About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

B is for Buried, Better, Burger King, BMC, Brent, Bandai and Benbros

As this is the season for getting as many things on your plate as possible (without letting the gravy flow over the edge!) I thought it was the ideal moment to cover a few minor makes or smaller samples from my collection, so here are some minor 'B's'.

On the left (and marked "MADE IN ENGLAND") is a pawn from the Buried Treasure ice cream (?) chess set. These were also sold in the states both as Buried Treasure (?) and Sherbet Surprise. The question marks are down to my not knowing if Buried Treasure was ice cream or some other edible product, and not knowing if they were available in the states as BT or just Sherbet watsit!

On the right and dateing from 1949 is a joke/stag-novelty of a naked woman from Better Novelties Inc. of the US of A, who will only stay in her bath for the person who knows the secret - a sliding magnet. I have similar toys of naked women in [on] a bed and the kissing dolls I think I've covered somewhere in the 450 posts now gone below?

This is apparently a very early Burger King toy from the 1950's or 1960's and consists of the King (himself!!? Who knew or remembered he originally existed?) riding an air-powered go-cart/cartie. Coming as a kit of 4 parts in a nylonish plastic, maybe a polypropylene? His only mark is the R in a circle so favored of Giant - this must have been an American thing, we had the Copyright 'C' and the Patent 'Pat.' but the Registered sign was never of legal worth in Europe and didn't appear on our products.

Above are two bits of hollow-cast I've ended-up with; a Benbros calf and a 30mm BMC penny-toy of a mounted Life Guard, with below; the only other 'volume' producer of composition figures in Britain (we looked at Zang the other day) was a company called Brent, who produced these generic WWII British types with picture-frame nails as weapon barrels/muzzles.

There were about 3 sets of small scale Pokemon, these are by Bandai, I think I've also got smaller unmarked ones and same sized ones by Tomy probably from their gumball machines.

As these are yesterdays 'fad' now, and space needs to be made for Ben10 stuff, there might be good pickings for this sort of stuff at car-boot sales this year.

18 comments:

MSFoy said...

The composition soldier with the nail gun is a familiar - I had a few of these - exactly like your example - in a heap of stuff I inherited from older cousins in the early 1950s. My composition guys crumbled - something deteriorated with age (alas, a familiar situation now!). Also, if you got them wet, the paint lifted off.

Interesting post, as always.

Hugh Walter said...

I think - like Zang they date from the war or the period imediately after it, so it's amazing any survive at all, given the age and material!

I know of about three other poses...in fact let me look for the web ones.....


.....few minutes later; No; can't find them - I thought they were on Brians website but I'd imagined it!!.

They are in Joplins big book, standing firing tommy-gun from hip and standing firing spring to mind...

Thanks for passing,
H

Mosstrooper said...

Can vaguely remember the plastic 'chess piece' figure from my childhood (think it may be about 40-50 years ago!) the ice cream surrounded the figure and you held it by the stick at the bottom - and of course you did not know what you had got till you had eaten the ice cream - Oh Dear your blog is making me feel old !! Merry Christmas to you and yours .

Hugh Walter said...

And a Happy New Year to you and yours Mosstrooper, thanks for the info, they would have been a bit before my time then (just dateing myself younger!!)? I have seen a US cavalryman in the range and a knight/rook from the chess set, very poorly covered/known about premiums, both sides of the pond...

H

Gog said...

Happy new year 2012!

That blonde in a bathtube is great! very funny!.

Putting figures in ice sticks is an idea I have never seen before, the most similar idea I've seen was a cilindrical whistle.

And finally, is time to buy all those pokemons in flea markets or in big ebay lots since they're not popular anymore.

Hugh Walter said...

Happy New Year to you to Gog

To both Moss and Gog (and anyone else reading the comments!) - They're all here;

http://www.buriedtreasureicecreamsticks.com/

with a full history, the 'England' marked one's must have been a license from the parent company in the US/Canada...Don't'cha just love the internet!!

Devlin Thompson said...

Buried Treasure pops were indeed sold in the US under that name and with sherbet at least as late as 1990 (when we stocked them at the convenience store where I worked), but they were never all that common a product in my experience; I hadn't seen one in a decade before that point, but I had them frequently in the 1975-78 era.
The Burger King toy is from the late '70s, as evinced by his appearance (earlier versions of the character were short, squat, and stylized drawings, rather than an actor in costume). The design of the front wheel can be found in use on several cereal premiums of that era, but I don't believe it's an R&L toy, since they were out of business by that point, I believe. Similar vehicles can be found from Fruity Pebbles, Captain Crunch, and several others.

Gog said...

Amazong link, Buried Treasure is clearly the antecessor of chocolate eggs, and that collection is awesome with so many colour variants, marbled figures, defective casting and so on...

Hugh Walter said...

Gog - Yup! There's pretty much nothing else to be said about them!!

Devlin - Thanks, I pretty much gathered that they were stronger in Canada (which should be Canadia surely!) from the various comments on the forum and blog links, which helps explain the British conection - all an Empire/Commonwealth together thang goin'on there, like the Canadian copies of US MPC ring-hand figures that find themselves over this side of the pond!

Do you suppose the site owner knows he's still got to collect them all again with 'England' on the stick...do you want to tell him or shall I...Doh!

Nice looking comic blog, I'll have a better look at them all and probably link to one later...

Thanks guys;
H

Devlin Thompson said...

Man... that Buried Treasures blog is really something! I forgot to mention that there's also a version of that magic trick with a mummy in a sarcophagus. Here's a video of one in action: http://youtu.be/tGCaGryRKBc

Hugh Walter said...

Thanks Devlin, watched it, that's just how they act!

M-7 said...

Hi - Happy New Year
BTW those are not Pokemon - they're Digimon..

Hugh Walter said...

What! Digimon??!!! Don't you come here with your "Happy new years" and then start with some sub-sub-brand classification of Manga type minis before running-off! COME BACK AND EXPLAIN!!!!!

Cheers for passing through thought!
Hugh

M-7 said...

Digimon
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Digimon
you can see most of the toys here
DIGIMON TOY ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://digipedia.db-destiny.net/toypedia/s1toys.htm
;)

Hugh Walter said...

Digipedia!! I love it...sometime I think that instead of bringing pease and democracy to the whole world - over time...the internet is just going to turn an already mad world; Stark Stareing Bonkers!!!

Anyway consider me re-educated!...but one of mine looks like a pokemon...it's so unfair!

Cheers
H

[Mutters as he leaves; Pokemon...digimon...poke-a-didgery-doo...]

M-7 said...

I will not even go on about other similar toys... be well...

Hugh Walter said...

No no, joking aside, I am vaguely interested - it's all grist to the mill, there's nothing about the similarity between the two products, or a relationship between them, yet there is a clear connection...was no one sued?

H

M-7 said...

No actually they were completly separate series and IMHO Digimon had a proper plot {other than run arround and fight to be the best}
many japanese series are like this - Gundan - Sailor Moon - Card Captor -

these are some of the more famous anime that have created many such sub replicas

let alone the live action tokosatsu - spandex clad cuper heroes

all the lines have there own toys - some store bought 3-34" usually somtimes bigger - and then my favorite ..gashapon - or more known as capsule toys..
these - in japan - anre piece together 100mm {ap} models that are sold in machines

the westernized pvc toys are slim representations of these
but IMO also fun [and less expensive]

you will often find many chinese knock-off of these - often in smaller form and usuall in soft rubbery plastic

anyway back to the point - no no law suits... there is so much cross over between series - and so many series -- well it would be almost impossible ---
all right starting to bable on
off for now
hope this helps some