock-off case, are made of only one piece. The original Go-Bot wheels had plastic hubcaps and gum tyres.

The cast and the stickers are also copied, but they are not identical. In the blister pictures, we can see that the stickers came unapplied.

Other differences are: red windshield, no chromed parts, body in red or blue instead of White, simplified head part.

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: RONY ROBOT (GO-BOTs REST-Q Knock-off)
• Toy Line: None?
• Year: Around 1986
• Company: Metalcar (Hungary)
• Size of the figures: Around 7 cm (between  2’’ and 3’’) in robot mode

#948 SPEED WHEELS - HINO DUMP TRUCK and NISSAN FAIRLADY Z (TOMICA KO's) (Around 1990)

I got these two cars recently. Normally I am not interested in the die-cast models when I cannot recognise the brand. In this case, I recognised them as Tomica knock-offs and they were in their original blister cards, so I decided to buy them. 1 euro each blister.

Can you recognise which models they are?
The car is a Nissan Fairlady Z, like the one in entry #548.

 The truck is a Hino Dump Truck, although the plastic part is different from the original Tomica one.

This kind of die-cast models are usually unmarked in the base (just "made in China"), so it is difficult to match model with toymaker. With the blister, obviously, I can say it is Speed Wheels. At the cardback there are several models depicted, one of each kind: sport cars, formula racing cars, pick-up trucks, tractor racers and more. I do not know how many of each type were made, but both blisters have the text "SERIES IV" in the front. I don't know either how many series were made, but on Google you can easily find pictures of series V (some Yatming KO's there), series III (look like Matchbox's Super G.T.s), series X (look quite modern and better done than the previous series, some look like Maisto other like Hot Wheels KOs), series XIII, and more.

The upper part of the blister is cutted off because originally it had the price tag on it. It costed 0,69 US$ per unit or 1 US$ if you took two. As I could see on Google, some blisters have this part also cut off.

I have noticed models that were available in two different series, I guess the card was redone everytime they wanted to change the retail price, but most of the times the assortment just remained as it was.

Interestingly, the one who seems to be the earliest blister pack of "Speed Wheels" on Google (does not show any series number) has the Faie brand printed on the card, so does this series relate anyhow to Faie? I think it is more probable that behind Speed Wheels hides a company that bought stock rests or maybe obsolete machinery to get/make very cheap models, so maybe they started buying from Faie, then from Yatming, then from Welly, Maisto... It could even be that the brand is still in use.

Interestingly, the distributor is a company from Illinois, U.S.A.

Other Speed Wheels came in plastic bags, in this case, each model was 0.39 US$ or 1 US$ for three cars. These cheaper models look like Summer's withouh windows.

And for the TFTP record, some unknown models from past entries seem to be Speed Wheels too! The mobile crane in entry #766 has also been seen inside one of these blister packages!

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: HINO DUMP TRUCK and NISSAN FAIRLADY Z (TOMICA KO's)
• Scale: Around 1:61 and 1:100
• Year: Around  1990
• Company: Speed Wheels (U.S.A.) / Unknown Manufacturer, maybe Welly? (China)
• Size: approx. 7 cm

#947 POWER COMMANDOS - FIGURES FROM WAVE 1 (1992)

I have known this series for a long time because it is one of the most thoroughly reviewed in the "bootleg" list of yojoe.com. I considered I knew a lot about Hasbro´s G.I.Joe: ARAH bootlegs, but I had not seen these anywhere else.

In ten years I only saw them very few times on eBay, and I got to buy two of them loose without accesories.

Fortunately, around three years ago, many lots of blister packs were sold by a Mexican seller, and I got a complete set for a relatively small amount of money. I didn´t ask him, but it looks like he found old stock somewhere and put all that for sale, either the figures in blister packs or loose (probably because some cards were too damaged for collectors). I recall that the description also stated that some blisters might present damage of some kind, so receiving the blister cards in perfect shape was a nice surprise.

Information about Lucky Bell and the Mexican importer

Copyright Notice

The Power Commandos by Lucky Bell are interesting for a series of reasons. One reason is that some body parts are very similar to others from original G.I.Joe and Cobra characters (for example some arms are just like 1986´s Vipers). Another one is that some characters vaguely remind of other from the Hasbro´s toyline, although the heads are all new, original sculpts, and third, because the weapons are quite imaginative and some are also bootlegged from Hasbro.

Other positive points for the line is the quality and durability of the figures and also the nice packaging art, also inspired by Hasbro. I like that some details of the figures are painted gold and also that the accesories come in different colours, but I dislike the colour combinations of these first 6 figures, all trousers are either light brown or blue, all torsos are either blue or red and the details are also blue, red or green, so all six figures look somewhat similar to each other.

This small flaw continued in a second series of figures, which are much rarer, but was corrected in the third wave which is ultra-rare and from which only a few pics have been seen so far. We will come to this later.

Another flaw is that in six figures we find only three different models of each body part: three torsos, three waists, three legs and three arms, all doubled, but six different heads, some of them very cool! This is not rare in G.I.Joe bootlegs, see for example The Corps or Kaido.

The character´s names are quite good, as we will see next, and they came with a filecard each with some bio-facts. Unfortunately they are written in poor English and the texts are rather simple and plain, not to mention the tag "Those guys from another galaxy", that actually reminds more of Masters of the Universe than G.I.Joe. The birthplaces of each character is not a real one (for example: "South of Arenia")

The figures were sold in couples, being one of the characters always a Power hero and the second one an evil villain. Note that the file cards have different colours and one is marked "Power" while the other is marked "Terror". Since these words are placed below the picture (that's where the affiliation of  G.I.Joe characters was indicated in the filecard), I would suggest the the good guys are the Power Commandos, and they fight an evil corporation or entity called Terror. Why not?

There were three blisters available:

1. Condor Strike
2. Red Raven

3. X-Ray Eye
4. Submarine

5. Mummy Mask
6. Metal Hawk

The blisters originally had its own artwork depicting both characters in action.

BLISTER 1: CONDOR STRIKE + RED RAVEN

BLISTER 2: X-RAY EYE + SUBMARINE

BLISTER 3: MUMMY MASK + METAL HAWK

Wave two figures are similar in colours but are made out of different parts/new sculpts, also inspired by G.I.Joe. The blister back showed all 12 figures in action, but the rest of the package is very similar. Of course the artwork was new and represented the new characters.

Wave 3 figures were sold individually and the package had brighter colours, maybe following the trend started by the G.I.Joes from 1992, 1993 and 1994. The text Power Commandos is written in yellow, the card frame is bright pink and the figures themselves are mostly pink, bright green and purple... this time the artwork is recycled from series 2 and the figures are also made out of parts already used in waves 1 and 2. Maybe I get these figures someday so I can take pictures and show them here.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: CONDOR STRIKE, RED RAVEN, X-RAY EYE, SUBMARINE, MUMMY MASK and METAL HAWK
• Toy Line: Power Commandos (Wave 1)
• Year: 1992
• Company: Lucky Bell (Hong-Kong)
• Size of the figures: Around 9.5 cm