Plastic Figure Showcase Part Two Queen of West first we will look at the Marx 60mm Dale Evans. Next I will show a example of the tan Marx 60mm Foreign Legion figures. Finally a few finds from the garage. (Yes there figures are everywhere.)
Plastic Figure Showcase Part Two Queen of West, Marx Foreigh Legion Dale Evans 
Dale Evans the Queen of the West first through movies and then on television with her real husband Roy Rogers entertained us. I remember seeing them at the Allentown Fair one summer. They were merchandised with various items including Marx playsets. Here we have the Marx 60mm Dale Evans.
According to Marx Wild West, Roy and Dale were first issued in 1952. At that time they were made in plastic vinyl. In 1955, the figures were done in a cream plastic. While Marx did several different poses of Roy Rogers in 60mm. Marx only did one Dale Evans pose. Marx in 1957 did Roy Rogers and Dale in 54mm with Pat Brady and Bullet.
Interestingly the only foreign Dale Evans figure I know of is from Trojan of the UK. The figure is a copy of the Marx figure. Dale Evans are not hard to find due to the number of playsets Marx made.
Plastic Figure Showcase Part Two Queen of West Marx Foreign Legion
As I mention in a previous posting I had acquired two Marx Foreign Legion in tan. These figures were purchased at the Plastic Warrior show. Due to them being fragile despite pack them they broke. This one only the tip of the rifle. I wonder if they were done in the UK at Swansea or here in this color. The other question is how were they marketed.
Plastic Figure Showcase Part Two Queen of West Where’s the Rest
I recently went to a country auction. I wanted to see if they had any plastic figures. Looking around in a lot of dimestore figures was one Marx 54mm race track figure and couple Payton figures. Nothing else, I did not stay as I felt the dimestore figures would go silly.
Plastic Figure Showcase Part Two Queen of West Garage Find
As I try to straighten things I keep finding hidden treasures. The first is is this gray Marx cannon.
The other item for now is this Hong Kong copyof the Elastolin Medival soldier. He goes with the catapult. You can see some of the dust still on him. I will try toclean the garage out more once it gets cool.
Hi, The Marx -Legionairre, and in fact most of the rest of Marx [unpainted production were sold, for penies in Woolworths ,in the UK.This was not a popular move with Children in the UK. We were used to fully painted “Toy Soldiers. and led to many of the figures being painted, with Poster paints.-“Airfix ” enamles not being common!. I still have lots of ^0mm G.I. s and a few of the Davy Crocket/Cowboys. these days languishing in boxes!
I find that kind of surprising that someone would prefer the often inferior quality with bad paints job as opposed to the high quality unpainted Marx figures. Well, I guess to each his own. I mean outside of Britains and Elastolin the figures I’ve seen have bad plastic and bad paint jobs that flake off fairly easily.
As it was stated the collectors grew up in the UK with painted figures. This was a carry on from the metal figures. In the United States we were geared toward unpainted. One reason we got unpainted was it would have been too expensive to do painted figures in the states. That is why painted plastic done by U.S. companies was done aboard cheap labor. UK was able to do it cheap as well due to the wages. Even the UK companies were force to change on painted figures. Britains moved some of their figures aboard while Timpo went to swopet style with colors part of the plastic.
I remember during our first tour overseas getting a bit of “culture shock” when I saw the painted plastic in the toy shop windows in Belgium. I was never really fond of painted figures as I had grown up with unpainted US plastic figures.
And, it has already been mentioned the paint jobs on a lot of the figures left a lot to be desired. I passed on a lot of stuff because they were painted and didn’t go with the rest of my figures. I only started painting my 1/72 figures in 1985 to get my Airfix Napoleonics to match the then-new ESCI figures and it has taken me until just a few years back to swallow hard and start painting some of my 1/32 scale figures. Boy, if I could only go back now. Some of those figures were better than their paint jobs and I often think of what I could do with them now.
Oh well…