Starlux Ours des cavernes (Ursus spelaeus) • Ursus spelaeus jaw fragment from Russia The French firm Starlux dates from about 1947. It was a successor to an earlier company, dating from circa 1900, which made miniature figures of a strange mix of chalk and glue. Starlux dropped the chalk composite in favor of a more conventional plastic resin, easy to paint but very brittle. Starlux distribution was always poor in the U.S. If customers can't find 'em, they can't buy 'em, so not surprisingly, the company has been more-or-less moribund since the 1980s. It changed hands in 1996 and was renamed Newstarlux. Stories vary - Newstarlux either folded by 1997, or continues to chug along. If the latter, distribution still sucks. Starlux produced a great many military figures, mostly painted by the factory. There were non-military figures also (zookeepers, cheerleaders, etc), and several hundred zoo, farm, and wild animals. And, most notably, a hundred-odd prehistoric figures. These Starlux prehistorics have no markings whatever - no Starlux logo, no copyright date, no animal name, no part number, nada. Good points about the Starlux prehistoric figures -
There are several number gaps. I don't yet know if there were ever any mystery figures in there, or if those were planned but never issued, or what. A Peculiarity FS40111 ("Trilobite en nodule" and FS40112 ("Spirifer Americain") were unpainted, and made of an entirely different plastic. The material looks like a thermoplastic, slightly softer and much more durable than the standard Starlux material. However, this plastic was probably, as a practical matter, unpaintable. More Peculiarities Starlux made more than one version of several animals. FS40108 ("Diplocaulus, par 2") was a pair of these distinctive little amphibians. I suspect the two figures comprising the pair were identical. However I can only find one lying around here, so I can't confirm that yet. There were two different Nothosaurs, FS40038 and FS40095 (both "Nothosaure"). There were two different Tanystropheuses, FS40065 ("Tanystropheus") and FS40099 ("Tanystropheus chassant"). There were also two noticeably different versions of "Diplodocus," and two of the "Mammouth." However, there was apparently only one number for each - "Diplodocus" was FS40021, and "Mammouth" was FS40020. Unlike the figures with different numbers - the two Nothosaurs and two Tanystropheuses - these were not issued simultaneously. That is, an old version of each was replaced by a new version. FS40111 ("Trilobite en nodule") was a 2-piece figure. It is a trilobite embedded in a plastic rock. The top part of the rock lifts off. |