Mike Jackson’s Hartland Photos:
Lucas McCain—The Rifleman

Text & Photographs Copyright Mike Jackson 1998-2009

Lucas McCain—The Rifleman: #826
With the exception of the two styles of tails on the horse, there isn’t much of a variation of the Rifleman sets. His horse “Razor” is always brown and has black stockings, mane and tail. From watching the old TV shows, Razor looks black.

This is a slight variation of the Rifleman set with Lucas riding one of the earlier style walking horses with the full wavy tail. Possibly more of these exist, but more than likely people aren’t paying attention or even care! Little clues like this help date and sequence the sets. I've had this combination on my main shelf for years and never noticed the variation. Knowing that this set was introduced in 1960, it would have seemed unlikely this horse variation existed since the skinny tailed horse had been in production for several years.

The slender tailed walking horse is by far the most common horse variation for the Rifleman set.

Number Show
Name		 Star’s
Name		 Figure’s
Name		 Studio Show
Year		 Brochure
Years
826 The
Rifleman		 Chuck
Conners		 Lucas
McCain		 4 Star Sussex 1958-
1963		 1960-1961

Some information in this chart from “Total Television” by Alex McNeil 1996, 4th Edition
Mold Mark
Rifleman figure: “©1959, Four Star Sussex.” on the rump of figure.
The Rifleman got his own box. The show was produced by 4 Star Sussex and shown on ABC-TV. It appears they started producing this set in 1959, but didn’t appear on the brochures until 1960. The photo above was used in the brochures in 1960 and 1961.
Rifleman Hat:
White hat with pointed crown. This one usually has 826 inside, but I have seen at least one that did not have the number shaped exactly like the ones which do.

The Rifleman Saddle is a standard black rifle holed saddle common to many of the later sets. He has only one weapon, a Special Flip Style Winchester. This rifle looks much like the smaller Winchesters which lack the ring.