Pirate ship deck playset, 'Fighting Furies' (Sea Fury), Matchbox/Lesney Products, 1974

Playset representing the main deck, poop deck and great cabin of a wooden sailing ship, made from card enclosed in heat-sealed red and brown PVC sheets, printed in black with maritime paraphanelia such as cannonballs, rope and the 'Jolly Roger'. It is decorated with printed paper stickers showing windows, gunports with protruding cannon, lamps, a barrel and a treasure chest. The toy is held together by metal rivets, and is . The playset closes to become a carry case for other toys and for its own separable parts, it has a separate yellow polyethylene handle. The back of the set can be opened to reveal the inside of the great cabin, the walls are decorated with printed images of, for example, a coat hanging on a hook, a chest and a cupboard. It closes using a transparent plastic strap.

There are four separable parts which can adorn the deck: a pair of red polystyrene railings, which slot into the poop deck; a ship's wheel of PVC-enclosed card, which turns on a rivet; a ship's anchor of PVC-enclosed card, with a green cotton 'cable'. Inside the cabin may be placed a table of PVC-enclosed card, printed with a woodgrain effect, sporting a sticker representing a treasure map, and a chair of woodgrain-effect printed PVC. There is also a sheet of printed paper instructions, and a sticker sheet, devoid of stickers.

Purchased in 2016 [2017/168].

Romantic, exciting and frightening stories about pirates and buccaneers have been told for centuries, with pirates alternately filling the role of dashing heroes, ambiguous anti-heroes and outright villains. The general twentieth century depiction of pirates and their activities was primarily descended from two fictional characters: the cunning, likeable and morally suspect Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1882); and the highly-strung and flamboyant Captain James Hook from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904). Silver’s appearance and personality was based on accounts of historic pirates from the historic ‘Golden Age’, formidable, charismatic and driven; Hook was a more comedic confection, concerned more with looking the part of a pirate than with committing actual piracies. From these we were given the caricatures of buried treasure on remote islands, prosthetic limbs and talking parrots, among other things. Pirates remained consistently popular throughout the century, peaking particularly in the 1930s and 1950s.

Lesney Products & Co Ltd are best known for their range of die-cast toy vehicles marketed under the ‘Matchbox’ trade name. It was founded in 1947 as an industrial die-casting company by Leslie Smith (1918-2005) and Rodney Smith (1917-2013), the company’s name was derived from their given names. Lesney’s first toy car was made from 1948, and their first toys produced under the ‘Matchbox’ brand were available from 1953. As well as toy cars, action figures, slot cars and scale model soldiers were also produced by Lesney as ‘Matchbox’ toys.

‘Fighting Furies’ were produced by Lesney under their Matchbox brand during the mid-1970s. Originally pirate toys, they later included American Wild West accessories and characters. The toys are very much in the tradition of the adventure stories that were popular with young people since the 19th century, although ‘Fighting Furies’ are particularly reminiscent of 1930s and 1950s ‘swashbuckler’ films.

The pirates, Captain Peg-Leg and Hook, bear many standard characteristics associated with fictional pirates: prostheses, cutlasses, tattoos and romantic outfits. Their characters were originally supposed to have been rivals who later joined forces, embarking on a range of themed exploits described by the Adventure, Disguise and Action Pack accessory sets which were available for them.

B.630-2016