Table of Contents to Marx American History Playsets

Marx Lane

Marx Playset Figures, Structures, and Accessories
of the American Wild West
Manufactured from 1951 to 1980
(now with added pages for other playset themes)

Table of Contents

Contents of this web site may not be reproduced or duplicated for use on the Internet or for commercial purposes without permission by Eric Johns.

This web site was created in late 2007, providing information about Marx wild west playset figures on a single web page. It now consists of close to 50 web pages, with information on figures, structures, terrain pieces, and small accessories from playsets of many different themes. It also has indexes for Playset Magazine and PFPC magazine. I will continue to update these pages as I obtain more information and photos. If you have anything to add to these pages or suggestions to make them better, please e-mail me at ericjohns@roadrunner.com. I will be glad to attribute contributions to you. And if you have questions or comments, I am always glad to hear from you!

Main Table of Contents

Click on the category to move to the section.

This Page

Recent Significant Updates to This Web Site

Toy Soldier Information, News, and Comments

Other Pages

Introduction to Collecting Marx Toy Soldiers

The American Wild West

Other Playset Themes

Index to Playset Magazine

Index to Plastic Figure and Playset Collector Magazine

Colors Used for Marx Playset Figures

Links to other related web sites

Recent significant updates to this web site:

4-4-12 A good deal of updates this time are items I obtained at the West Coaster. Many are on the military pages, including several of the accessories and a very nice 60mm stretcher with wounded GI. Now I need the 60mm stretcher carriers! I hope to add a page on the Marx presidents in a month or so...nothing that exciting, but I do have most of them. Unfortunately, I have neither the White House nor the Capitol Building that Marx made, but perhaps I can pick up at least one before I add the page. P.S. Is this stucco background better than the previous plain yellow-gold?

2-5-12 Minor change, but a significant one for us Marx Wild West enthusiasts. I will never claim that the photos and information on these pages are 100% accurate, and Bruce Schnake has just verified it for me. On the Wild West accessory page, I have had an incorrect chair pictured in the Hotel-side streetfront furniture group for several months! As pointed out to me by Bruce, I have now removed the armless desk chair and replaced it with the high-back chair with arms (see item 5 in the group). Thank you, Bruce! It's a one-man show here, so everyone should feel free to inform me of any inaccuracies that you find. I added General Eisenhower to the military figures page today also...Eisenhower and Patton are my meager start to the 39-figure group. My collection of U.S. presidents is coming along much better, and I might have a very basic politicians page up soon.

1-30-12 I've been adding items here and there the past several days, though no major changes. Today I added the Marx parachutes on the military figures page (and the paratroopers were added on 2-6-12), General Patton, the 60mm GI with a parachute packed on his back (commonly called a butt chute), two of the U.S. Army Gallant Men character figures, as well as updated the 60mm Vikings photos on the medieval page. Other recent additions include the Flintstone gas station, one of the Babes-in-Toyland, and the hard-to-find tin litho Army Combat Gate.

1-3-12 Further improvements made to Military Figures and Military Accessories pages. I am doing my best to make them as clean as possible before I go back to my real work January 9. If you have looked at the pages a day or two or three or more ago, you might want to visit them again. I have added quite a few things -- though often just information without photos -- and expect to continue adding information here and there over the next few days. As the weeks roll by, I will hopefully have more and more photos to show you also.

1-2-12 Clean-up and added/corrected information on Military Accessories page. Also corrected link to Captain Gallant page and added photos of three Disneykins on Cartoons Page D-4. Updates to the new circus page will be coming soon, as I have just purchased a partial Marx Super Circus playset. Also note my recent luck in the "Toy Soldier Information" section below.

Marx and other toy soldier information, news, and comments:

The West Coaster Toy Soldier Show on March 11 was again a success for me as I sold about $450 and picked up a few nice items. It seemed to me that plastic was a little more well represented this year. Despite that, I managed to show great

will power by coming in $1.50 below my $200 budget (plus $25 I had saved up in coins). I purchased a couple of buildings, the Marx down-sized Armed Forces

Training building (from Mark Young) and TSSD's newest building, which looks much like a Wild West general store (see comments below). I also picked up various needed military accessory pieces (see the military accessories page), a few Marx 60mm GIs, a set of Paragon's new U.S. Cavalry, and various other odds and ends of figures. Paragon's six Cavalrymen include great poses (see photo at right for three of the poses), though as with previous Paragon figures, they have necks and heads that seem too small for the rest of their bodies and hats that seem too large. But the figures offer lots of potential for much very imaginative play action!

