This is me, Marshall Dillon. I've got a gun on.
You sure you're feds? Yeah, I wish I was feds.
Everything right.
The Roy Rogers Show, starring Roy Rogers.
There really was nothing like the TV shows of the 50s and 60s,
when little children would find their favorite TV programs in a box under Christmas trees the world over.
The Roy Rogers Show.
Hello, welcome to Playset Video Collector, Volume 5, and the Fabulous Marks TV Playsets of the 50s and 60s.
Hello, I'm your host, Rusty Kern, here to bring you more rare figures and accessories than we've ever put together
as we explore the relationship between the Marks TV sets and the TV programs that they represented,
and we'll do it here on the Marks Collector's Atomo screen.
We begin with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, two of our most beloved TV stars of the 50s and 60s.
Marks liked them because they appealed to both boys and girls.
A license was secured, and the Roy Rogers Western Ranch was issued.
This 55-piece Roy Rogers rodeo ranch came with Roy himself and a complete rodeo setup.
It contains three operating chutes, a set of cowboys, and tin ranch house.
There were several variations. Here's a Roy Rogers rodeo, not ranch.
They were all similar to the basic western ranch set shown here.
The exception, of course, were the character figures of Roy, Dale, their trusty dog, Bullet,
and later sidekick, Pat Brady, not present in the earliest sets.
Pat's Nellie Belle Jeep was replaced by a blue buckboard in many sets.
Marks issued 14 ranch kids. Here's Francis Turner with this rare treat.
Twelve of the 14 ranch kids, they came in a certain Roy Rogers set.
They put three in a box, and you never knew what three you were getting.
They just randomly put three figures in.
The little girl was touching a dog, I guess.
This is an Indian on the bottom.
And then there's a western boy, has an Indian pinned down by the horn.
And then the other Indian fellow came over and has the western boy in the headlock.
The Larian fellow is using their Larian tag like that. That is just gorgeous.
And here they are in David Schaeffer's collection.
A complete set of 14 ranch kids is a very uncommon sight.
This 11-inch cabin came with many, but not all, Roy Rogers sets.
Interestingly, the first Roy Rogers rodeo ranch in 1952 came with no cabin at all.
By 1960, Roy's sets had 54-millimeter figures, contained 90 pieces,
and permanently dropped the Nellie Bell Jeep for Buckport.
1952's Roy Rogers Mineral City went the whole western thing place,
and a whole place that thing better, because there it was.
The actual town that was on TV was in the box.
You unfolded it, and there you could go in and out,
and it was, like, very beautiful.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, where'd you guys get a license?
There were 25 interior accessories and 19 exterior accessories.
So now you get, like, a complete western environment.
I mean, inside and out, and some of the interior accessories are really quite uncommon.
Some of the exterior western accessories, they can be kind of tough, too.
See this little guy over here?
That little roll of barbed wire right there.
Kind of tough to find, because it's just so small.
Kids would lose them. They'd put them up their nose or in their ear or something.
Roy Rogers sets continued to be available for some time.
The Roy Rogers Show, starring Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys,
Trigger, his Golden Palomino, and Dale Evans, Queen of the West.
Meanwhile, space became popular on TV, spawning several sets.
Here's collector Francis Turner to help us out.
Space sets will be the subject of an upcoming video.
I just want to make this look neat. See here?
A guy actually can sit in here.
And then it has a one with a gun.
Put the tip of the gun right there.
It has a space car.
With the canopy, which is nice.
Buildings for these sets varied, as shown by David Shea.
I have all three versions of the space buildings.
The blue one, which is the most rarest, is the one from the Space Patrol.
And alongside it, the yellow one from the Rex Mars and some of the Captain Space Solars.
And the silver one from the Tom Corbett sets.
Coming up, we're going to pop the staples on a mint and box sealed Flintstone set.
But first, many of the play sets we're reviewing have two types of trees in common.
The first is Christmas trees, under which we first found many of our play sets
ordered from the Sears catalog.
