F is for the Falcon Steam Pencil Works!

Not often we have a piece of Victoriana on here, so twice in one day, and another board game, is a bit special! I shot these on Adrian's table at one of the autumn shows, and it's a very unusual thing, as its primary purpose seems to be the promotion of pencils, despite being plaster figures.

 

Burglar & Bobbies, a lovely litho-print label which conjures-up Sherlock Holmes or James McLevy running about in the dark while some villain from the slums fires wildly into the night hoping to stop the chase!

 

Slush-cast from plaster of Paris, or possibly blank-de-moudon (it's quite hard) suitably painted, and not that big, maybe 55-mil for the Bobby and 60-odd for the burglar, I didn't measure them, but sort of standard chess-piece size!

 

The dimples in the centre were probably caused by a wooden dowel 'dibber', being used to push the material into the corners, such as there are, while the air-bubbles were being knocked or vibrated out?

 

There were five Bobbies and one burglar, so I think it's best described as a variation of Fox & Geese (or Pig and Mooses, as I believe they play in North America!), or Hare/Fox and Hounds, as far as the game-playing mechanism goes, but with a smaller playing area, vis-à-vis number of squares?

 

Given the age of the game - it's obviously older than 1952 - the 'Her Majesty,' must be Victoria? And I was clearly born decades after 'The Bank of England' pencils ceased to be a thing! E Wolff & Son, being the actual maker, or issuer?

 

Given the amount of mentions of pencils on both the box - outer and inner, and the paperwork, the feeling is that this was a promotional item, like the Seagram's Whisky game, and like that, might have been bought in, or at least the playing pieces would have been? Although, I think Falcon pencils were still around, when I was a kid?

 

I forgot to shoot the other side, which must have had the movement instructions! I have two good shots of this side, so I suspect I was distracted, and thought I'd tuned-it over when I went back to shoot the other side! Many thanks to Adrian for letting me shoot this.

K is for a King Does Not a Republic Make!

I bought this in the Phillis Tuckwell charity shop in Farnham on Tuesday, I have to say the Phillis Tuckwell shop in Farnham has some very, very, very smart stock, lots of old collectables, stamps and ephemera, white elephant, ceramics, fabrics and clothing, old toys (a tray of good condition Yesteryear's), I could have spent a fortune, but this was in the window, and while not cheap, is near perfect, so I settled on this.

 

For reasons, I WILL bore you with another day, this is how you are supposed to display a chess set for sales purposes, one of each piece in one colour and a pawn from the opposing side. The set is bone, not ivory, I do have an ivory set or two, and one day we'll have a mini season on chess sets, but for now, these happen to be in front of me!

 

Exquistely hand-made threads on all the base discs, and several sections of the Kings and Queens, I don't know if these are a Napoleonic POW's work, or something more commercial, or later? I suspect something a little more modern, as the joins are all tight, unlike earlier sets, where some threads can be quite loose. Suggesting the maker had a jig, if not a modern tap & die set?

 

You can tell it's bone, at a glance, none of the warmth of ivory, nor yellowing with age/handling, and clear striations in the material, along with some rough areas like this crown underside, all easy clues to it being bone rather than ivory.

 

The greatest variation is in the Pawns where some look visually quite different, simply by being a millimetre higher, or a little fatter or thinner, and I think one Castle (first image above) may be a replacement, but it's quite a good, sympathetic one, just a slightly shallower battlement/longer neck.

 

The black side was fully coloured before fiddling cleaned/wore the threads. I suspect the whole side has been 'enhanced' with a marker pen, and at some point I will give them an alcohol dip and rinse, to remove anything like that, and then either re-stain with old India ink, or rub melted boot-polish into them with an old toothbrush, and buff with a soft cloth! Nice find!

Y is for You Wait Ages for One and Several Come Along At Once!

Hot on the heels of the two sets we saw a month ago, and the pencil top/clinger pair shown here at Small Scale World over Christmas, comes a fourth space-related set of erasers in as many months! This one credited to an Ooly, and containing 12 erasers for four-quid, or 33.3r-p each! 

Galaxy Blast! In the style of Iwako, as the previous two were, with a 'puzzle' element, they are press-together segments of different coloured rubber. If the connecting studs are the same diameter, we could have fun with all three sets, and others we've seen in the past? A future post maybe!

 

Peep's; the guy on the left looks a bit like a space faring Wimpy The Moocher from Popeye, I don't know why! In the middle, a domestic fembot of some kind, maybe a waitress at a drive-in, and an Alien Panda?

 

Spaceships; A pair of Bezos phallus-rockets in the background, and a fourth (seen here recently) pulp-ship in the centre, with two generic fighters/atmosphere craft either side!

 

Two more planets, both with rings, a giant telescope to the left, and a dish-concentrated death-ray to the right, ready to go to Hoth! Add the planets in the Home Bargains 'Blast Off' sets we saw here in '23 & '24, and there are more than enough now, to arrange for one to be Pluto!

I is for In The Works

I picked-up a couple of bits last time I visited The Works, and we're looking at them here. 'Big Head' astronauts, as I've mentioned already, are definitely a thing at the moment, with another design here, and the other item we have looked at before, but I opened this one, as it turned-out it was a duplicate.

