P is for Perfect Polymer Perambulation

So, to the Ambulance and crew, I rather took too-many shots of these over two sessions, but I've hacked through them, deleted a load, and collaged the rest, so it's boiled down to its over-shot essence! Brian Carrick caught me, at Sandown Park, while I was indisposed to go and find the items myself, and a version of the following conversation took place,

 

B - I've just seen something round the corner which I think you'd be interested in?

 

Me - Oh really, what is it?

 

B - An early-British plastic Ambulance, and stretcher team I haven't seen before, he doesn't want a lot for it?

 

Me - Could you grab it for me, and if it's nice I'll have it?

 

B - Yes, I'll pop-back now, he's only round the corner!

 

Which he kindly did! 

 

Two minutes later, he was back with what we're looking at here, and I quickly said "yes" and sorted him out with the dosh. Conversations ensued, between Brian and myself, and subsequently, with a few other people as they passed through the day, and the general consensus was that it was probably Triang-Minic or Mettoy-Playcraft, with me favouring the former (for the similarity of the wheels), but arguing equally for the latter because of both the big Hospital play set, and the Ward 10 stuff they did?

 

You can see both are covered in those orange-brown smuts you associate with smoker's homes and damp, whether tobacco, coal-fired boilers, or open-fires, and how they look like they go together! I also pointed out to Brain, that the figures were the ones "Blue Box Copied..." in small scale - as seen here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/08/e-is-for-emergency-empire-or-emson.html

 

The Ambulance, after cleaning, is a Daimler, and there were several toy versions around at the time, it seems to have been one of the commoner chassis used by Ambulance coachworks, before the invention of the long-wheelbase Ford Transit van, in my childhood!

 

There is the slight warping you get with the older Minic's, I think they must have been using a 'styrene-like polymer, which was not as stable as actual polystyrene? The contemporary model trains were polystyrene, and don't warp!

 

Clear marking of Made in England, I'm sure the 'red' crosses are from an old Airfix (or Revell?) version of the Junkers 52 'Aunty Ju', in Swiss airline markings, as used in the filum The Battle of Britain, and seen in both Swiss and German versions, parked-up at Blackbush Airfield, by yours truly, when I was a small boy! So they'll need to be removed! But the 'Ambulance' board, over the windscreen, is original.

 

The wheels were reminiscent of the Tri-Ang stuff we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/06/afv-is-for-among-my-favorite-vehicles.html

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/t-is-for-triang-minic-part-1-military.html

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/t-is-for-triang-minic-part-2-civilian.html

 

And it's now been confirmed to be Tri-Ang Minic, we actually looked at the Mettoy one a while back, which I'd totally forgotten, until preparing this article!

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/09/t-is-for-two-toy-ambulances.html

 

Front and back shots!

 

But . . . these aren't the figures copied by Blue Box, I think they ARE Blue Box! When I got them home, and first, put my glasses on, then got out the jeweller's loupe, it became obvious, very quickly, that the stretcher is marked on the underside;

 

Made In Hong Kong, in a nice, neat, rounded, DIN typeface, as found on all sorts of Blue Box (and Redbox) animals and other toys/accessories. Albeit hard to photograph, in white plastic!

 

And, while I haven't found a Blue Box Ambulance in large-scale, yet, nor a medic set with the military figures, the fact that the small-scale versions are Blue Box, means I'd put money on these being so, too. You can see the similarities with the 50mm GI's sculpting as well!

 

And it's almost neater to discover that what we thought Brian had found wasn't quite what it seemed to be, as instead we've box-ticked a Triang niceness (I've since obtained a bag of the military trucks, in addition to those shot on Adrian's stall, or my previous few, as seen in the above links), and added a probable missing brick in the Blue Box wall!

 

All cleaned-up!

 

I managed to find the guy who'd sold it, had a chat, and bought something else from him, but I can't remember what, it might have been the animal transporter, which may get a post of its own, or it may be one of the racing-cars, which will also get a separate post, I think?

Confirmatory shot, from an old Vectis auction, of a shop-stock box of Tri-Ang ambulances, note how the red-cross fitted between the windows, not over them, and the LCC on the doors could be London County Council? Did councils run Ambulances before the NHS Ambulance Service took them over?

Q is for Quickie! Seen Elswhere

And actually seen here! I was going to do a longish post on Ambulances, but I was up at 4:40 to drive to Luton and have successfully battled the salary mongs on the M25, back again. Now fatigue is catching-up, and I'm going to have a snooze before work, so here very much as a reminder, are a few bits from last year's Plastic Warrior show, which - as far as this year's - is only four Saturday's away, three and half weeks peeps! We did see them in last years show report posts, but these went on a Faceplant group at the time.

 

A pair of 1st version British Paratroopers from Airfix.