The second is palm trees, as in jungle sets.
The jungles of Africa provided the backdrop for many movies and television programs of the era.
Jungle Gym emerged as one of the most highly desired sets.
Very difficult to find in prime condition.
We'll visit the Jungle Gym set in collector Gary Linden's collection.
His Jungle Gym set is preserved above glass cases in his exquisite collection.
Stockade walls used in some Rev War sets make a Jungle Gym compound.
The tin litho jungle outpost cabin is among the most desirable items from this set.
Like most character figures, Jungle Gym was usually issued in cream.
We found this unusual character figure in chocolate to show you.
Here was a complete jungle environment with African animals, natives, and accessories.
Gary has a unique understanding of Marx.
They're getting ready to make missionaries too.
Well, I think he got himself off the stake, but he's in the pot, so I think he's in hot water.
Since this is an older set, Gary's collection has grown some extra palm trees.
That's great. That's a beautiful set.
Now, continuing our palm tree portion of the program.
In the late 1960s, Marx revisited the jungle-themed TV show with Daktari.
Daktari came in several versions.
Number 3720 here comes in a colorful character-illustrated box.
Others came in so-called cartoon boxes.
The earliest sets from 1967, like this, still contain flat or nearly flat-colored natives.
Included are 30 figures in nine poses.
There is a pair of carriers for your safari, including this evocative pole and separate kill.
This native policeman helps set the stage.
Splendid warriors defend their land against intruders.
Accessory weapons are unusually important in this set because Marx made several ring-hand poses,
highly unusual for the company.
Each of these weapons is worth nearly the value of the more common figures themselves.
The television program featured Marshall Thompson as Daktari, the title character.
Paula is the loving animal doctor.
Even Jungle Jim returns in an uncredited role as a white hunter.
Judy the Chimp and Clarence the Lion came with a family of painted animals,
also available separately in attractive cardboard boxes.
Seven other white hunters in four poses are well-sculpted and animated.
New for the set is the inclusion of this jeep, previously issued in blue for the Strategic Air Command sets.
This driver is exclusive and therefore a little harder to come by.
Untouchable's fence was imported from Chicago for the Compound Stockade.
Inside is the Jungle Jim trading post with its mysterious lighting and interesting details.
Oystered above the compound is the tin Daktari flag.
A native village surrounds the compound with huts on legs and ladders.
Round huts come in two pieces.
These are in flesh and brown colors, contrasted to the Jungle Jim set's more realistic colors.
Not included in this set is the missionary or the medicine man.
Red accessories are numerous and each helps tell the story.
A lion trap provides tension.
Others imply danger.
And this tiny dish set implies what happens after this leads to this, which leads to this.
The torture stake is an earlier Mark's creation.
A PFPC collector pointed out that this 45 millimeter pioneer from Fort Apache in the Alamo
would perfectly match the torture stake, giving rise to the speculation that they too were meant as a set to go together.
You can almost smell the fire and screams of the roasting victim.
I just love the realism of Mark's.
Beyond the mysterious jungle is an arched rock formation, which made their first appearance in Mark's prehistoric sets.
A play man came with a set, but it was only just large enough to contain all the pieces.
You couldn't really spread it out.
We now take a step up in rarity to feature one of the most highly desired of all TV or any other kind of play sets, Wagon Train.
Wagon Train was released with both 60 millimeter and 54 millimeter wagons and some very uncommon parts, depending on the set.
This one is in David Shaver's collection, and he's going to take it from here.
This is quite a special wagon train.
It's the largest one that Mark's ever made, series 5000, 4888.
And the box itself is quite large. It's 30 inches long, 18 wide.
Included are three sets of Indians, either one set of rust brown, two set of cream, two set of rust brown, and one set of cream.
One thing about the series 5000 play sets, they always contained at least an extra set of whatever was in the sets, in this case a wagon.
The wagon trains themselves were the only sets that did contain the cream Indians.
