About Me

My photo
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.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

B is for Baden Powell's Boy Scout with Battery Torch

And U is for Unknown . . . again!

Just the one picture today, but I think you'll agree: interesting, nevertheless? I actually thought I'd already posted him, but I can't find him on the blog, so apologies if I've already asked about him.

I haven't the faintest idea who made him, when or where . . . well, actually, being the big head the Vichy claim I am, I do have a slight inkling; ironically enough, I think he may be French! But; more likely Danish.

He's a slightly 'soapy' polystyrene or celluloid/phenolic plastic without the heavy smell of the urea-formaldehyde or early celluloid compositions, so I think late 1950's or more likely the 1960's as he's in an advanced, stable polymer. The French were good at that sort of stuff, once they'd got through their crumbling, melting, splitting phases! [a quick coat of plumber's sealant - it seems to have worked for that Belgian figure and it seems to have worked on my sticky Starlux!]

Speaking of Belgium - could he be from there? He also has a lot (more?) in common with Kai Reisler's output in Denmark; they have a similarly posed GI, and cowboy and they're the only one going in the tag-list!? If he is British, I would favour Subbuteo; as the closest figures to him I know of - domestically - are the Subbuteo Beatles? Which might make him a board-game playing piece?

Obviously a Boy Scout or Cub Scout, is he part of a bigger set, or was he a token (jamboree attendance) or fund-raiser of some kind? He has no mark of any kind, and his 'swivel arms' have got a bit loose, being strait plug-ins with no ball or swelling to hold them in. He's approximately 54mm, but that would scale him to 60-odd as he's meant to be a juvenile?

Can anyone shed a little more light on the subject than his torch is able to?

Later the next day . . . Doh! Lucky I only put them in the tag list!

1 comment:

Hugh Walter said...

Fuck-off Anna Kevin Day; you fatuous waste of oxygen.

H