 

A trio of Trojan 14th Army figures, joining a growing sample.

 

Four of the Hilco ANZACs cloned from Timpo, which had been on my shopping-list last year, I'm not sure what's on the list this year, in fact, I don't know, because I've given it little thought, beyond the one or two 60mm Crescent Mohicans I still need! But I've three weeks to give it some thought, and save some dosh, and, so do you!

 

Contact details, I expect Brian Carrick (who was to feature in the Ambulance post!) will do a detailed travel guide in the next week or so, and there'll be more on Faceplant for those still there.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior?fref=ts
Blog. - http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/
eMail - pw.editor3@gmail.com (pw.editor@ntlworld.com)
Tel. - 01483 830 743

E is for Eye Candy - Marx Babes in Toyland Soldiers

Picked-up this little doozer of a lot at Sandown Park the other day, and at the pre-sale, car-boot scrum on the terraces, before the doors opened, too! We've seen me slowly collecting them loose, here on the Blog, and the Wilton knock-offs loose and bagged, but these are the icing on the cake!

Different lighting and angles, I'm studiously failing to get a grip of this new camara! The Marx toy soldiers, from the Disney movie Babes in Toyland. There is a 'Warriors of the World' style issue with them named on plainer boxes, two of each for an eight count I think, among various packagings, but I prefer these unnamed ones in their generic sentry-box cartons are nicer, and you only need four to complete!

T is for Two - Diver Sets

I picked these two up from a friend of Isaac's, over the phone, I won't bore you with the details, but as soon as I saw them I knew I needed them, if the price was right, which it was, as they are one of those things which brings several threads of the whole Rack Toy oeuvre together, while half-ID'ing some bits.

 

We've seen this card before, and most of the contents, one suspects they all shared pegs in little independent newsagents and corner-shop/convenience stores for a few years, in the mid-late 1960's, and sold well enough, despite the poor quality of the contents, as there's still a lot of play value in a relatively cheap set, for the era?

 

The ships are really quite common, but here we have mid-quality copies of the Lone Star divers, instead of the Monogram figures we saw last time;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/m-is-for-monograms-men-made-much_10.html

 

Trucks have been associated in previous posts, but now I can find the correct mini-subs and rubber boats from the larger, unknown Hong Kong samples, and, possibly of more interest is the hard polystyrene plastic submarine, which I would never have assumed went with the soft plastic surface vessels.

 

Although, thinking about it, they have come together in mixed lots, or donations of the sort Chris Smith, and particularly Trevor Rudkin have given me over the years, confirming patterns that were already hidden in the background wallpaper!

 

Fewer total contents in this slightly smaller card, which is a new addition to the series, and which may also include some of these;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/b-is-for-beachead-hong-kong-style-part_01.html

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/b-is-for-beachead-hong-kong-style-part.html

 

They don't solve many questions, but they do thin-out the various other bags and tubs of unknowns, with the Lone Star clone divers now associated with the commonest of the 14-odd different copies of Monogram GI, the ships and Humber 1-ton mini-trucks brought together with the smaller vessels and submarine, and one version of equally common aeroplane type added to the whole.

 

These both need a careful opening, and re-threading with rubber-bands, at which time I'll dampen and iron the cards to stiffen them up, and restore them to something like how they looked sixty-odd years ago. A task which will be easier on the second set, it's pretty obvious what went where, there will be more guesswork involved in getting the upper set shipshape!

SS is for Shelfie Session

Try saying that when you're drunk! I had a quick whizz round all the usual suspects the other day, and managed to shoot a few shelfies of stuff which may be of some interest to some loyal readers, or not, as the case may be!

 

Shot this pair in Hobbycraft, and I may go back for the Sherman, if only to compare it with the CTS and Airfix ones? It's the Lego-compatible range of clip-together 'kits', but differing from Lego and Cobi, in not having any studs showing on the finished article, the top layer is all 'site specific' and fully-moulded/sculpted on the final, visible faces. These were new, about two years ago, and I venture to say, at 20-quid-a-pop, all the money!

 

Off to The Range for these, I think we've seen the Harry Potter one previously, but no matter, a reminder is as good as . . . something witty I can't come up with? Hard to pin down, but I'll try - branded to RMS, brand-marked to Project Craft and imported by CDS Group "...a third party logistics (3PL) and supply chain solutions provider!", so there!

 

While these were shot in B&M the other day, Magic Box have clearly moved-on from Crazy Bones, but there's still a blind-bag element to collecting the line, they are too unpiratey (spellcheck says I invented that word!) to save for ITLAPD, so here they are.

 

It's funny, because Bushy the Twig over at planetcamp has started going to B&M, and The Range, he'd better get himself to Smyths and Hobbycraft if he really wants to copy me! And a few garden centres, and Flying Tiger, and the other one! And he needs to stop showing us the stuff he leaves in the charity shops, which he also now visits, because that’s the shite nobody's buying!