Also in this set were several other unique features.
This building came in several other sets, Gunsmoke, John Gringo, Rifleman.
However, it only came with this tar paper roof in this one wagon train set alone.
Now here's the two character figures. They're beautifully detailed.
Got the Flint McCullough on the left and Seth Adams on the right.
Now here we have the famous Wagon Train mooing cow.
This cow was almost unknown several years ago.
I guess probably the people that collect farm sets may have seen him.
He told he came in one or two farm sets.
The 4888 came with five wagons, two wagons with blue tops, two red wagons with tan tops, and a yellow wagon with a rust top.
It came with three Calvary drivers with whips, two of the sitting cowboys in gray and rust color.
In this set you get the yellow wagon, and this is the only other set besides the Johnny Gringo that had the yellow wagon.
But it comes with a beautiful rust color top.
This is the only play set that came with this top.
It's a fairly rare wagon.
Now if you look carefully at this teepee, it may look like a normal 54 millimeter teepee, but in fact it's not.
It is made in that same rust color as that top for that yellow wagon, and it was included in the 4888 and in that set only.
It is an extremely rare teepee.
You can see there in the background that brown, small brown fencing, which is pretty much like the Cape Canaveral fencing, only a brown.
It didn't come in too many western sets, this wagon train, the Johnny Gringo, and the Gunsmoke.
It's not too easy of a fence to find anymore.
These horses here in this Palomino color only came, I believe, in certain wagon train sets.
Quite a rare color actually for the wagon horse.
You also got a couple of dead horses, one in green and one in brown.
You also got here the bow and arrow, the Indian sprue, and the cowboy sprue.
This wagon train also came with two sets of Indian accessories, the hide, shield, and the Indian travelwood.
You'll see those scraggly trees, but they were always in hard plastic, and this was, as far as to the best of my knowledge, the only play set that they came in soft plastic.
You also got two sets of common pioneers in powder blue and in silver, a set of ten cowboys, half of them in rust color and half in gray.
You also got in this set the rock formations, the flat rock, the curved rock, the cave, and water formation.
This red wagon with the red top only came in one variation of the 4788, a smaller wagon train. It's quite attractive.
Here's the ox wagon team that came in the wagon train 4805 with the really nice flat gray top.
By the way, the mat did not come with the set, and this wagon train itself, well, it's basically about as good as it gets. They just don't get any better than this set.
Gunsmoke is another long-running TV program which earned its own Legendary Marks play set. Again, here's David with the details.
This is the official Gunsmoke Dodge City Series 2000 play set number 4268.
Let's take a look at the character figures. All four of them are beautiful likenesses of James Arness there as Marshall Dillon as Kitty. You can actually see the little earrings on her.
Doc Chester.
Gunsmoke came with a set of 16 miners and nine cowboys. Now, cowboys came five in tan and four in blue or five in blue and four in tan.
These cowboys in the powder blue only came in the Gunsmoke set and no other set. They're about every bit as rare as the character figures themselves.
Another grouping is the mine shaft parts, which got was the mine shaft, the mine rail, the ore cart, and the stream and sluice terrain, the sluice barrel rocker.
Quite often in used sets, the handle on the rocker, and it's broken off, and it is in my set too. They are extremely hard to find with the handle unbroken.
Another figure that's sort of hard to find in the miners of this figure, holding the separate sack of grain. That piece is generally missing in a used set.
In the Gunsmoke set, you also got the stagecoach, an uncommon piece that wasn't in too many other sets. I believe it also came in the Wells Fargo set, the Large Roy Rogers set. It's a very nice piece.
You also got in the Gunsmoke set the single-story western town, and you got the entire grouping of the outdoor furniture pieces.
In this set, this oxen team, it came without a top, more as an ore wagon. I think that's probably what it was supposed to be used at.
Here is what has come to be known as the Gunsmoke cabin, the same cabin that came in the Rifleman Ranch and the Johnny Ringo sets, except it has a brown roof instead of the gray roof, as in those two sets.
