S is for Sandown Park - Combat Troops

We're clearing some stuff out this week aren't we? Mostly khaki chaps in this post, the actual 'army men' from the September Sandown Park visit, and we've seen some of them before here, but this is how they come in!

 

Three from Replicants, I think I have two already, but the executioner is new to the stash, if memory serves, two of them (sentry and sailor) are PW show exclusives, so it may be that all three were, although, after their show debut's, they usually go on to the Weston's site for wider distribution.

 

Seen before, and to be found on the WWI American page of the Airfix figure Blog, here's the Montaplex 'New Zealanders', with German Obergefreiter's rank badges! Utilising the Airfix Americans and the baby kangaroo from one of the zoo sets, although without the adult from the other set present, is it just a wallaby?

 

Three composition TAG's, including a new identification (Free French ally, 2nd figure from the left), and yet another Cossack painting (seven found, seven paint ways . . . and three poses?), and an African soldier, who I think might be . . .

 

. . . Solido Belge? I know they made some composition in that period just after the war, and while the mark is not actually readable, I think with a little wishful thinking, it could be Solido Belge!

 

Charbens 'Great White Hunter' reissues, not an urgency, and not really toy soldiers at all! But in a dense polymer and new colour (presumably from the Marlborough/Dorset era), so worth grabbing for both completion and a wider-ranging sample.

 

All seen before - 

Speedwell German, Cherilea UN 'dancing loon' and some Britains Swoppet parts!

 

From the subjects, I assume French production, at first glance I thought they were chalkwear, but they are a pretty standard 'olin' composition of wood flour and linseed oil with wire weapons, two have bases, but from the styling I think they are all the same maker, I just don't know who . . . or whom?!

 

I think these might be Acedo (Domage et Cie), but I'm not sure and need to check, the MG gunner needs a bit of a mend, but I'd do it obviously, nothing worse than faking it, and there's so much fake stuff around now.

T is for Targeting Target!

Back to our Halloween dispatches from the New World, and we're looking at the shelves in Target. As we've had Costco here for a couple of decades or more now, it's a wonder why Target have never tried, but if they did, they'd probably destroy what's left of the High Street, and two of our smaller supermarket chains, so maybe a good thing they haven’t bothered!

 

Dastardly Duckies! I love the bat-duck in the background, and is the one on the left channelling Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice . . . Beetl . . . ooh, nearly!

 

A huge orange pumpkin skeleton, but what's that, down the bottom right? How quintessentially American is a Road Runner skeleton? That's what it is, isn't it? That's as WTF cool, as the alien/monsters in the previous post!

 

Andy Warhol’s pop-eating-itself here, with Star Wars stormtrooper skeletons! They look to be fired ceramic too, proper novelty ornamental tat! And loving the pumpkin-snowmen next to them, too!

 

We love erasers here, we love pencil tops, and we love finger-puppet figurals, so with this set triggering all three nostalgia buttons, we're happy, until the next post! Two of them, the Mummy and Pumpkin, were found in the TKMaxx set, last year, so I'll be looking out for the others? Many thanks to Brian Berke for popping down to Target for us!

WTF is for Whacky Tall Fellows!

These came from Peter Evans a couple of weeks ago, and are, well, whacky tall fellows . . . or fellowesses? I mean WT-very-actual-F? Clearly the Hong Kong 'old guard' in China, jumping on the Skibidy Toilet/Brainrot bandwagon, and it's so nice to know this shite is still being planned, designed, and issued!

 

No brand, no branding, no marks, no date, no nothing, just a bag . . . full of bags! Totally generic, and I thought they might be bendy toys, but it turned out they were just polyethylene novelty figurines, presumably picked from a counter display box or outer liner of some kind?

 

There's eight in total, about 80mm, two each of four polymer colours, most (five) having a skeleton as the central frame, and with open speaker/cone shapes being found on four of them, the red one on the left having shark'y mouths in the open ends of the cones. All have one colour of paint, stab-and-hoped, with some having two colours, and the giant eye having three.

 

The black 'baby' being the obvious odd-ball, having nothing in common with the other seven, while two incorporate inanimate human-constructed objects in the red traffic light and black screen of some kind. Completely whacky, completely fun, hard to stand up, classic Hong Kong tat, from 30-years after Hong Kong stopped marking their output separately, but I bet that's where these have come from!

 

Thanks to Peter for finding and grabbing them for us. These are so bad, they’re WTF'ing cool! 

S is for Sandown Park - Wild West

Picked up a few Wild West bits at the last Sandown Park shenanigans, nothing rare or valuable, but always things of interest, grist to the mill, gap fillers and collection enhancers/improvers - so let's have a look at the plunder!

 

While the Reamsa stuff in Sobres seems to be copies, I think these are original Comansi supplied product, the 60mm backwoodsman/pioneer/trapper being the same softish silicon-rubber as the late Thunderbirds/OVNI stuff, while the 50mm Lucky Luke is one of their sculpts too? Their relevance to the Battle of Manila being a moot point, but typical of these cheap, pocket-money, Montaplex novelty envelopes!

