C is for Cake Coaches + Cat = Carnage!

I had an eMail this week from a chap looking for info on wagons, turned out he was an eBayer looking for listing description information, but he was polite and answered my eMail so I was happy to help, all too often people will eMail asking (sometimes - like those Marx blokes years ago - demanding) information and never even acknowledge your reply, some people seem to think everyone else, on the Internet, is there purely to serve them!

But, as I say the guy this week was very nice, he thought his wagons might be Giant, and from the description I thought something similar and gave him a couple of paragraphs of verbiage!

He then sent an image and they were something completely different, but probably much nicer; the Hong Kong copies of 'Manurba' single-horse wagons, but with the free-wheeling wheels, and various designs other than the common one, so hopefully, by the time I'd corrected myself, he was happy?

Anyway, it left a nice image in the archive and reminded me we haven't had wagons for a while now, and haven't had single-horse novelty wagons for years! So let's kill that duck . . .

. . . with this coach! In the style of the 'Manurba's but with a Cinderella twist (I'm using quote-marks because there are several designs, with fixed wheels, rolling wheels and integrated or separate horses and I don't know for sure if they are all Manurba, and a lot of stuff credited to Manurba by the 'old guard' is turning out to be by other makers!), I suspect this is (or was) specifically a cake decoration, and from the number I've found, quite common here (so I'll tag Culpitt) but I bet you could get it elsewhere (so I'll tag Wilton as well!).

I've lost a footman's head and a couple of driver's hands! I think one or two of the horses are limping as well? But you can see the influence of the 'Manurba' wagons and coaches in the driver, who although missing a whip, has the 'Manurba' hand positions for one!

I had help! No - I've got a pesky-pesker on the staff who's now clearly just playing-up to the camera!

The coach is unmarked (in all examples) unlike the HK and German ones which usually have a national-origin moniker somewhere about the bodywork. The 'build-quality', finish or production value is high (for a cheap novelty) with sharp, crisp detail and no flash to speak-of along the join-line. The two human figures are a bit crude or cartoony though!

Another difference is that all mine are hard polystyrene where the foreign versions (and I'm not saying this isn't foreign too, I don't know) are soft polyethylene, although the snapped-off horses which came in a while ago in red and yellow are 'ethylene, so there were some . . . to be honest I thought I had a soft plastic one in red or dark blue somewhere, but I can't find it; this is the two lots I knew about, brought together.

I am working on the HK wagons (including Giant) for the HK Blog.