Miniature Giants: Mystery Monday crossover!

 

As I write this, I just went a whole week without making a post. I decided it was time to try going a week with a post for every day, which for a while was what I did every week. To kick things off, I decided it was worth doing another Marx figure post and if at all possible bring back my Mystery Monday feature. As it happened, I had a few things in my pipeline that fit both purposes, plus a few more things in reserve in case I didn't get something in time. To kick things off, here is the minor mystery, with a couple friends.

This lady is from the previously covered Campus Cuties line, labeled Lazy Afternoon. In the time I have been aware of these figures, she has been my favorite, though I waited a long time to make a purchase. What convinced me to make the purchase was that the figure was a white or gray color I had seen frequently, quite different from the pink color of the trio I had purchased. I had already seen others voice the suspicion that this was a mark of a reissue. I finally ordered the figure and had it arrive s little after my previous post. Here are a few more pics.

"Hmm, actually, I've never been canoeing in my life. Why do you ask?"

Now, it will be evident on examination that there are a few things that are... odd. First, this is one of two of the original 8 figures wearing pants instead of a dress or skirt, and the only one in what can be considered athletic wear. Because the oar is not anchored to the rest of the figure, it is commonly warped as a condition issue (also a problem with the Flag Guy astronaut). Then there are some odd details of of anatomy. The lady's endowments are not so much oversized as oddly squeezed, to a degree that would be difficult to achieve short of using recycled shock absorbers as an undergarment. Her hands and feet, on the other hand, are curiously small. (For that matter, the angle of her right wrist does not look natural or comfortable.) What really only stands out on actual handling (grow up...) is that things look significantly off-center, which might be rationalized as an ill-fitting jacket if the hood and her head didn't also appear skewed to starboard. The upshot of all of this is that Marx's moldmakers were still working out both the female form and poses that reflected peacetime activities. But the mystery was always, is this an original figure or a reissue? Here are a couple pics that just might give an answer.

To state my conclusion first, I am not necessarily convinced this is original, but I am definitely far less skeptical than I was. First and to me most significantly, the real color of the plastic is a tan or off-white, which is different than the pink usually accepted as a mark of authenticity but still a "flesh tone" in keeping with the concept of the line. Second, it does bear the Marx name and logo, though this is not conclusive. Third, it is made from soft plastic typical for Marx, which among other things made it relatively easy to bend the oar back into its intended position. My one reservation came down to two marks in the wrist, at least one of which should be visible in the first of the pics above. On casual inspection, this looks like nothing more or less than chipping, but that would really only happen with much harder plastic. There are independent signs of scratches on the figure, but this kind of damage would take deliberate gouging, which I see no evidence of. What I believe is that this is an imperfection caused by air pockets in the plastic (see the Field Museum Mold A Rama dinos), which would definitely be out of character for Marx. As usual, there is middle ground here; maybe this was made later, when the company was struggling, or perhaps in one of their foreign factories. And that brings me to the other item under consideration...

Now this was a figure where nothing looked right. While it is vaguely similar to the nominal 45mm figures I have been using for the Space Marine analogs, it did not match any of the sculpts used for the US soldiers within the 6-inch line. The fact that it was painted was odder still. On top of that, the whole style was quite different than usual for Marx. It would have been easy to count it as the work of a competing manufacturer (see the Lido draft dodger from back when), except that the seller showed a pic with Marx markings on the base. It was also reported that it was indeed 5 to 6 inches tall. I concluded that the only way to sort this out was to buy it. Immediately on receiving it, I discovered the greatest anomaly: The figure was made of hard plastic. Here is a lineup with the Japanese office and a Soviet soldier to show the difference.

And here are a couple more pics.

Now, this was a little more than a Wall of Nothing. The markings identified it with a set called Combat Soldiers, released as part of a reasonably well-known line called Warriors of the World which I ran across several times trying to run this guy down. These were "army men" figures of about 60mm scale that represented a range of nations and historical periods. Unusually, they were sold pre-painted, typically in individual boxes. Evidently, they also tried scaling these figures up to nominal 6-inch scale (I get about 5 1/2 inch, and yeah, part of the gun broke off) at the same time they started releasing the soft-plastic 6-inch figures we know and love. By all indications, this was a dead end of another dead end. Warriors of the World clearly failed to displace playsets with unpainted army men. As for their large-sized counterparts, the WW2/ Vietnam era US soldiers are the only ones I turned up that received this treatment. By all indications, they were short-lived compared to their soft plastic counterparts. I believe it is possible they were sold mainly outside the US, based on the fact that the only other seller to offer them was in another country. As for their value, I paid a little more than usual for this one because it was so clearly unusual. The problem, as I keep doomsaying, is that price is a function of demand more than actual scarcity, so most likely, items as obscure as this will remain no more than moderately expensive.

Now I really need to wrap this up. I can't call it a night without a shot of the Truckstop Queen! We've come a long way, kind of...

That's all for now, more to come!