A coupla months ago I saw a large black plastic horse in a charity shop. It was the kind of horse I thought I'd had as a kid for Action Man. But then again it could have been Barbie or Sindy for all I knew. There were no visible makers' marks. I googled it and because it had four straight legs all touching the ground I left it. As always I'm regretting it now.
My reasoning for leaving it on the shelf was because as far I know Action Man's horse has one bent leg as you can see in this old Vectis auction photo.
My own baby boomer horse was more likely to have a Life Guard on its back. I would have given my entire gobstopper collection for one carrying this Lancers soldier I saw recently on the SAS sales site.
I've since wondered if there was a female version released by Palitoy and lo and behold there was. Action Girl Pony Rider and all quite new to me. Here's a boxed set I caught up with on an old auction. You can see it has a bent front leg too.
Still, I regret walking away once the stable door had shut and the charity horse had bolted.
Did you have a toy horse readers?
I could always splash out £61 for a ultra-modern 8 inch fully articulated mare from the Max Factory Figma range on Amazon UK. I wonder if Palitoy ever considered jointing their horses?
The Figma horse assumes truly life-like postures. Too small for Action Man but maybe Madelman or Little Big Man could get on. I'm impressed. Are you?
The rider is a Nintendo's game heroine Hazuki Mizuhara.
What do you think?
Back in the thread on the western toys a few days ago, someone mentioned the Marx Golden Knight. My older brother had the Golden Knight, and I had the Silver one.
ReplyDeleteThey both came with horses, and the level of detail on those was really remarkable. Sadly , I was only 3 and mine did not survive very well.
The knights both came with full armor, that could be put on and taken off in individual pieces. With that, there was armored barding for the horses as well! They were really amazingly detailed figures. To detailed for my hands at the time.
I showed them to my wife, and she pointed out that one of her toy horses was from the same mold. Her's was brown, and probably came from a cowboy toy set.
Either way, she's been a long time collector of Breyer's Horses and we've got a large herd running around on our bookshelves. :)
Dunno if they've got Breyer's in the UK, but they're a pretty big thing over here in America.
Great memories Scott. You and yer brother had a great childhood by the sounds of it. I has a Marx knight and horse too but I can't recall which now. They were indeed great fun with tons of accessories like you say. A wonderful detailed toy for its day. As regards Breyers, I know I had some hard plastic horses as a kid but whether they were Breyers I don't know. Send us a snap or two of your horse shelf!
DeleteI have a couple of these Action Man horses ...very nice miniatures.....had the pleasure of using them a couple of times on my Hasbro Action Man Projects back in the Nineties....used them again on a children's comicbook story "Sinbad Gold Raider Heroes" ...have to dig out the picture memory cards sometime for Moonbase Central . Richard Dixon TPD Studios UK .
ReplyDeletePlease do Richard and best of luck with the Seastar 5 comic launch today!
DeleteClosest I came was a "model kit" Morgan horse. I think it was pretty much just two pieces, but you did have to paint it.
ReplyDeleteIs Morgan a kit brand Baron?
DeleteNo, it's an American breed of horse.
DeleteAh ha! And whilst trying to look up an old book I read about sailors, I found a reference to THIS book, the one I read as a kid that resulted in my buying the Morgan horse model kit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Morgan_Had_a_Horse
DeleteI had some Timpo ones, later some Airfix kits of mounted soldiers of various types and much later still, a real horse!
ReplyDeleteA real one! Did you ride it Kev?
DeleteI did. Even crossed a dual carriageway on him once, which was surreal!
DeleteFigma does great work
ReplyDeleteI agree!
DeleteGreat figures. The Figma horse, with added rider, is very similar to articulated wooden models that you can buy in art shops, intended to help artists get human or animal poses right. I did not have any large scale horse toys, just the smaller Britains or Timpo models.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to their 54mm kits, Airfix also did large Show Jumper and Bengal Lancer kits in 1/12th scale, which included horses.
Renwal also did a large scale Visible Horse kit, which included the skeleton and internal organs.
I think I have an article about that visible horse from you Paul in my archive. I'll dig it out. Thanks!
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