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.

Friday, May 24, 2013

News, Views etc...Tatra Plastics, New Book and - sadly - Plagiarism!

But not in the New Book! More on that in a mo...

Tatra Plastics

First; I have been contacted by a Philip Gwynne from the PR company working with Tatra Plastics on their 50th anniversary celebrations, with the following message;

Last year you corresponded by email with Tatra Plastics Manufacturing ref plastic cereal box toys. You may be interested to learn that Tatra is launching a nationwide hunt for any of its toys that might have survived, as part of its celebrations mark the 50th anniversary.
Don't know if you and your fellow collectors can help with the search, so I'm sending you some info just in case. Please let me know how you get on...

As my collection of Tatra is all in storage and a bit non-get-at-able since my Volvo was written off by a petulant Audi TT driver, if anyone has nice examples of the sets mentioned on the original post, or complete sets they might like to lend for any events, or decent photographs, let Philip know, his email - suitably coded to cheat spam robots - is;

philip[at]thenakedcompany[dot]co[dot]uk

Especially if you live in West York's! The futher information is as follows;

TOY STORY!
Company marks 50th anniversary with hunt for oldest cereal box toy made in Yorkshire

Do you remember when small plastic toys came free inside your box of cereals? And how you shook the box to make the toy fall out into your bowl? Did you know that they were probably made by Tatra Plastics Manufacturing, whose factory is in Norwood Green, near Bradford?

To help mark the company’s 50th anniversary, Tatra Plastics Manufacturing want to track down any of their toys that have survived down the years.

"We’d like to hear from anyone who still has one of plastic toys,” says MD Karl Hesmondhalgh. “We know there are serious collectors of this kind of ephemera and there may also be a few plastic figures that have remained hidden at the bottom of old toy chests."

The era of free toys in cereal boxes was brought to an end by health and safety and “small parts - choking hazard” warnings. But for an entire generation growing up in the 60s and 70s, they were a special treat at breakfast… and a proven marketing tool for cereals manufacturers

"It would be nice to know if any survived,” says Karl. “Especially if the owner lives in West Yorkshire, because of the strong local connection




New Book

Barney Brown and Peter Cole, both known for their previous publications on the iconic brand that is Britians; Barney with his in depth looks at Farm, Zoo and Garden plastics and Peter with two editions of his comprehensive look at the history of Britians plastics; Suspended Animation - have come together to produce the next instalment in a growing archive; Herald Civilians - The Golden Years, which covers all the civilian figures not covered in Barney's previous three volumes.

 
Here's a book wot we wrote! (with appologies to Eric Morecambe)
Peter on the left and Barney, with their 'baby' and looking justifiably proud!

It is a lovely work, with all the little things that don't normally get covered in any great depth like the Ethnic and Ballet Dancers. However for those of you who like your gun-play they have covered all the Cowboys and Indians, which are technically 'civilian', however I have a slight point of order to raise with the authors...when a country has two armies - fighting each other - that doesn't make both of them 'civilian'!!

However - they are hard to catagorise and having the ECW figures covered (and photographed) in some depth, will be the best reason for your rushing out and buying it post haste...in fact, you don't need to rush anywhere, just write to Barney for details here;

Cobweb Cottage, Lyminster Road, Lyminster, West Sussex, BN17 7QQ, or eMail him here;

barney_brown[at]sky[dot]com

I believe he has some copies of the earlier publications left as well, so well worth a quick note if you are new to the hobby or missed them frist time round.



Plagiarism

It has come to my notice that a major UK publisher, known to a fair few of you has allowed one of it's authors to get a clear infringement of this blogs copyright past its editors. I will be taking the matter up with the publishers and trying to ascertain when a blog (started in 2008) becomes "pretty old", if the Internet as we know it is barely 15 years old, but in the meantime please make sure you've read (and understood) the legal notice at the foot of the blog-page. It's crap, I know, but it's to protect me and the effort I put into this, and it's not the first time.

Piracy - It's a bit crap! (ABC)

I have absolutely no problem with people downloading images, text or even the whole blog (as happens about twice a month) for their own use, against the possibility that the Internet will cease to exist some time after lunch tomorrow (which never comes), indeed there is no way to stop people doing so, and I do it all the time, but I try to rename anything I download with an 'X' to remind me I can't re-use it.

While it's very hard for me to pursue a private publisher over the pond - using my photographs without permission, to pad-out his interminable and error-filled list of new poured-resin -  it's far more easy to have a word with someone closer at home and I will pursue this.

Please - don't use the stuff without asking...Henk? Are you reading? You clearly visit or you wouldn't have been able to steal the vac-form pictures would you?..stealing my traffic at the same time! If you don't have the stuff to photograph yourself, you link to someone who has. Clearly you've misunderstood the meaning of 'Inter-Net', it's not a Trawl-Everthing-that-Takes-Your-Fancy-and-Drag-it-Back-to-Your-Place-Net! Bloody Dutch Buccaneers, always were a problem.

If you don't understand the [International] rules of/on copyright, intellectual property rights or plagiarism, the answer is simple...don't copy anything until you do! Rant over.

