Playmobil Deluxe Cavalry set (c. 1976)
Schaper Deluxe Set

with Mr. Stinkhead

Not too long ago I shared pictures from my visit to a small shop in Virginia that has a motherload of playmobil. 3000 some boxes, all vintage. Most of them rare, yet in great condition. I also recently shared the haul that I got from that little excursion. One of those items was this Schaper Cavalry set. Last year for Christmas, Lando da Pimp got me this Schaper Knights set. I loved how you could keep the figures in the box, but the flip top lid allowed you to remove them, but still keep the packaging. They also had several themes that came in uniformly sized boxes. So like those Masterpiece Macross figures you keep on a bookshelf, I have a growing collection of Schaper playmobil sets. Schaper is an American company that licensed the playmobil designs for releasing sets here in America in the early 80s.

A note about the photography, the packaging of the earliest playmobil featured large photos that had at least one figure in the foreground out of focus. I loved this "slice of life" photography that instantly made you, the viewer, the same scale as the playmobil. It helped to launch playmobil's mission on fostering a child's imagination. It doesn't hurt that it's dripping with (oh-so-beautiful) pretentious European minimalism. You know what it says to me? It says

"This is no child's plaything. No, this is only on the cusp of being considered a toy. This is a learning system. A system that makes your progeny so fashionably hip and smart, that I have to congratulate you on deciding to purchase it. Your child will probably cure cancer."

So in lieu of curing cancer, this playmobil as a child has influenced me to take pictures with narrow depths of field. Aka, they're supposed to look like that.

However, if I decided to display them on my shelf, I could use this tiling backdrop I designed. We have a whole collection of backdrops you can print out and tile to the length of your shelf. This desert scene should work perfectly. Come see if we have one you could use.

Check out the rest of major haul, the toy store it came from, and all of our playmobil coverage.

All images and article ©2006 MillionairePlayboy.com.