News, Views Etc . . . London Show Tomorrow

Well, this is new, I was going to write 'weird', but it's not really weird, just 'new', I'm coming at'cha from a car-park on an industrial estate having paid 4.99 for an hour's internet, which seems excessive but that's end-stage capitalism! However, I happen to have an hour to spare, and remembering to tell you about this at midnight, would be a tad late!

 

Going to give the London antique toy fair a go tomorrow, I suspect it will all be wooden games. barley-twist marbles, balding Teddy Bears and old dolls, but there might be something of more interest, and it beats sitting at home avoiding showers, and definitely beats going to work!

 

Kensington Town Hall

Hornton St

W8 7NX

 

October 13th 2024

 

https://www.200yearsofchildhood.com/

H is for Haunted Hallows Halloween Hangable . . .

. . . Plaster Paint Your Own Kit! Shelfied in The Range the other day, this chalkware/plaster Witch comes with a half reasonable paint brush, which is excuse enough to part with a quid?

 

From two angles, just because of the flash, and the store's own lighting, there's not a lot else to add, it's a figural, it's seasonally relevant, and it's out there now . . . fun for kids! Purple and orange paints too!

Q is for Question Time - Whimsical Lead

Again, not so much of a question, as I feel these are likely to prove to be Good Soldiers, but they came as a bulk lot of 'shop stock' with no packaging, which would be an uncommon escape from the garage concern that is Good Soldiers, I haven't seen them in Ron's immaculately-cut, foam-lined 'toy soldier' boxes, on his stall either, and they don't seem to be copies of other, older, plastic figures, as his more whimsical, or fairy-tale-TV-Disney stuff tends to be.

 

These are more 'Good Soldier' like, as the two larger bears seem to be taken from a commonish sculpt, both sides of the channel, and both sides of the pond, often found with backwoodsmen or other Wild West, not holding bowls or spoons, mind!

 

And the girl holding a straw boater behind her back also looks vaguely familiar, but as a group a rather nice Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I would add that Baby Bear is doing a pretty good impression of Mary Plain, while Daddy Bear seems to be a stretched Mummy Bear - owch!

Whereas these Rupert the Bear snowball fighters appear to be unique sculpts, in that they weren't cereal premiums or similar as far as I know, The Tournament Collection did a whitemetal set back in the 1980's, but theirs were smoother finished I feel, and all just standing. From the left Rupet, Podgy Pig and the mischief-makers, Freddy & Ferdie Fox, although how you tell them apart is a mystery to me!

 

So anyways, any ideas, on either set, gratefully received!

A is for Another Donation!

Another mixed lot of all-sorts on the back of Adrian Little pushing a slightly overflowing, ex-somethinglikebutnotbutter tub over the pub table the other day, as these were the eclectic but nevertheless useful contents . . . 

The die-cast traffic lights are interesting, I wonder if they may be US products, but they also have something in common with the items in the Tuf Tots set from Lone Star, which we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2021/12/t-is-for-tuf-tots-toy-trucks.html

Except that they already had a finer-stemmed, one-way set in the N-Gauge Treble-O model railway line? 

 

The windmill might be De Gruyter, I have half a memory of one similar in Jan Boers' original article in Plastic Warrior magazine? The plane is Hong Kong, the boat could be British or European and is typical 1950/60's fare, there's a tub-full somewhere!

Two TN Thomas PVC dogs in the foreground, and six (of twelve?) Hong Kong dogs behind, there's more on the Hong Kong dogs in the forthcoming queue, but these arrived after the shots for the other had been collated!

 

I think we've seen the chimp here a few times now; a contemporary tub/toob toy, but the pair of crocodile/alligator types are totally new to me, and coming on the back of the three-example, probably Blue Box family, we saw a while back, have further extended the smaller-scale corner of that sub-collection!

 

Standard, late generation piracy of the Britains goat from Hong Kong is grist to the mill, while I love the little - probably Christmas cracker - cat, and the other four are Bullyland small-scale which were a revelation to me, and they're not bad sculpts, around 1:64th I think . . . same size as the larger Matchbox livestock.

 

An odd mix of oddments, of which the unpainted 30mm Comansi/Novalinea Indian is interesting, the little pink roadworker (?) more so, he could be connected to those Hong Kong copies of Merit's plastic versions of Wardie Mastermodel die-cast sculpts? The yellow blob may be a Gogo Crazy Bone, or a knock-off?