Still, he does live castles now, as well, and he's finally added a Blog archive, after nearly 20 years! He added a link-list too, a couple of years ago, but managed to avoid this Blog, and has already cut it down and placed it where nobody can find it - doesn't like sharing, see!

 

But then it took him several years to start tagging, and only after one of his readers (guess who!) kept pointing out the lack of a tag-list! And then never did it that systematically, so it's still hard to find anything, nor did he retro-Tag the first few years' stuff, so that's lost!

Don't get me wrong, there's no exclusivity to any of this stuff, I can't expect to be the only person doing this, that, or the other, and a good idea, nicked, is the purest form of plagiarism, therefore - the sincerest form of flattery!

And so soon after the 'ossuary' thing, he managed to squeeze in a Shogun reference, the day after me (literally the next day!), but I was talking about the MB Games game with the five armies of different-coloured miniature figures, not some nerdy, cerebral time-waster, for a rained-out caravan holiday!

 

It's tragic how threatened or envious he seems to be of what was originally, a completely different Blog, but they increasingly look the same, because he keeps doing what I've already done! In a few years, the only discernable differential between our two Blogs will be that all the eBay scrapings will still be over there, and all the original copy and images (mostly of a [vaguely organised] collection) will still be here!

Anyway, I promise you, you'll never find me making dollies accessories out of hot glue and toothbrush handles, ever, he can keep that! What do you think readers!

E is for Eye Candy - Indian Animals

I shot this back in February at Sandown Park, I should have bought it really, but the images will have to suffice, just as you can't know everything, so too, you can't own everything, but you can have a damn good try at it!

 

A nice set of Schneider type semi-flats, hand-painted and tied into a tray, in the 'old school' fashion, and there were 33 previous sets! Box ticked; Karachi Industrial Works under two forms of lighting!

F is for Fireman Pat, the Paw Patrol Builder

There's a ton of this infant oriented stuff out there, and in scanning the shelves I tend to filter it out, what with the American knock-off of Tomas the Tank engine starting to make inroads to British shelves, and Postman Pat now joined by similarly-cloned builders and firefighters (still called 'firemen', shock-horror!), even if you could argue Pugwash or Mr. Ben came first!

 

But luckily, Brian Berke spotted these in the 'States a while ago, and they've been in edit since . . . checks images . . . 2024, in fact, June, so two years ago, and well overdue for an outing here. Also, while flat erasers aren't necessarily a thing, we have had similar robots and dinosaurs, so by default, they are part of the Small Scale World oeuvre now! The law of unintended consequences!

 

 

Apparently direct-from-Turkey imports, or is that a version of Arabic? Zaini (LZ) are well known as a Kinder rival, and we've seen a few figural efforts or vehicles from them over the years, the likely prizes as illustrated on the box, weren't in the box! But do include two figures who may turn-up in mixed lots someday?

 

Instead you got flat-slab erasers with water-slide transfer-printed images of the characters from Fireman Sam on them, credited to a Prism Art & Design Ltd.* Many thanks to roving reporter Brian, for roving, and reporting!

 

*According to the Fireman Sam wiki - "Prism Art & Design Limited is a Welsh entertainment company currently owned by HiT Entertainment, itself a subsidiary of Mattel" - so, wheels within wheels! 

BMSS is for More Plunder, 2 of 2

The other half of the BMSS plunder, I literally split the folder this morning so there's no theme to either post, but this is by coincidence both mostly small scale, and mostly stuff Adrian gave me in a little tub, as a mixed lot.

 

Seen better days, with Plasticine bases and glued arms, but small scale'ish (o gauge), chalkware composition, in the style of Drevopodnik, and new to pile. They might be from the Soviet Bloc (post-war) or earlier, and German, I'm hoping they will be findable in my Schiffmann Sammlekatalog, next time I have it out?

 

Two Spot-On's to add to the stash, and two of the Kinder 'Mocherette', based on the Lone Star Metallions which might not be Lone Star (given that Hubley, Kresege, 'Hong Kong' and others, also issued them), one copper 'chromed' over the base metal, the other bronzed to an almost black-olive.

 

Reduced-size copy of the Brtiains Llama, a Hong Kong pack mule and one of the Torres wine-bottle giveaways, make an interesting trio of animals in polyethylene.

 

When I first started finding these, years ago, well, about 40 years ago, I was intrigued, I would get one or two at each show, and it took maybe a decade to get the last colour, they then became one of those things I'd seen the origin of, so 'knew', but could never remember, so didn't know! Eventually they were remembered long enough to blog (charity shop purchase I seem to recall), as Waddington's Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs figures.