 

Pen[cil]-top astronauts. These come with an added novelty gimmick, and can be removed to enhance the feature's usefulness, there were three colourways of figurine, but only two pens, metallic pink or silver.

 

The three 'star-men', love 'em or leave 'em, they are figures, and of a vaguely alien or otherworldly stature, so in the stash they've gone! Orange, blue or grey highlights, but all three backpacks have the same red/blue elements, and the reflections on the visors are white on all three, more over-moulding, too!

 

The novelty gimmick is an LED torch, they get everywhere these days! While it shines through them, it can be made more useful/powerful, by losing the astronaut all together! Might prove an aid to finding dropped items in my dotage, but with Lego figures, Guardsmen, monkeys, tank key-rings (and a bendy alien), I have more LED novelty torches than is reasonably excusable, now!

 

I couldn't remember if we'd seen this when I got the others and Blogged them around Christmastime, so bought it, as it was the last, reduced, and when I got it home, checked the Tag, to find I had one in storage, so opened this one.

 

A count of thirteen seems as unlikely as duplicate Polar Bears, so I suspect a packing failure has left me with an extra bear? Although, "bear" is a very specific term for the skinny, dog-like creature here! Other sculpts in the set are a little better, and it's another box ticked!

A-Z is for Padgett Brothers - 2025

So back to Birmingham for this year's Spring Gift Fair, and Padgett had most of the stuff from '23, and most of the stuff previously seen in London, and a bunch of new space stuff, and some other stuff, so I took lots of pictures of their stuff!

 

The dogs have new A-Z branded cards.

 

And, as a range, are joined by more cartoony domestic animal sets.

 

Joke shop staples!

 

All-new Dinosaur sets, it's the same twelve animals to find/collect, but there are various assortments, and as people like me will be getting them over some time from charity shop bags, this is the image guide!

 

Not the best shot, but a larger tub of bigger beasts!

 

The insects are now on parade!

 

There's always one! Two years ago I managed to shoot the very bottom of the tub by accident, this year I wasn't in focus, but didn't realise, maybe next year or in two years time, if it's still on display!

 

Better shot's of the two window-boxes!

 

But I did get the 'new' (ish?) tubs in focus! Farm & Zoo.

 

All sorts of new NASA/Realistic-themed space toys, most of the figures are probably outside the parameters of even my collection, but there's a lot of useful stuff in there anyway, ground vehicles, satellites etc . . .

 

The guys sitting on moons and asteroids in the first shot are all over evilBay as hard, poured-resin versions, I suspect these are softer PVC-alike, and may be the originals, while there are [larger?] night-light versions, so a new 'thing' which will be around for a while, I don't know if it's one maker or several involved?

 

New 'army men', following the trend of having a piece of scenery integrally-attached to the sculpt/base, but not the figures we've seen here a couple of times, these are older sculpts repurposed/nth-generation pirated!

 

We've seen these before here, and in a subsequent follow-up post, which both produced a few comments sending me down a rabbit hole, and which also led to further purchases. Meaning, for several years there has been a follow-up in the queue, probably two or three posts-worth, or one very long post? Which I'd better bump-up the queue, now I've mentioned them!

I think the three above are the better ones with accurate chassis and detailed superstructures, while the lower set of eight are the poorer ones with generic running-gear and simplified, one-colour air-brush weathered bodies?

A-Z is for Padgett Brothers - 2023

I don't have as much Padgett as other brands in the archive pile, as their stuff is always interesting enough to post nearer the time of taking, certainly all the London Toy Fair stuff has gone-up in the past, but with everything else going on recently, I did leave 2023's Gift Fair shots in Picasa, so this is they, and then we'll have this year's efforts later.

 

'Army Man' stuff, the green figures look like the Henbrandt boxed set, the bi-coloured set looking like the ones Poundland was carry for many years in various formats and plastic colours.

 

Push and go and freewheeling vehicles/AFV's.

 

Paint your own Dinosaurs

I think we've seen these elsewhere, possibly in different packaging

 

Lots of other Dinosaur stuff, some, like the silly (not if you're a kid, I know!) vehicles, have smaller 'companion' dinosaurs. Some of this is branded to A-Z, some of it more generic, and as such harder to ascribe, especially if you've seen it somewhere else first!

 

Farm, zoo, sea-life and more Dinosaurs, in sets. I'm pretty sure I recognise the larger bears; Panda and Polar, and I'm sure that the odd-coloured sheep is in the pile somewhere, so I suspect a fair amount of this is already in the stash, among the unsorted stuff of the last few years.

 

A range of domestic dogs with what looks to be three sizes of card, six small, three-each mediums and larger, or is it a trick-of the eye, due to how they have been hung?. They are very reasonable sculpts, and well decorated in what is several colours for most of them.

 

The Insects clearly weren't ready, so get a colour print of the catalogue/online artwork! And another set/size of Dinosaurs!

 

More retail counter-display boxes - farm, wild animals and leery lizards!

 

Pretty sure these cows were in a donation from Jon Attwood or Peter Evans?

 

Likewise, I've already put one or two of these chaps in the stash, I think?

 

A BTR60pb/VAB hybrid? Nice-looking model for 54mm figures, though.

 

Another farm set, with different animals to the previous one, above. These have the look of those thin-walled, hollow dinosaurs we've seen here on previous occasions, but they might be solids, it's hard to tell from looks alone!