 

A pair of Marty Toys fantasy figures, two rack-toy Matchbox American machine-gunner rip-off's, an Italeri 1:35th scale kit figure, a version of an Esci red-beret and a Blue Box Japanese shooter, in a similar size.

 

Finally, an actual Merit matelot, and three HK clones of the Airfix US Paratroops from WWII, which may be the Artform Industrial Co., ones, or a new 5th (6th?) version? We've looked at them here,

 

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/2020/01/1975-wwii-us-paratroopers-51464-51464-8.html

but I know more have come in and will all need adding at some point! Thanks to Adrian for another bunch of useful gap-fillers and new question-marks - that diminutive pink chap, and the two croc's!

Q is for Question Time - Astronauts

Not really a 'question time' per se, as I know they are converted key-rings, and from the sculpting style, from the same stable as the PVC footballers we've seen here once or twice now, so Hong Kong originally, but these are actually solids in a dense polyethylene, so possibly a little earlier?

 

I just wondered if - given the faces - they aren't trying, despite the garish space-suits, to be the crew of Apollo 11? The chap on the right looks particularly specific, rather than the usual generic baby-face of the later (?) footballers?

Collins in the middle, Armstrong on the right and Aldrin on the left? I know the orange hair's all wrong, so am probably being over imaginative, but it's nice to think they might be caricatures of the original crew!

V is for Very Fine Sight!

During Brian Berke's recent sojourn in Italy, he bought this pair of larger scale items, as rather brilliant toy-related mementos of their visit, and nothing more iconic than a Vespa moped . . . with added babalicious babe from Babalonia!*

 

In Brian's own words;

"The two wheeler riders in Naples and surrounding area are positively demented.

This may be part of the universal road rage post Covid lockdown, though I suspect they were this way before.

The roads are narrow, which does not deter 2 wheelers from passing cars both into oncoming traffic and curbside at the same time. They go down pedestrian only streets. There are the equivalent of Zebra crossings. The custom is walk across and ignore traffic? Do not make eye contact. It was quite unnerving. Two wheelers don't stop they weave around you as you cross.

So I had to purchase this as it represents the most notable memory of the trip. The scale is larger than I would like but I wanted to buy it in Italy rather than later. The figure was the only one I could find, bought in the US which surprisingly it pretty accurate in terms of rider dress code near the beach!

It has gone on display temporally while the trip is fresh in the memory."

For a speculative purchase, they work very well together, and at 1:18th scale (approximately 90/100mm or 3-inches) the bathing beauty from American Diorama looks perfect on the Maisto moped, and one can imagine her posing in the warmth of the evening's setting sun, in one of the Piazzas, while her beau fetches a soft-scoop ice-cream cone!

We have a scaler, with the Crescent shooter, it's a trope which has rather fallen by the wayside in the last few years, not least because of everything else which has been going on, but I intended to have a couple on the planned, dedicated photo-station, once I'm fully settled, and we'll get back to 'berserker' comparisons!

As part of an eclectic display of odds and ends!

Brian shot an actual one in situ!

Many thanks to Brian for these, it's nice to have something a little left-field, and with a first for American Diorama (poured PU resin), it also adds to the underused Maisto (doe-cast) Tag . . . and, it's a babe in a bikini!

* I think I nicked that from Bill & Ted!

S is for Shelfies - Morrison's

Morrison's supermarkets have taken a leaf out of the 'George at Asda' type business model, and invented the in-house Nutmeg branding for what is collectively, or sometimes rather euphemistically called 'homewares', and among them are the inevitable Poundland-type tat, of which a few are always figural, and I shot these back in April;

The world is groaning under the weight of this stuff, but, if it's figural, I have a sense of duty to annotate it when I encounter it! And, let's be honest, the picture has been the same in toys since the first Tramp Steamer arrived from Hong Kong filled with cheap polymer knock-offs, 70-odd years ago!

It's pored resin, which is pretty stable, so on one level will last forever, whether at the bottom of the ocean or in land-fill, without doing much obvious harm (except possibly confusing future alien archaeologists), but the trouble is, it chips easily, and those chips end-up being ground under-foot into micro polymers which will end up in the environment and/or the food chain.