This building also came in some of the 4888 large wagon trains also.
By the way, there's that brown fence again too. In the Gunsmoke set, you got five pieces of it.
Another point of interest was in the Sears catalog picture of this set, they airbrushed all the mining pieces, and they look quite nice, and it's a real shame that real Marx production pieces, they never did that.
If you have a picture of the Sears Christmas catalog, one of the differences is that the buckboard was 60mm and it also had a top, when the actual set came out with the 54mm wagon without a top.
You can almost hear those cows stampeding into town.
The amazing thing is that so soon after practically inventing the art of injection, molding marks could go from a bunch of plastic beads to this.
Here it is, the prototype Matt Dillon, one of the first taken from the mold in rare legitimate gray.
This exact figure was the one personally approved for production of all the rest and made available for this program by Chief Playset Designer Frank Rice.
The rare piece does not yet bear the copyright on its face. It is deliciously detailed and a highly desired character figure, brought to you as an exclusive of Playset Video Collector.
It now resides in a private collection.
Gunsmoke and Wagon Train have become available on Columbia Home Video.
These new film transfers are in sparkling black and white and storylines which seem much stronger than today's programs. Watching them seems to enhance ownership of the Playsets.
Wyatt Earp was another Western TV hero. Here's the character figure in unique tan and legitimate gray.
And Cream, the color officially issued for the Playset.
Okay, I'm holding two blister cards in my hand. One to the left is the Skin Diver and Monster. And next to that is the ever popular Gallant Men Playset from the Warner Brothers television serial.
Which you get the large number 51 tank that has the machine gun on it and eight of the, there's actually five personage figures in the set, there are a few doubles in here, you get eight figures with this blister card.
The Gallant Men was a Warner Brothers TV show from late 62 to mid 63.
The Mark's Box is beautiful emerald green and verges on the less common. It contains a healthy assortment of standard World War II accessories, terrain and tent group, two US vehicle groups, and firing delta jet and howitzer.
Four sets of figures were in khaki and forest green, plus 32 marching figures with no real enemy.
What makes this set unique are the five character figures in green, perhaps the only indication of which group Mark's intent to be the good guys.
They are shown here in front of the very rare, very desirable battle damaged battlefield tinlitho building.
In the mid to late 50s, the Walt Disney Company had three tremendous hits on television, which were made into playsets. The first, Davy Crockett, we covered in volume two. The second has earned legendary status.
Few figures could be as evocative of 50s adventure as the Mark's Zorro. This 54 millimeter figure epitomizes the Disney TV series set in old California.
The Zorro sets include a fabulous recreation of the original quartel de Los Angeles. The high quality of the program is evident in the playset. It is a study in duplication of details.
The quartel is the central setting of both program and playset. You can see how exactly the lettering and main gate are reproduced.
The Spanish garrison is quartered here in the barracks. Note the roof and balcony where Zorro often makes his entrance at night.
Here is the Mark's version. The roof line is identical and so is the Spanish chimney design.
The quartel prison is frequently employed for its characters and is carefully included in the Mark's version, even including the stable with hay roof to the right and open doorway.
It's all taken directly from the TV set. The black Zorro flag was an anomaly, I thought, artistic license on the part of Mark's, until I reviewed the TV series.
And sure enough, about the tenth episode, the flag appears, just as it is contained in the Mark's playset.
So too, the character figures. Don Diego is reproduced exactly as its star, Guy Williams, appears in the first episode.
Take a look at that brocade detailing on Don Diego's sleeve. And Bernardo, played on TV by Gene Sheldon, appears in miniature exactly as Bernardo first explores Zorro's secret cave.
Diego's father, Don Alejandro, is carefully executed as is Henry Calvin's immortal Sergeant Garcia and the show's first and best villain, Brit Loman's Comandante Monasterio.
The quartel is enclosed by six tinlitho walls, which can be bent in the middle to provide a rounded enclosure.
