I picked this figure up recently of a Marx 60mm Knight from the Marx Robin Hood. Set. Someone did a nice job of painting the figure. I flip the figure over and saw the underside was an orang e plastic. I knew it was an reissue. I thought it was for a few moments it was Marx 60mm Robin Hood merry men reissue that had been done in England. Before Marksman of the UK had gotten Rado to run the Merry Men in green, the Robin Hood figures were done in odd colors such as purple and orange. These figures were sold in stores over in England.
Then it hit me this figure was the knight not the merry men yet it was in the orange like the merry men. I do not remember them being done in that color and sold in England. The only colors of the knights I have seen are white and black from Mexico. So I have a new mystery to add to the list.
This is unrelated, but I have seen clones of the 54mm 1st edition knights in bizarre colors and even more bizarre, they took the ring hand figures and gave them strange weapons molded into the ring hand like a spiked baseball bat.
Lately on e-bay all sorts of strange colors of Marx recasts are appearing, right now there are repro’s of Roy Rogers, Dale, Pat Brady and Bullet in an ugly green and not even matching green. There are also some Gettysburg figures showing up which are repro’s of the Marx Civil War figures, some of which are red and others being the orange as in your figure.
Ed
The 54mm Roy Rogers are from Jugetemundo who has the mold of Marx 54mm figures plus Ranch kids, WWII French and 45mm firemen. They do not know the original colorsand do bright colors for the children. When Dinamenicos originally did the civil war figures they did them in different colors until Excalibur got them to do them in correct colors.
The 60mm knight is question mark for the moment.
Back around 1980 I sent a letter to the Mexican company that did repos in crazy colors. They actually had a representitive in Westchester County in NY. Al Striano and I went to the address and got catalogs and a huge bagful of samples from the guy.
The rep explained that the company sold bags of figures in Mexican dime stores ( like the American Woolworths) and used regrind soda bottles along with various leftover color dyes and that the figures were never attended to be sold to collectors.
I still have the catalog and it is all in color and shows dozens of different figure lines.
Al and I tried to buy a few hundred bags of figures but the minimum order was way above our budget. I believe that Stone Castle wound up being the eventual importer of the figures.
I’ll have to dig it out and get the company name. I wonder if they are still in business?
Bill
It is a shame that you or Al did not get in touch with me as we might have put it together. What the sales rep said was true. The figures were a stiff regrind plastic. The figures are now in a softer plastic, due Excalibur Hobbies. The figures were sold in the Mexican Woolworths as well as supermarkets, convience stores, etc. I found the figures in a Woolworths in Tijuana. My late aunt, uncle, mother and myself went to West Coast for a vacation. They want to go to Tijuana and I was trading video tapes with a lady in San Diego, who loaned me me her brother, brother in law and a van to get over the border. We did the tourist sites and then went to the Woolworths. We went for two reasons my aunt worked for Woolworths and I had a rumor the Marx reissues were in the store. Well the dream came through, there was piles of Marx and Timmee reissues. I spent $110.00 for the figures and it was the beginning of an interesting time for Stad’s
Stad, my first exposure to Marx recasts was in the early 1980s when my wife and I lived in Connecticut. We received a listing of Marx recast figures from StoneCastle Hobbies in Kentucky. I can’t remember the owner’s name, but he used to be a regular at OTSN, where he always had a double room. My wife and I were ultimately able to visit his great StoneCastle toy soldier museum in Bardstown, Kentucky where he had all the original Marx playsets on display. Anyway, he sold sets of 50 Marx recasts for $25.00 a box. One of the boxes I ordered were the 60mm Robin Hood knights, one pose of which is the one you are depicting. I clearly remember they were a strong, dark orange color, as were the Marx 7th Cavalry recasts, which were also sold in a box of 50 figures. It wasn’t until a few years later that I saw them recast in black and white, and ultimately in the original silver metallic color.
Don
Thanks for the information, once you mentioned Stone Castle it all came together. I remember their offering of the Marx reissues in the strange colors. I remembered going to a OTSN where Stone Castle had them. He had previousily had gotten the Marx Civil War Bridge done by them. He knew that I had done some border runs for bags and he felt he had end run me. It really did not bother me as I was not set up to get the quantities needed. I might have ended up buying wholesale from Stone Castle. I did not remember that Stone Castle reissue were in a soft plastic, the items I got were in hard stiff plastic.
Greg Hahn was the owner of Stone Castle and ran a hobby store of that name on the east side of Louisville, KY until about 6-8 years ago when he shut down due to high expenses. He moved back to his home town about 20-30 miles south of Louisville where he runs stuff through ebay on a regular basis. Castle something is his ebay tag but I didn’t find him selling right now. He usually has some of the early stiff plastic Marx/Tim-Mee/MPC recasts in many colors and I remember seeing the orange 60mm knights in his store on ebay plus Britains and other metals. His store was always fun to visit when I was in the area and I was sand to see it go under.
Hello Kent
Greg Hahn is up on Ebay as stonecastleimports. I saw he had a bunch of Elastolin swoppets today.
Happy Holidays to you and Laurie, Paul.
You too Whit