This feature's back, with something that was literally a long time coming. In a previous installment, I mentioned that I had found an offer for Marx figures claimed to have been made in the former USSR. Very soon after that, I decided to order the lot for a quite good price, from a seller in a former Soviet "satellite" republic. Unfortunately, recent events have caused as much disruption over there as over here, and my package apparently ended up sitting at an airport for a good deal of time. Eventually, however, officialdom caught up, and I received my order, consisting appropriately of a Soviet infantryman with a less explicable group of "Wild West" figures. Here's some pics of the infantryman with other Soviet figures previously covered.
It should be apparent from these pics that the Soviet-produced figures are entirely comparable to authentic Marx figures. If anything, the unique dark brown color makes it somewhat difficult to capture the full extent of the detail. (The gun is a very good representation of the PPSh-41 submachine gun.) I also confirmed that the infantryman and one of the other figures has marks in Cyrilic, a clear confirmation that they were made somewhere in eastern Europe. I further assess them as made from harder plastic than vintage Marx specimens; my now standard "clack" test produced a uniquely resonant sound when the figures were struck together. Here are pics of base of the infantryman with a Marx figure and another from the lot.
The other figures, as noted, were Western-themed figures, but not what could be considered typical examples; they are specifically absent from known Plastimarx and later "afterlife" Mexican production. Marx Wild West designates them as a group called "Pioneers", likely based on army man-scale figures released in 1955 as a tie-in with a Davey Crockett movie. I have considered the possibility that the 6-inch figures were meant to tie in with the 1960 John Wayne production of The Alamo, though my own investigations indicate that no large-size figures were made before 1963. Their reappearance in the Soviet sphere might be related to the influence of "osterns", a genre of frequently revisionist Westerns made in the USSR and other eastern nations. Here are pics of one of these figures, noteworthy as the only one with a standard "cowboy" hat, with a vintage Indian for reference.
The remainder of the set all share a coonskin hat. I find them notably less dynamic than other Marx figures, though the designers were clearly trying to impart a sense of action. The inclusion of a histrionic "knife guy" only reinforces my assessment. Here's a pic of two more of them, and an extra reference shot.
"I am not affiliated with him."
"Chief say, don't make eye contact with crazy guy with knife."
Last but not least, we have yet another "casualty" figure, this time with an arrow instead of a bullet hole. It's all graphic stuff, though notably toned down. Here's pics front and back.
As with the specimen of the gunfighter, this figure has an exit wound that has impressed collectors. However, I find it a misfire, as it looks more like a funky barnacle. It also doesn't line up at all with the arrow, though I could put that down to imposed censorship. I suspect the placement of the arrow in the shoulder was at least partly a way to simplify production, as it puts the shaft on the seam between the halves of the mold. Marx must still be given credit for an extra level of messed up.
As for the deeper mystery of how these came to be, I admit I am currently at a dead end. Both the seller and other sources report that these and other Marx soldiers were made in Donetsk, Ukraine beginning in the 1970s,. It is claimed that this was under license from Marx, which I find reasonably believable simply based on the relative obscurity of the known products. A vivid recollection from a book called Everything Is Normal by Sergey Grechishkin recounts that Marx soldiers were especially valuable in the USSR and usually only available to those with political connections. Intriguingly, the author also mentions that more typical army men were of the infamous "flat" type, which Marx had produced in the very early 1950s. The big question mark is how long they were in production, with the most specific dates being 1991. If true, then the eastern copies outlived Marx itself by over a decade, a good run for a spinoff.
For links, here's the previous installments:
Part 1: Enemy Marx (Japanese figures)
Part 2: Marx Marxists! (Soviet figures)
Part 3: Marx on the Moon (Apollo/ astronaut set)
Part 4: The Good, the Marx and the Ugly (Wild West and "'casualty" figures)
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