These are similar too, but lower than the Mark's Alamo walls and perhaps a bit less evocative.
Mark's created a special group of sombrero-hatted Mexican cavalry for the set, closely matching the series.
They always vastly outnumbered Zorro, and here the odds are 32 to 1.
Included in the set were 32 sombrero-hatted figures in ten poses, aqua-colored in some other sets.
Accessories for the set are familiar from both Ranch and Alamo, with one exception, Zorro's Cave.
This beautiful but very fragile piece is made of excessively thin vacuform plastic, and lastly, palm trees.
Contained in number 3753, series 500, this is a highly priced set.
Series 750 sets lack the cave.
The Zorro play set was issued in 1958 with unfortunate timing, because Walt Disney had just discontinued production of the show.
The good news is that Disney has re-released many Zorro productions on video.
A lasting and delicious moment of childhood, and they are priced just right, around nine bucks.
When Walt presented Johnny Tremaine on television,
Marx did likewise with character figures added to their standard Greb Warsets.
Here was Paul Revere's famous ride, and Johnny Tremaine, and several other characters for a total of six.
Here, rare samples in white-hard plastic.
Disney knew how to show the bright side of life, and Marx imitated it.
Surprise!
The Untouchables, on the other hand, showed the dark side and sullied the underbelly of American crime.
This set came with a beautiful 1920s tin lithograph street scene on playmat, not shown here.
A beautiful red warehouse completed the scene.
Between them, these contained several extremely difficult pieces.
Take the street lamps, theater struts for the marquee, and handrail for the warehouse.
They're all real toughies.
Two tin-friction cars of the era were included.
Black, maroon, and green are the most common colors.
Marx's line-mar division produced other vehicles of similar character, which worked nicely in this set.
Chicago police of the 1930s are beautifully detailed.
They exist in a world of violence, evidenced by damage to the environment,
illegal brewery equipment, booze cases for the shipment, and violence in the street.
Accessories enhance the interior of the buildings.
Included here are bank vault, counter, tables, office chair, and restaurant accessories.
There is sinister fence in sinister gray to surround the sinister westside warehouse.
The fence is borrowed from Strategic Air Command sets.
Elliot Ness has an uncanny resemblance to star legendary Robert Stack.
Scarface is played by Neville Brand in the television show, and his physical likeness here is perfect.
The Untouchables TV show has only gotten better through the years
with realistic action and settings.
Still available on Columbia Home Video, these programs are as good today as they were in 1961.
They start at very low initial subscription rates, and I really recommend them.
We'll give you their number at the end of the show.
F-Troop was a popular show of the 60s with goofy characters mimicked in MBC's unique playset of the same name.
A colorful box reveals a raised terrain platform.
After setting up the fort, headquarters and stable all marked from the actual settings in the show, Fort Courage, the fun begins.
Use your magnetic wands to manipulate the magnetic-based F-Troop Indians and accessories throughout the set.
Just like TV's F-Troop, wherever you want them to go, they won't.
This is a very uncommon set and the only MPC offering in our rarefied TV group.
We now come to the single rarest production figure in Mark's history, Johnny Ringo.
The character figure is legend itself.
He bears a remarkable resemblance to the show's star, Don Durant.
The Johnny Ringo playset has earned rare status because the show didn't last long and playset sales were reportedly low.
I don't know of a single video source for them except the occasional airing on TV land.
Mark's took great pains to carefully detail a character's weapons, often around which the show revolved, and Johnny Ringo's unique holster and special pistol are no exception.
The Johnny Ringo western set marked the return of the gunsmoke mine grouping, including track and ore cart.
The three wagons in this set are among the top finds in Mark's western collecting,
with the red and the yellow ones being quite rare.
This small cabin with gray porch and side chimney is another uncommon and expensive piece.
The Velardi sign is way tough, while the balance of figures are nice, but not uncommon.
Then there's the box itself. In exceptional condition like this in Rick Eber's collection, it is a true wonder.