 

And I now have so many of them I don't know what to do with them! They would paint up nicely as ranked war gaming pieces, but they have officers pistols, not rifles, so don't lend themselves's to ranks, or files! And how many role players (28mm) need slightly small (25mm) explorers, and what would they pay for them, when you can find up to 16 in a charity shop! The law of unintended consequences!

 

Odd smallies here with a Sistema Cadillac from Italy, in an odd scale of 1:77th. A few of the Slaters/Merit (Collis Plastics), home painted, and the weirdest of the three mico-AFV's which various rack-toy issuers used as filler in their sets in the 60's and 70's, joining the obvious Daimler armoured car and 25lbr type gun is this odd little amphibious landing craft/jeep/pop-up target/carrier hybrid, which has never been explained!

 

A bit of Thomas Wild West, an LB caveman, Matchbox Space 2000 'future warrior', and a kit figure in 1:48th scale of a WWII German tank crewman, alongside a later Briains head, farm, I think?

 

Atlantic, Davy Crockett figures, he survived an enraged bear, Indians and two demented donkeys, only to fall to the dastardly Mexican forces of General Antonio López de Santa Anna!

 

Three of the gold, post-Giant Greco-Romans we looked at on the other Blog, from two of the sourses, a Meccano for Hornby policeman and a larger firefighter, taken from Dinky, I think, or Corgi, but here probably from a larger plastic beach/garden toy?

BMSS is for More Plunder, 1 of 2

And so to Reading, what was only about five weeks ago, but already seems like ages ago, where I managed to fill my boots with bits and bobs, despite there only really being three vinatge sellers present, Adrian, Paul and Steve, and it's to Mr Vickers' overburdened table we go to, first . . .

 

. . . as he gave me this! It's a bit of Hong Kong tat (Tim-Mee copies?), probably from no earlier than the 1980's, and to Steve, rather bringing down the quality of his whole table, more used - as it is - to a better class of commodity all together, but to me; another brick in the knowledge wall! Cheers Steve!

 

And the sort of thing I used to give to charity shops regularly when I was a small-scale only collector, and they'd come-in with mixed a lot. Indeed, more modern stuff like this, 20-odd years ago might have gone straight in the brand-new, shiny, Rushmoor Borough Council recycling bin! The horror, the horror!

 

30 and 40mm policemen from Starlux with a tin-plate sentry-box, of generic nature, only because I don't know the maker, I imagine, either a German or Austrian producer, and probably an accessory in a set of painted flats, or maybe lead solids around 30-50mm? But - equally - it could have been an accessory with a wooden fort set?

 

Speaking of sentries, these are Greek, Athena, and real box-tickers, I may already have a few, but there do seem to be a number of variations in uniform, and red or blue versions of most, so I grabbed one-each while they were going cheap. The cymbalist is to replace a damaged one, which I shot to hide the damage, last time we looked at them.

Likewise, the mounted, I need a better horse for the trumpeter, or a base at least, to balance him on, but he's lost a couple of the studs, so it would only, ever, be balancing! And all these, rather like their UK equivalent (the Hong Kong Herald guards), will benefit from the hot water treatment at some point!

 

A trio of Pilots, the chap on the right seems to be a modern, probably home-painted figure, in the middle is a bisque chap, who may be a World War sweetheart keepsake thing, or maybe a cake decoration, it's certainly in the style of bisque cake-decorations, and there would have been many marriages, as men went off to war, the bride would have been in the inventory already?

 

The big guy on the left is more of a mystery, as he's pretty huge, and not really 'toy soldier' compatible, so, maybe a character piece, Charles Lindburgh wears similar kit in some of his photographs? Jumper isn't lumpy enough for Amelia Earhart, and Cody was earlier, but there must have been other popular aviators back in the day?

 

A couple of home-made sci-fi figures in around 35mm, they seem to have been modelled in Plasticine, with brass and brass-wire detailing, on brass-wire armatures, do you know who made them and why? Was this your work? They seem to be exploratory rather than belligerent?

 

A bit of fantasy, I've mentioned the Crossbows & Catapults stuff a couple of times recently, and their main post is well overdue, but probably still a few years away, there's plenty on t'ut Internet for those who need it, and a few of the 1980's big-box fantasy figures, which are still waiting for their big sort-out!

 

A nice Crescent cowboy I couldn't remember if I have or not, and a couple clowns from Charbens, which are probably both duplicates now, like Pirates, I've been concentrating on a subsection of circus stuff, so there's quite a bit of it somewhere!

 

Some gash (repainted) metal from Adrian's rummage trays, I think he said one of them (chap on the far left?) is an arm swap and wasn't actually issued by Britains in that 'at the trail' configuration? And very much box-ticking, my knowledge of this stuff is minimal. I split 18 images into two posts, to help with Tagging, so more later!