The only thing that I planned on buying that I did not find was one of Manoil's Happy Farmer figures. I'm not big on metal, but I am about half way to having a full collection of the 41-piece Happy Farmer group. The figures are nothing fancy, but just a neat little set to have and display. Having struck out at the show, I blew $22 on Ebay a few days later for one of the Happy Farmer figures I needed. Anyhow, I found it again to be a fun show with plenty of sellers and collectors. The two photos above are of my table at the show; the woman "manning" the booth in the photo on the left is my wife Vicki.

The new TSSD Wild West building is very well made and more than reasonably priced. It looks very much like what I would call a typical building in an active Wild West town and has gone directly onto my new display table. I opted for

the unpainted version for $35, but the painted one only costs $5 more. The building comes in three pieces -- the basic structure of walls and floor, the removable roof, and the front piece. Both the outside and inside are nicely detailed in a simple style, very similar to

the 2-story house recently released by Traverse. Panes in the front windows are made in a thin foam that are translucent; two side windows appear to be the same, but mine seem to have been busted out by local thugs. The front and back door do not open.

The structure measures about 11-1/2 inches deep and 8 wide on the outside, and 8-1/2 deep and 7 wide inside. In taking the photos and adding the building to my display table, I did a little research on scale. Of course, if you don't

really care that much about exact scale -- and Marx certainly did not -- then it does not make much difference. However, if you do, then be aware that the building is what I would call a true 1/32 (54mm) scale, again similar to the recent Traverse house.

I primarily use door size to assess building scales, and the door of this new building is 2-5/8 inches tall (not counting the overhead windows), which is just right for 1/32 (54mm) figures that stand about 2-1/4 inches tall. The 2-story building issued by TSSD several years ago has a door 3 inches tall (seen in the photo below left), and the company's town front -- also issued earlier -- has three doors that

all are between these two heights. The figures shown in these photos are from the excellent Del Prado Wild West Series. Including their thin bases, they measure, left to right, 2-7/8 inches tall, 2-5/8 inches, and 2-3/8 inches.

If you assume the Del Prado scale to be 1/32, then the newspaper editor (subtracting 1/8 inch for the base) is 6 feet tall, the bartender is 6' 8", and the guy in the hat is 7' 4". That would be a good start for an NBA team, but they look a bit weird standing together in a Wild West town. By assuming that the figure scale is 1/30 (60mm) or 1/25, you can assume one of the other two figures are 6 feet tall, but then the editor drops down to about 5 feet, and the figures look just as odd in a group. In any case, the editor works well with this new building, the bartender can squeeze in, but the guy in the hat is going to lose a few teeth if he tries to go through that door in the new building!

Of course, the solution if you own all these items is to place the larger scale items in the front and the smaller scale items in the back, creating an optical illusion of increased depth to your display.

The display table is looking good (in my opinion), with sand in place and buildings being moved here and there to try and find the layout I want to start working on. The photos are of a couple of layouts I have set out temporarily. I'm presently leaning toward something like that in the photo on the left. Your thoughts and suggestions are welcome! The

only issue is that I still have to make the backs for at least three of the buildings, including the saloon near the center of the left photo which looks like nothing more than a false front! I obviously need to paint and detail several of the buildings. I need to put a better finish on the table's legs and edges (as started in the photo at left), so it does not look so much like it belongs in the garage. And add more scenery. And maybe get a backdrop. I think I have my work cut out for me! At least the table is located at my vacation house in the high desert, so I can walk outside and pick up all the rocks and Wild West vegetation I need for free.

Sometimes you just get lucky. This time it was me. I'm not out and about enough in the toy soldier world to make a big time find, but I do sometimes luck out with a small find. And this one supports my theory that the best time to bid for

toy soldiers on Ebay is December...when everyone else is spending their money on Christmas presents! I've been looking for a Marx 60mm Captain Hook with sword still attached to the base for a few years. My experience is that they are hard to find. So when I recently saw one on Ebay with what looked like an attached sword -- though that was not mentioned in the write-up -- along with one other Marx cartoon character, I put in a bid. And I won them for $12 (including postage). When they arrived, I found that not only was the sword attached, but they were in what I would call near mint condition. So I thank Ebay seller the300spartans for letting me have Hook so inexpensively!

Contents of this web site may not be reproduced or duplicated for use on the Internet or for commercial purposes without permission by Eric Johns.

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