Now, Playset Video Collector tries to bring the special treat of a mint and box stapled shut playset opening to each program.
This time, we open one of designer Frank Rice's favorite sets, the Flintstones.
Well, I'm sure you've all tried to be unique in the various methods that you try to open a mint and box set.
This was something I've always wanted to try, you know. It's just got to experiment a little bit.
Uh-huh. Well, it's not getting through those staples very well.
Well, there's just got to be a better way. And there was.
Back in the 60s in New York, early 60s, Frank Rice also needed a method of opening stapled shut boxes without destroying them.
So his friend, Walter Nesperly, the foreman at the Marks Model Shop in Glendale, West Virginia, sent him this.
Walter Nesperly's super-duper carton staple remover. And he sent it to Frank.
And what Frank learned of our dilemma of how to open the Flintstones sets, he sent it to us. We're going to use it.
The last people to use it was Frank Rice at the Marks Company opening staple-sealed sets.
So this is really quite an honor. And Frank, we thank you for sending this along.
All right. Well, it's time to open the Flintstones set. It's an honor.
Frank said to be sure to try this on a couple of boxes first in practice. But I'm like, on what? They don't use staples anymore.
Here we go.
Put it in. It's got some grab.
And twist.
Ooh. Yeah.
Okay. There's one out.
The specific idea here is to get the slotted end of this thing into and over the staple at the front, front middle of the staple.
There it is. It's going down.
And you twist.
So it looks like five staples, three across the front, two on either side.
Slips right in.
There we go. There's another front one.
There's that one.
There's that one.
Just for reference, here's another technique. You cut the center piece.
And then instead of trying to pull the whole thing out, all you do is shove it in like this.
See? And then you don't leave any marks on the front.
The same would be true of the other side.
Pretty good. One last one.
And Mike Jordan has joined us. Hi, Mikey.
Hi.
Beautiful.
These staples have been opened.
And this is the first time it has been opened since 1961.
Here's a staple for you.
A staple from a mint and box set.
Okay.
Wow. Isn't that beautiful?
Completely mint and box.
All the bags are yellow. Only the white ones.
Figures.
Accessories tucked in upside down.
See down below here that the play mat is down in here.
It's the first thing put into this box, along with...
See the instructions down there.
We've seen the instructions right on the top of the box, too.
Nice dinosaurs.
The whole bag is green.
Look at the color on that.
Frank, I hope you're enjoying this.
Green is the shopping cart. Unbroken television antennas.
The seats to the diner.
Big ol' brown bag of stuff.
Want to open that and see what's in there?
A very large brown bag.
A very, very large brown bag.
One of the longest marked bags I think I've ever seen.
What color is that?
That's a very light gray.
Aren't these usually stylized?
They said I have them in dark gray.
Are Barney's poles in there?
Let's find out.
Oh, look at that nice blue color.
Poles. Two, three, four poles.
That's nice.
Let's keep the left side separated from the right side.
You know what that is?
A tube of glue.
For gluing the buildings together.
Nice minty, minty poly layout sheet.
Nice minty, minty.
And there's some bleeding across the top.
There sure is.
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Frank, we really want to thank you for the use of your
Waltern Esperley Super Duper Carcass Staple Remover.
And we'll hand this back to you now.
Thanks very much.
For toy collectors everywhere,
the Marks Playset harkens us back to a time of our own childhood,
which we as adults respond to
because the essence of those memories is goodness.
We'd like to thank Rick Eber and Dave Schaefer
for sharing their photography and playsets with us this time.
And we'd like to remind you to join us
for our other Playset video collectors.
Until then, I'm Rusty Kern, wishing you good hunting.
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Can I stick my nose in there?
Yeah.
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By the way, if there's anything about our videos that you don't like,
any little thing, don't be bashful.
Just come right on out and tell us, and we'll take care of it.
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You know, you don't get a chance to...
No, to do that, you know.
Mmm, smells mostly like old paper, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Grab a bag.
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