Post by dinonikes on Nov 6, 2009 5:22:25 GMT
I was a big collector of any plastic or tin toys and figures that I ran across at the local fleamarkets or garage sales or rummage sales , etc. etc. that I was goingto atthe time when looking for materials to use in my art I was doing att he time. I collected quite a stash of stuff back around '86 thru '90
I thought i would share some ofthe stuff i had back then, not necessarily prehistoric, but I am hoping that any of you that are really not familiar with these great little sculptures put out from the 50's to the 70's by such companies as Marx, MPC, Ideal, Auburn Rubber, will appreciate them as great sculptures-great toys-these were all from my collection- sold off years ago- luckily I took some photos of these pieces- forgivethe quality of these-they were taken in the late 80's early 90's and are scanned in-
It is interesting the level of quality that Marx used for his non prehistoric stuff- probably due to the fact that most boys that would be buying these types of plastic playsets and bagged figures were the types that would have probably rather have had soldiers, Cowboys and Indians,spacemen etc. - I imagine that Louis Marx focused on these markets as the priority-if Marx had set the same standard to his prehistoric line as he did with his Western line, the dinosaurs he would have made could have been very nice (although still with retro science from the day).
I thought I would start off with some of the Civil War/Western stuff-
First up is a rare find that my brother and I came across in a mail order auction- it was a Marx playset box-from the playset called 'Indian Warfare'- it wasn't a complete set, just a jumble of different partial sets of the western variety-we could see from the black and white photo printed in the auction catalog that there was a run of 'Blue Confederates' which were made for the elusively rare Custer's Last Stand Set- Marx used the molds from the Civil War Blue and Grey Set for the cavalry for thisCuster playset, and so there were blue plastic versions of the usually grey confederate figures to fill out the cavalry ranks-these were pretty rare figures which at the time you would pay top dollar for mint copies-
We gotthe box and found that it contained a partial Custer set along with a partial Wyatt Earp set with stagecoach and the Earp character figure-
here is the Custer Set- it has blue versions of the medicine wagon, and the covered wagon- the accessories for the medicine wagon are also blue- there is a run of first mold confederates in blue pastic (including the confederate flag bearer and shot confederate)-the Indian accessories are cast in red plastic - these colors are all exclusive to the Custer Set I believe-withthis partial set we also got the paper instruction sheet for the Custer set, which was the first that collectors in our circuit had ever seen before- we ended up selling this Custer partial set to Kurt Fredericks, the brother of the Prehistoric Times Fredericks-this photo was featured in an article aboutthe Custe set in Plastic Figure and Playset Collector magazine (a now defunct I believe publication)
This was my display of Civil War figuresand accessoriesmostly marx figures- - displayed in a diorama type display in my bookshelf unit- it features a few rarities like Blue confederates, metallic blue union soldiers, 60mm figures both union and confederates, blue medicine wagon from the Custer set- Andy Gard figures, Ideal figures-
Marx plysets always had great graphics on the cover and sides of the playset box- here is the box cover for the Rin Tin Tin Fort Apache playset- it was just a basic Fort Apache set witha new box and three added character figures from the current hit TV show ( back in the fifties)
This set was a set of the large scale marx Pioneers and Indiansalong with a large scale covered wagon with cloth cover and two incredibly sculpted horses for the wagon-
Here is the box from the Indian Warfare playset- this was the box that the Custer set was found in-
Here is the box cover art for one ofthe smaller earlier versions ofthe Roy Roger's ranch- this set had the rarer version of the tin cabin-
I thought i would share some ofthe stuff i had back then, not necessarily prehistoric, but I am hoping that any of you that are really not familiar with these great little sculptures put out from the 50's to the 70's by such companies as Marx, MPC, Ideal, Auburn Rubber, will appreciate them as great sculptures-great toys-these were all from my collection- sold off years ago- luckily I took some photos of these pieces- forgivethe quality of these-they were taken in the late 80's early 90's and are scanned in-
It is interesting the level of quality that Marx used for his non prehistoric stuff- probably due to the fact that most boys that would be buying these types of plastic playsets and bagged figures were the types that would have probably rather have had soldiers, Cowboys and Indians,spacemen etc. - I imagine that Louis Marx focused on these markets as the priority-if Marx had set the same standard to his prehistoric line as he did with his Western line, the dinosaurs he would have made could have been very nice (although still with retro science from the day).
I thought I would start off with some of the Civil War/Western stuff-
First up is a rare find that my brother and I came across in a mail order auction- it was a Marx playset box-from the playset called 'Indian Warfare'- it wasn't a complete set, just a jumble of different partial sets of the western variety-we could see from the black and white photo printed in the auction catalog that there was a run of 'Blue Confederates' which were made for the elusively rare Custer's Last Stand Set- Marx used the molds from the Civil War Blue and Grey Set for the cavalry for thisCuster playset, and so there were blue plastic versions of the usually grey confederate figures to fill out the cavalry ranks-these were pretty rare figures which at the time you would pay top dollar for mint copies-
We gotthe box and found that it contained a partial Custer set along with a partial Wyatt Earp set with stagecoach and the Earp character figure-
here is the Custer Set- it has blue versions of the medicine wagon, and the covered wagon- the accessories for the medicine wagon are also blue- there is a run of first mold confederates in blue pastic (including the confederate flag bearer and shot confederate)-the Indian accessories are cast in red plastic - these colors are all exclusive to the Custer Set I believe-withthis partial set we also got the paper instruction sheet for the Custer set, which was the first that collectors in our circuit had ever seen before- we ended up selling this Custer partial set to Kurt Fredericks, the brother of the Prehistoric Times Fredericks-this photo was featured in an article aboutthe Custe set in Plastic Figure and Playset Collector magazine (a now defunct I believe publication)
This was my display of Civil War figuresand accessoriesmostly marx figures- - displayed in a diorama type display in my bookshelf unit- it features a few rarities like Blue confederates, metallic blue union soldiers, 60mm figures both union and confederates, blue medicine wagon from the Custer set- Andy Gard figures, Ideal figures-
Marx plysets always had great graphics on the cover and sides of the playset box- here is the box cover for the Rin Tin Tin Fort Apache playset- it was just a basic Fort Apache set witha new box and three added character figures from the current hit TV show ( back in the fifties)
This set was a set of the large scale marx Pioneers and Indiansalong with a large scale covered wagon with cloth cover and two incredibly sculpted horses for the wagon-
Here is the box from the Indian Warfare playset- this was the box that the Custer set was found in-
Here is the box cover art for one ofthe smaller earlier versions ofthe Roy Roger's ranch- this set had the rarer version of the tin cabin-