Fair Maidens - what the heck are these things?
In 1994, Panton announced the first "Fair Maiden" figure, "Faithful Companion". It was a very large, impressive looking piece - at the time the largest piece they had ever put out. Three more were released, once per year, in 1995, 96 and 97. Each piece had a woman figure and a creature of some sort - two dragons, a pegasus and a unicorn with her baby. These pieces were notorious for breaking during shipping - they are INCREDIBLY fragile, even more so than Krystonia.
Some interesting observations:
- Newsletter #17 mentions the series highlighting the new exclusive collectible line of "the maidens and a beast from a land called Teldor" (???)
- The pieces, while impressive, do not really fit well with the existing Krystonia pieces
- None of the pieces contain krystals
- The boxes were not Krystonia boxes
- None of the pieces had Krystonia cards - they had a piece of paper with information, and this paperwork made no references to anything about Krystonia whatsoever
With all the above, it's pretty obvious these were not intended to be part of the Krystonia collection, but they rolled them in for some reason anyway. They had the same "RW" scuptor, but that is the extent of the connection. Honestly, I'm re-thinking whether or not they should be included in the collection at all since they are not REALLY part of the line, but since they were included in the catalogs with the other pieces, there's little doubt they wanted to "blur the lines" to help sell the things. But by that logic we should also include the Funny Galore figures as Krystonia!