13 comments:

Paul said...

Fair comments Hugh. Good on you mate.

Anonymous said...

so it really was tata

Paul´s Bods said...

Whose nicked your pics?!! Without asking that ain´t on, not fair and a downright ingnoring of the etiquette.
I do remember the free toys´in the cereal boxes. One, and I cannot find (maybe cos i can´t remember the name correctly) were the upsi-sidi downs. Little figs with thier legs and arms all swopped about. Probably not what they were called, we probably made the Name up. I had hundreds of toys, planes busses and a good one was cut out and Keep stuff, like a series of Knights based on gravestone carvings. Had the whole set.

Hugh Walter said...

Paul Paul - Thanks mate!

Paul's Bods Paul - How many books on small scale have come across the pond in the last hundred years? Thieving Canuck! But there's nothing I can do unless I find a Canadian litigator willing to work for peanuts, and they'd be damp peanuts at that - they'd have to go by sea as I'm as skint as the vernacular a*****le!!!

The funny thing (well, not funny - Ironic) is that it was another Dutchman who - amoung a couple of others - got me kicked off a certain forum for defending Plastic Warrior's copyright, they didn't see the stuff should never have been posted, they just saw me as a problem...and one of them called himself a journalist!

Today's ruling in the Bercow/McAlpine case while referring to defamation, did establish that terrestrial law will be applied to the Internet?...

As to the things you used to have...the tragic phrase in that sentence is "...had"; "I had...", I've got most things but I'm still looking for the odd bit I KNOW I had!!

Anonymous - Er, yes, I think?

The Ferrymen said...

Hugh,
Hope you render them a new rectum for stealing your pics.
Good luck.
Regards,
John

Hugh Walter said...

John - in the language of the yoof of today; ROF, LMAO!!

H

Mike Niederman said...

You're understandably vague about naming names, but if the guy's a member of the Ontario Model Soldier Society, based in Toronto, I can at least have some moral pressure put on him. Especially if he's flogging his wares at their annual show. Although that probably wouldn't work on a pirate.... More hints as to title?

Hugh Walter said...

Thanks Mike, but if you haven't guessed - don't worry. He knows who he is and at some point I'll go back through the blog finding all the copied pictures and congratulating myself for each contribution to the doorstep - in bright pink!! Revenge being best served cold...and left on-line for all time!!

Hugh

Mike Niederman said...

Hi Hugh, you can amend this or not publish it- I was just talking on long-distance phone to an old friend who was enumerating his latest 1/72 and 1/76 soldier purchases, I mentioned Plastic Soldier Review to him (he's a non-adopter of the computer fad) and he started in on this local (to him in Toronto) guy who'd put out a book on the subject. Said fellow had rejected out of hand my friend's offer of a two page long list of errata he'd spotted. Sounds like the culprit- a certain V. R. Quite a coincidence. He hasn't made friends and influenced people over here, either.

Hugh Walter said...

The penny drops!! Suffice to say the culprit is in 'Finance' and they haven't been making many friends anywhere on Earth...since about 2007!!!

Ed and Bettina Berg said...

Hugh,

Having been a prolific downloader of images since we got our first 'puter back in the '90s the one habit I never developed was simply re-posting them out of hand, having done so very seldom and then only to use as an example. They were always for my own edification and enjoyment and to assemble somewhat of a 'catalog' of sorts for my own research. But recognizing that, of the 7 billion semi-intelligent bi-peds wandering this planet, a good many of them are 'connected' and it's a darn good bet they're copying my photos. To this end I gave one of my readers - Alf Beem of the Netherlands - full permission to copy my blog photos to WikiPics (or whatever it is they're called). That way anyone can have free reign of them. I have done my part in sharing them and have absolutely no qualms about the arrangement. I'm no spring chicken and am sure to die poor anyway so what the heck!! :-) I'm just gonna continue to have fun with the blog.

Keep on truckin' !!!

Hugh Walter said...

Hi Ed, I know what you're saying and at least one of the images 'stolen' by the Canadian 'author' is from my old Imageshack account!

I have myself posted one or two images for which the provenance/permission is not clear here on the blog, but on each occasion I have said as much - in writing - allowing the provision that should the original owner/copyright holder wish-to come back at me, they can. I try to use them only when they are un-watermarked images I am pretty sure came from/recall being from a public auction site.

But when someone produces a book with a dozen or so of your images, plus a couple of whole entries that can only have come from information on the blog and when the same tome does credit other items on the blog (some published here weeks before the author must have committed the word.doc to print) the plagiarism is deliberate!

And - ultimately - I am sharing here, it's not going anywhere soon, and with it's current levels of traffic, would stay here for some time if I was hit by a bus tomorrow, so these guys just need to reference it, not steal bits of it to suit!

H

Ed and Bettina Berg said...

Yeah Hugh, what he did was pretty low-handed. I haven't a clue if anyone has done that yet with my photos - and according to Google I have over 10,000 posted. Oh well, I think today I won't worry 'bout it. Perhaps tomorrow.

...or not :-)

Cheers

Ed