H is for Have a Happy Easter!

Well, I seem to have managed to get Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday off, so I might get a bit posted, but I might go off and do something more meaningful! I fancy a walk this afternoon, but in the meantime, it is time for the regular look at what Scully & Scully have had in their window this festive season, courtesy of Brian Berke from the New York office!

 

Trees and shrubs were a noticable portion of the display, and Brian actually went back to shoot a couple more. I think the first one may have been flocked with micro poly-beads, but the others just look to be painted?

 

They seem to have moved them around between visits, so we get different lighting, if not different angles, hard to shoot flats anyway other than straight-on! We saw this sculpt (or Edition, as the flat 'publishers' call them), last year, but they always seem to use a new painting, when they do re-use the models.

 

 

A hundred-and-fifty meters to Easter people, a few circuits of the garden, or pop-down the corner shop and back, you'll be there! And if you don't use the carrot-car you'll get a bit of exercise!

 

These are a delight, every time, and just as traditional as chocolate eggs, although I was now years old when Kalani Ghost Hunter (one of my current secret pleasures on Facebook reels) educated his followers to the fact that the American's don't do chocolate eggs like the Europeans do, his mind was literally blown (non fatally!) by the wall of eggs in an average UK supermarket, and when he went back to the 'States, he showed us a Walmart display, and apart from a few Cadbury's Cream-Eggs, similar things from Reeses, and a few minis, there was nought!

 

And, many thanks, as always, to Brian for taking and getting these shots to us.

News, Views Etc . . . White Tower Miniatures

Matt posted this yesterday;

"Sad day, we have done our quarter one review. Sales are down quite a bit. It must be a combination of three things, firstly the world climate is stopping people buying due to costs and fear. Secondly ebay has added costs to our products, more of that later. Thirdly we are possibly making too much.

So something will be changing, our products will no longer be on ebay. It is marking up prices, gouging on postage and making listing very difficult. Its not worth it, so go to our website to gain free shipping cheaper prices and the full range of our products. Secondly the price of metal has skyrocketed so production costs are beyond sales, so we need to tread more carefully. This means we will still release the next two batches but after that until we start to break even I will use you good people to pick what gets made, I will sculpt figures and put them to a vote.

Sad but needs must till things balance out. Please help me find new customers by sharing our Facebook and website with people you might think will be interested. And you at least will have a say in what goes into production as I will not be able to subsidise the width or figures I sculpt into production. A bit gloomy I know but as a one person operation I can not bankrupt myself for a hobby."

So grab anything you need off of evilBay if you use that platform, before he delists it, or remember to use the website from now on; https://whitetowerminiatures.co.uk

 

You can get hold of him on Faceplant too; https://www.facebook.com/whitetowerminiatures

F is for Farm Friends - Odds & Sods

I haven't photographed my LB (or other) farm 'funimals' yet, and with the bulk of them in storage that'll be a project for another day, but I have found a few bits around and about, which we're looking at here, with one or two shots I have taken while sorting or whatever.

 

Pretty sure these are all Lik Be, as I said in a previous post, there are more than one sourse of these cartoon animals, and different sets (like the band, and the circus sets - smaller animals riding/climbing on larger animals while wearing hats!) within makers, and many similar smaller sources, so it's not an exact science.

 Even within the oeuvre of LB's offerings, where the A/B- coded numbering helps, it's complicated by unmarked examples and the fact that the winter-sports funimals, band, cake decorations, dinosaurs, cavemen, wild west and 'Gygax monsters' (six posts - coming soon . . . I hope!), are also within the list, quite randomly, although usually in blocks, with the unnumbered fishermen, spacemen, astronauts and robot/aliens and others, probably accounting for some of the gaps (also blocks) in the list!

 

Colour variations of the rabbits we saw in the other post.

 

One shot I did take, to show colour variations of the pig!

From Mike B's catalogue image, the trio of chicks is sometimes broken-up and sold individually, or as individuals, I should say, the other three are from a sub-set of more anthropomorphic animals with items of clothing or human accoutrements. The farm boy on the music box will be a hard polystyrene version, and came a little later than most of this stuff; in the mid-1980's

A better sample of the farm range, with both cows, both donkeys (one with loud, pink-paint detailing), separated chicks (two of each), the goat and an adult duck, who's huge! If I recall correctly, the seller had multiple sets, but had opened one for the sales shots, but it was before I was an active buyer on evilBay!

The set we looked at in the previous post, but I think this was the seller's image, although I take similar images, I rarely use the same colour of both surfaces, and try to hide gaps! But it worked, as I bought two of them, a few months apart!

This is from the 'box'-something guys in Germany, still available, but, after a few successful purchases from them, it all went a bit pear-shaped - after Brwreakshit-proper (Boris the clown's 'deal'), they cancelled an eBay sale, didn't reimburse me, and bombarded me with eMails, in German, trying to get me to make an off-eBay sale (against feeBay's rules) elsewhere, so I've never bought from them again, and they got my fifty-odd quid, but have lost more over the subsequent few years? Branded to both Wello and LB.

The 'farm kids', there are a rarer farmer and wife, who are more realistic, still cartoony, but slimer or more proportionate, and so go better with the tractor driver, found in a larger set or sets - no pictures yet!

A tragedy! Some people shouldn't be on feebleBay! This was the sum-total of the sellers images? They look to be two further examples of the same sized card as the Wello-contracted set above, but this time all-Lik Be. And that says "Paint High Impact, not Taint - Ooh-missus!
 

I'm not

 

I'm not going to look at the other vintage makers here, but this is the modern take from someone called NPRC (somthing-People's Republic [of] China?) on Amazon, clearly a made-up-name! Twelve animals with more than a hint of homage to the oldster funimals, Lucky Luke and a bit of Hanna-Barbera!