It's no longer a question of if or when you get micro-polymers in your body, but how much is there already, and the family cats, dogs, local squirrels etc . . . Butterflies were down so much this year an emergency has been declared.

Mini pot-Gnomes, about 90/100mm maybe, they have those weird rods in them which I haven't managed to identify the material of, they may be a coated steel or something more exciting/exotic like a reinforced carbon-fibre?

 

I rather liked this, the mouse is a bit big for role-play, but if you fantasy wargame in 54mm (and some do), this could have a use somewhere in the background! That's it, a few bits I saw out and about, a while ago now!

T is for Two - Taffy & Thomas!

Except it's only the one gun, and it's a Poplar Plastic Product, but we're returning for a third/fourth (?) time to the Poplar-Taffy-Thomas 5.5" gun, and hopefully sorting out the difference between them, which I highlighted here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/05/t-is-for-two-taffy-toy-and-twin.html

. . . a while-ago now! And worth a quick revision, so you can see what's being said here!

 

I actually shot this at PW's show I think, and had the opportunity to look at it more closely at Sandown Park the other week, and while it's a nice set on any level, it's also an explanation of the two types we looked at back in 2017, where a piece or two were missing, compounding the mystery then!

The [now] obvious screw-thread on the end of the barrel of the Thomas (?)/Poplar gun actually takes a pretty substantial moulding; the 'Flash Eliminator', which needs to be substantial, as it houses a firing cap, and needs to hold and direct the mini-explosion into the back of a 'shell'.

 

  

As per the instructions!

We sorted the Thomas (et al) Jeep/Jeep-driver out with the help of Chris Smith, around the same time, and here's another, pulling the under-scale (for the Jeep) artillery piece, note the hole for the plug-in's, one of which we saw in that post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/07/p-is-for-problem-solved.html

Not terribly clear, but we have seen them in a plunder-post, I think, and I know I have some in the 'unknown ammo' zone, so we'll return to this subject again, just to cross the final t's and dot the i's! They look like micro' space-ships, little squat domes with four shallow fins toward the 'skirt' end, they obviously go over the heavy flash eliminator, and are propelled by the small charge of the cap.

Sometimes as kids, when you were firing-off a roll of 200 caps at your brother/mate, from behind cover with your little die-cast six-shooter near your face, you would get the odd bit hit you in the face, and - whether bits of powder or bits of paper - they stung, as they were/are coming off a mini explosion, and the power was/is there, if only in miniature!

Box end; and thanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this.

"Carefull, or you'll have somebodies eye out with that"

Is probably, now, the true reason for the second, simplified Taffy version!

B is for Bristol Bloodhound

Managed to tick-off a smaller 'grail' at Sandown a month ago, with the purchase of this beast, I knew it existed, I can't remember when or where I saw it, but I had seen one, some years ago I think, anyway, I recognised the box and bought it quickly without checking the contents! I've also managed to shoot it twice, with some of the following 'seen elsewhere' soon after the purchase, so a few more images than usual, and no collaging!

 

The box; exactly the sort of thing I remember from Webb's The Newsagents in Hartley Wintney when I was a kid, colourful, but basic three-colour screen-printed on low quality card, reminiscent of early, cheap, post-war wallpaper like our grandparent's bathroom ducks! It leaves little doubt as to the contents and includes simple graphical instructions in the drawings.

 

Components; there's approximately 30+ pieces, all factory assembled in both polystyrene and polyethylene, with a couple of metal parts. Several small, plastic pivots/axle-pins allow for elevation/depression of the whole launcher, which also revolves on its baseplate, and a separate Bloodhound Missile with spring-firing mechanism can be locked in.

 

Ready to fire; The trigger is slightly damaged, so while I can set it up for a photograph, I can't fire it, and that's probably a good thing, as making such a model in frangible 'styrene was not a wise move, as far as longevity is concerned, and it's a bit of a miracle it's still this complete. And that white button on the back may have had a function, which I haven't yet worked-out!

 

When I first posted it elsewhere, I suggested in might be scaled-up from the Corgi die-cast, but rapidly came to the conclusion it's more likely to be based on the Frog kit, which will give my crew-figures, from that aforementioned kit, something useful to do! It's around 1:35th scale, or maybe a little smaller, I'll have to get the Frog kit, I've never previously been after, to compare! And obviously, no maker, or any clue to same!