I decided it was time for more Timmee, and I definitely knew what the next in line would be. Back when I introduced the Marx knights, I also introduced a guy I call the Timmee nuclear guy, and featured him again with the Marx 3 inch space guys. Now I finally have a more complete lineup of the set he came from, with an extra twist or so. To begin, here's a few pics with the Galaxy Laser Team commander and the 70mm Space Guy Who Doesn't Care.
The backstory of the nuclear guy is that I picked him up as a prize sometime in the mid to late 1990s, as I recall at a church carnival-style function. At the time, I genuinely thought of his getup as a radiation suit, and it still strikes me as what a kid would happily assume. What interested me most was his relatively large size. I previously estimated the scale as 60mm, a scale listed for certain Marx figures,. After some further eye-balling, I now am satisfied it is 63mm, a scale that was at one point "standard" for Marx army men.
The big discovery came when I started looking up Timmee reissue sets, and saw my "nuclear guy" pictured as part of a firefighter set. I never got around to buying it up, and in more recent years it dropped out of sight again. However, when I went looking at online auctions, I found plenty of listings for both reissues and "vintage" specimens. The one that caught my eye, and was still quite cheap, was a bagged set with actual Timmee production marks. I got it a little while back and put up a few photos online but didn't immediately make time to give it a proper treatment on this blog. Here is a pic I took at the time of the bag, plus a close-up of the charmingly hideous and perhaps terrifying card art.
From the best available information, the Timmee firefighters were made in the early or mid-1970s; Toy Soldier HQ gives a year of 1975 which I believe is correct for the "set" as a whole. As usual, earlier production of some sculpts cannot easily be ruled out. Of more interest, Toy Soldier HQ reports that the set was being produced as late as 2004, which may have been boosted y the post-9/11 fervor. I consider that the likeliest date of the bagged set. That would further account for the cute/non-threatening police officer in the artwork, which in the current climate would be more fitting for a BLM meme. I would like to think that mustache was drawn in with a pen, but I very carefully looked for evidence of that without finding any conclusive proof.
With packaging like that, the figures should be almost anticlimactic, but that's certainly not the case. To begin with, they definitely have a cheaper feel than my nuclear guy, complete with the noticeable "clicky" sound during handling. They are also quite random, with the nuclear guy and at least one other figure missing entirely. Finally, there is a noticeable difference between the modern, masked figures and the "old school" style of the rest, which might indicate that some were added to an earlier set. Here's the pics of the lot.
It should be clear from these pics just how randomized the selections were. I suspect the nuclear guy was discontinued by this point, which would have been understandable given the further fears of nuclear/ biochemical terrorism at the turn of the millennium. What's less explicable is that several of the sculpts are clearly intended to form a group, as illustrated in the opening photo. I had to do this with the nuclear guy because a regular fireman with a hose nozzle is also missing, despite the presence of three guys manning fire hydrants.
Finally, the set also includes a group of cops, reportedly released originally as a "SWAT" set in 1978. They are in army man scale, and inexplicably hideous. The inclusion of a lady cop is noteworthy, particularly considering that she is the meanest-looking and flat-out ugliest of the grim group. It can be assumed that the designers didn't intend for the figures to represent regular police, but this only adds to the unintentional terror factor. I may have to come back to these again to do them justice. For now, here's a couple pics.
All in all, the firemen are still worth acquiring. The cops/ SWAT guys, on the other hand, are to be avoided except as an example of absolutely hideous army man figures. It would be easy to take the latter as proof of how far Timmee went downhill, except they date from the same time as Galaxy Laser Team and years before Legendary Battles. The real lesson is that "army man" toys were truly among both the best and worst toys out there, whether it was the 1950s or the 1980s. That's why they stay in the memory long after more expensive toy lines fade away, and that's why so many of my posts are dedicated to them.
That's all for now, more to come!
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