F is for Farm Friends - Smaller Set

So this is the other set I have, it's a smaller set, and has the boy again, although the girl does exist, I think we've probably seen her here, in a donation or show-plunder post in the past, but of interest is the reverse sculpt cow, flat tree and Dutch barn.

 

The flat tree is in the style of, but not a copy of the Lego trees of the era, while the Dutch barn, with a stain/wash and dry-brush, would make an excellent war gaming scenic piece, albeit with a rather 1950's silo, but still, you could hide an anti-tank gun in the doorway, behind some straw, or a strategically-placed wood-pile!

 

The window-box and liner, I bought two by accident, so unboxed one set, after I realised I had two! As with the 'funimal' band and critters in the Animal Fun Fair set (previous but one post), these are glued in with Hong Kong's take on what was called Evo-Stik in the UK and over time it dries right-out and becomes brittle.

 

If, or when I'm replacing/restoring sets with remnants of this glue I use small spots of a modern clear contact adhesive like Bostik (yeah, they all drop the 'c'!) or UHU, which dries near invisible with the chocolate brown underneath.

 

One of the better B's, clearly a heavier whiteness on the right, and while it's a shit logo, I went into all that while we were still trying to promote the 'LP' red-herring, and wean people off 'ID' or 'IDL' which are both still being used on feebleBay! Now we know it's Lik Be, we know it's an LB!

F is for Farm Friends - Larger Set

The Farm Friends trope was a sort of under-branding carried by quite a few sets, some generics, or supplied and otherwise branded to other firms, but this set is fully marked to Lik Be (LB) and is the first of two we're looking at for now (I might dig out all my evilBay/Worthpoint shots later!), and having been in Picasa since '21, is well overdue.

The full set, the Farmhouse is actually a money-box/bank, with the smaller pieces stuffed inside, along with a blow-moulded grain-silo which also has bits in. The artwork suggests the traffic-light sticker, placed here, on the roof, should be engine 'detailing' on the tractor!
 

The artwork listing is also not quite complient with the contents, a 'pony' is actually, clearly a donkey, no matter how cartoonish, a pink and white farm is also hinted at, and the farm-girl has been replaced with a farm boy! There's two dogs and an extra chicken, too.

 

The other dog - if we assume the referred-to one is the sheepdog - is this small black puppy, and the boy is pretty dwarfed by both of them! The boy and girl are in the style of, and may be by the same sculptor as the Native American Indian kids, seen before here at Small Scale World.

 

The smaller animals, the problem with researching these is that as well as at least three sets of knock-offs (nominally, at the moment; Betta Toys, Colonial and Holly), some of these are not marked or numbered in sequence with the A-codes, while the odd piece has a B-code, so I'm rather keeping my powder dry on that score, to which end we've seen the rooster on his log/stump a couple of times without me letting-on his LB connection!

 

The larger animals, all 'funimals', with the pig being one of the commoner finds, and the cow being among several versions, clones, and a reversed-sculpt, in several sizes. A cat as big as a sheepdog, why not?

 

The money-box farm-house, a sort of Dutch-American design, with a simple key to open/close the flap, also equipped with a carry handle, it's not bad for a bit of Hong Kong tat, and would have made a poorer kid happy, even under the tree at Christmas!

 

The tractor has a driver who is channelling the Fisher-Price 'Little People', who were themselves mirroring the earlier wooden infant toys, like our racing-car driver (seen here passim), the whole design, scale-reduced, is taken from Fisher-Price, a rare instance of plagiarism from LB, who usually designed their own stuff?

 

The grain silo; made of two blow-moulds which just sleeve together, the silo-body being decorated with relief sculpts of corn-cobs, a deer and something in a nest which may be a catdog or a dogcat, it's not clear, and it might be a pig!

 

The farm-fencing in hidden in the silo, and with only four pieces, not much cop! Having been sticking these in the 'unknown' fence section for years before I knew they were Lik Be, I have quite a few of them somewhere, and one day we may have a photo-session of a proper set-up with all the LB farm - there's another set of chickens and a pair of kittens on the yellow plastic, and more animals, including some realistic sculpts.

 

The much-missed and not-yet replaced Boysie-boy helped me investigate tractors!

And Godzilla monsters!

K is for SS Kresge, Kids, Kmart and Super K!

Nearly history now, but the Australian operations continue as an independent enterprise, several stores outside CONUS are still going and a limited presence on an old Floridian site is still doing business. But back in the day, they were big!

 

Claimed by a Chemtoy Corp of Circero, Illinois, the set also states the contents are made in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, and to anyone who's been following this stuff, clearly contains the products of the Lik Be Plastic & Metal Factory of the territory, but not carrying the LB logo on this occasion. It's then further branded to SSK, the short form logo of the earlier iteration of Kmart, - SS Kresge.

 

I said, in a post on other things (astronaut-spacemen I think) a while ago, that I had two farm sets to post, but don't seem to have got round to doing so yet, however, as one needs much editing before it goes first, of the pair, I thought I'd shift this out of Picasa as a warm-up!

 

How it arrived from the 'States!

 

 

After I had matched up glue marks and restored a bit of order!

 

A mix of three from the anthropomorphic animal band (bases marked with the LB hugging monster, as per the divers/fishermen/astronauts) and seven of what I call the cartoon 'Funimals', we also get five sections of the distinctive LB farm fencing, in two blisters, heat-welded and dated to 1971.

 

There is no relationship between the Key 1 code here and the British supermarket chain Keymarket, which, although having a similar logo, was not related to Kresge at all. The first supermarket locally was a Keymarket,, back in the late 1960's, it's now the - totally rebuilt - Sainsbury's site in Farnham, we would go there, very occasionally, to do a 'big shop', and it was a big deal!