 

Rather damaged, but new colours for these 'styrene large-scale versions of the SIKU manufactured Euro-premiums - carried here, in the UK, by Betterwear, as a smaller range, in soft ''ethylene . The yellow being the same shade as the British issues, and both will join the dun, fawn and bronze, painted and unpainted sample, slowly gathering in a bag somewhere!

 

 

So clean I suspect another of the East German production, like the military chap we looked at a while ago, but I'm not clued-up enough on Elastolin composition to be sure, a nice clean figure though, along with a huge (100mm+) Hong Kong copy of something Spanish, I feel? 

A pair of HK copies of Britains (one Herald, one Swoppet), a speedwell/Trojan type and what I suspect is a Hilco 'from hollowcast', it's similar to a couple of the Johillco metal sculpts, and turns up quite often?

 

Mixed cowboy lot, I don't remember where these all came from (with previous and next two image contents), there must have been a mixed bag of them, possibly from Isaak, or Martin? Two Lone Star, a Crescent, a Supreme and three to be ID'd, along with a wagon driver.

 

Mid-quality swoppet knock-offs!

 

One of the Crescent ACW copies from Hong Kong, carried by Ideal in the US, more generic over here, this one has been repainted by the owner, from the look of it!

S is for Spooky Sweets!

We (UK) may not be good at figural toys, compared to the ''States, come Halloween, but on the edible figural front, we always seem to provide, and while B&M had the same lollies as the last two years, I managed to find these iced jelly lollies in The Range.

 

Jelly Pops, produced in the Republic of Ireland (first for the Tag's maker list?), for CDS Group, they are iced with a sort of hard fondant, and we have two full figurals in the cat and ghost, along with a pumpkin and witch's head!

U is for Undying Undead!

This must be year eight, maybe year ten? Our roving reporter in North America, Brian B, has managed to visit three of the 'household name' discounters, to see what they had on offer this Autumn, and he's found a darn slight more than I've managed to, over here, and we're starting with the new packaging for an old favourite.

 

They've lost their blister-cards, in favour of card-headed bottle-bags, and there seems to be the one card 'Skeleton Army', despite the fact that some of them have the Mummies, but only the two types were to be found in New England!

 

Now claiming to be made in Vietnam, and imported by the Old East Main Co., Dollar General is carrying them. Thanks to Mr. Berke for shooting them for us, like the cyclamens under the cedar, they just keep popping up every year!

Q is for Question Time - Reamsa Copy?

A simple one today; can anybody ID the maroon plastic figure?

 

The figure on the left is clearly marked REAMSA 68, from Spain, and, unusually for Reamsa, it is in a rigid polystyrene polymer, rather than the vinyl of early production, or the polyethylene of later mouldings

 

The one on the right, also 'styrene, seems to have dropped the scalping knife, and may be French in origin. Note how they have both not only scalped, but cut the whole face off, and are both looking pretty pleased about it!

S is for Sandown Park - Animals

There's a lot of lose stuff to clear, from the last Sandown, from Peter Evans and from Adrian, and with the next Sandown Park show only three weeks away, I guess, I need to clear the last lot, sharpish! Here's the animal element of the last show's plunder!

 

A miniature set from Rado Industries, with both the Ri Toys tree-logo and a Laurie Toy moniker, having previously seen a Lucky Toy in Laurie graphics one might be tempted to think there's a connection between Lucky and Rado, but really it's just that Laurie were an importer/jobber, putting their name to various other peoples stuff, whether known or unknown. The beauty of these little sets (we've seen a long thin one before (in Linda graphics?), is that they help separate the Blue Box/Marx (Sunshine Series) stuff from the Ri Toys copies!

 

This was an excellent find, as it's only a year or two since I discovered this knock-off Muffin the Mule from Gantoy, courtesy of one of Chris Smith's donations to the blog. I now know there are other colours too, and the one from Chris didn't have the integral base of this one, nor signs of it's removal, so there's  two versions, but for now, box ticked!

 

The accompanying plants in the first image are from the Corgi Magic Roundabout playset.

 

Odds and sods to be sorted!

 

Dinosaur flats, with three British cereal premiums (left, Nabisco), and two Warner marked, German versions on the right. I believe there are French variants too, and with soft polyethylene re-hashes (seen here passim), some from the antipodes, quite a sub-section now!

 

More flats, with the white ones probably all from Europe, the Elephant (missing a gun or circus wagon?) marked Munsterland, the cat 'Carstanjen' and the puppy something unreadable, while the other two, coloured ones, are more capsule toy or cracker prize type fare.

 

These are from a board game, not unreasonably called the Donkey and the Carrot! From Spears Games, there's a red one missing from the line-up, and these are interesting as they may connect with the sheep we saw in the Shepard and his Dog game. There may also be a connection with all the Prior/AHM/Cullpit stuff (they are vinyl), and Arco (some Rae marked polyethylene animals seem to be the same as the Arco Noah's Ark stuff), so another useful find, toward future, more definitive posts.

