About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

M is for Manta Force (and Viper Squad) by Bluebird Toys (and Tomy Toys)

The oddest range I have from Bluebird is the Manta Force, only two (or three? see note on yellow figure) poses, in a few colours, and three distinct ranges of vehicles/accessories, very good ones which I think originate with Tomy, the Karnoid stuff which is of a completely different and poorer quality and some stuff in the 1990 catalogue which may never have been made here or in Japan?

Manta figures, the Gold one only came in a couple of sets and consequently as I don't actively search these things out I only have a pair of (broken) legs!

The yellow guy on the bottom row with the Pharaoh headdress is not visible in any catalogue photographs, so may be a late issue, or some body else's from some other range all together? (Terrahawks?) He is in fact from the Silverlit Multimac toys (Thanks to Bill Bulloch over at the Moonbase Central).

One of the early accessories, the build quality of this is very good and both the material and colours are reminiscent of some Ultraman or Gundam stuff from Japan.

Another from the same initial release, this used the good old 1950's toy cannon mechanism to fire 6 rockets at once, very safe, blunt rockets mind, this was the nineties!

Both Viper figures.

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