H is for Hobbycraft Horrors

Yes, ''Horrors' is a bit strong, mildly enduring maybe? I didn’t find - or haven't, there's still a week or so, but it's already being concentrated to one or two shelves/tables, to make way for the Christmas merchandise - found much Halloween stuff this year, but there are a few bits to look at, and some bits from across the pond, to come.

 

Not much in Hobbycraft beyond the usual craft stuff, paint your own and purple pipe-cleaner stuff, but they did have these at the beginning of the season (sold out when I went back a week later), resin decorations of the cake variety,, although so small, they are almost 'sprinkles'!

 

There appears to have been a tweak in the world of poured-resin technology, with both a glossy glassiness to these, and transparent, coloured resins contributing to two sets of ghosts and the pumpkins,, the cauldrons being a more standard polyethylene, or polypropylene?

 

I found this in a charity shop in Frimley, and initially thought it was a 'styrene cake decoration, in the style of our Christmas stuff, but after cleaning, it was clear it too was this newish, pure white glassy resin, obviously Ganesh (Ganesha, Ganapati, Vinayaka, or Pillaiyar), the Hindu god, a four-armed elephant, also revered by Jains and Buddhists, and is probably aimed at miniature home shrines? He was probably on his way to someone's home for the festival of Ganesha Chaturthi in the month of Bhadrapada (August/September), so almost overlapping Halloween!

R is for Recent Reading

Not from the last few weeks of enforced sabbatical, but earlier in the year, or even last year, but new purchases, rather than the stuff from the 2021-'23 sorting photo's folder, which we have been looking at in thematic lumps, and I can't remember where they all came from, but I suspect a couple of visits to the old bookshop in Alton, and a couple of charity shop purchases?

 

Ironic, as I'd forgotten it, and it has a whole page on the Gowland & Gowland vehicles, whose drivers we looked at a while ago! A useful little primer on 'Old Fashioned Cars', in both die-cast metal and plastic, along with sections on the larger collector models. The cover image includes some of the European plastics we saw a few French examples of, in some posts a year or two ago, here at Small Scale World.

 

This is a fascinating 'document', I can't work out if it is some kind of facsimile, or the actual Bassett-Lowke catalogue of 1968/9 (or for 1969), I suspect the later, but it's very modern-looking for a late-60's tome. It has all manor of sections, including hundreds of old adverts going back to their inception, what appears to be their - then - current range, other makers collectables, in the London shop (including a lovely boxed set of European toy soldiers), future plans, and various other bits of company history, and tech-spec' stuff.

 

I tend to only buy doll, doll's house or Teddy' books when I see them going for a song, as they are well outside my main areas of interest, but they often have useful annexes or appendices, and anything with an index can have a use, if only to look up company or individuals' specifics. And Christies are a better class of auctioneer - if you know what I mean!

 

This is a bit 'coffee table', but without the large format or colour imagery! It's a rambling meander through certain aspects of popular culture, with a bias toward design, and will complement several similar works already in the library. Again more use as a reach-for/dip-in reference work, than a definitive guide to anything!

 

Three more for the 'same size as Shire Albums'' section! There is a bunch of the Miller's somewhere, not seen when we looked at this format and the Shire's last year, because they we shot separately, while the Louis Wain is a catalogue of known collectors/vintage postcards. The other is a glossary of old auction terms, and panders more toward my interest in language and words, than toys, but there's some collectables stuff in there!

 

This seems to be in a similar size and format as the Manga guide, I bought (and posted) a few years ago now, so they can sit next to each other when they are finally set up (was there a superhero volume as well?), and provide a ready-reckoner for stuff I know so little/less about, although I know a bit more about this than Japanese cartoons, I prefer the Euro-stuff which begat Metal Hurlant, or the 2000AD inspired UK output, and often find I need help with the more populist US stuff, and modern 'Indy' publishing!

 

A trio of actual Shire Albums, there is an 'Other Collectables' post on walking sticks in the long queue, playing cards come under toys & games, and will add to several other works on the subject - there's even a book specifically on boomerangs in the library!

 

The tile work will enhance a separate library on the subject, other interests of mine include both the Art Nouveau/Arts & Crafts tiles, and mosaics; ancient and modern. Although I'm also interested in the bi, or tricoloured clay tiles of the medieval period (Church floors), their modern copies (Victorian/Edwardian hallways and lobby's), and the somewhat unscientific science of repeat patterns and mirror-symmetry which drives some forms of tiling/tile design (or wall papers/wrapping papers), which can quickly get you into Fibonacci, fractals and quantum weirdness!

 

This was a brilliant find, coming too late to crib on this Brian Berke contributed (nine years ago!) post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/01/c-is-for-contribution-week-i-circus.html

 

And it's clearly the tourist/visitor keepsake, for the exhibition which Brian visited. It contains a history of both its building, and how it ended up where it is, and has lots of images of the various elements while they were being built. Interestingly, there's no sign of the sea horse/merhorses, Brian shot, so they must be a newer addition, from the hands of the Mr. McGarvey and his wife, whom Brian mentioned at the time?