S is for Sandown Park - Bits & Bobs

Continuing with the Sandown plunder from September (next one's three weeks away, this Saturday!), and this would normally be the last post in the sequence, but I haven’t got the images ready on the other two, so, here's the odds and sods.

 

Martin Fahie had put these to one side for me, and they are all Hong Kong production, and all enhancing existing samples, some of which we have seen here already, and I have taken follow-up shots with some of the bits from the storage unit, so that'll be forthcoming in the near future.

 

Lido space werhickle! Missing one of it's two plug-ins, but takes my sample over the basic four, and allows for chopping and changing for future shots. What I think is the engine nacelle/venturi for the Dalek lander-'Mechanoid' from Cherilea, which is another useful spare in that sample, which you have watched grow, almost in real time.

 

And a pretty clean and undamaged Hilco Martian, and one of two poses most likely to be found damaged, again a collection which has grown from almost naught, with the Blog, to over a dozen with damaged examples. And I believe his helmet will be following shortly (three weeks!).

 

 

Three of the larger set (scale/size wise) Noddy in Toyland/Toytown figurines, made in Hong Kong, and in the style of some Marx production, but nothing is known of the maker, as far as I know, nor do I know how many are in the set (nor a total for the smaller set), but they are slowly growing as a sample!

 

Probably the best find of the show? We've seen the White Rabbit before, first as a single, phenolic or early styrene, with good detail, then as a mass produced lesser quality ethylene moulding, in the set of educational oddities, now I find these?

 

A stretched Alice, lays in front, awaiting glue, with from the left (best to open the image); White Rabbit,  Queen of Hearts (first book), Cheshire Cat, Hookah-smoking Caterpillar, one of the Kings, Mad Hatter, Playing Card Guard (near-flat, although they are all demi-ronde), Red Queen (second book) and the Mock Turtle. 

 

One might think board game pieces, but if the colours are a clue, it's not a game for three equal players, nor any even number of players, but are all the pieces here? They are old, and with characters like the Dormouse, Tweedle brothers, White Queen, and another King or two 'missing', they may be from a larger set, and while board game is still a best bet, they are quite small, no more than 20mm?

 

We've seen the pixie before, but in a darker red, this one is Ready Brek glowing! A puppy jumper - while it was OK to start collecting the LB copy jumpers, and the bug-eyed aliens were/are fun, it seems jumpers are to join white-button toys (two lots coming soon - Halloween!), as a peripheral sub-collection! And what I suspect is one of the few lose Corgi figurals previously missing from the stash, everybody's favourite villain - Dick Dastardly!

 

A couple of Euro-premiums from one or two different building sets.

 

Civilians; an unknown nurse (Atlantic like, but I don't think she's theirs, Charbens again?), Britains arctic explorer, a huge copy of the Corgi ice-cream seller, I guess Lucky or similar? Then the tramp/hobo from Hilco (? It's from the Johillco hollow-cast moulding), a mother and child, probably from a US model car kit, and a recent farm worker which I think we saw in Padgett Brothers/A-Z packaging, a few years ago? In front, a Britains cyclist.

 

The long arm of the law! Three Lines Tri-Ang Motorway, with a bugler (I think they only ever looked like that in kids' comics!), one Corgi Junior, two Hornby Dublo/Meccano and a pair of Merit/Model Scene, with the WPC snapped of at her shapely ankles - ouch!

 

Other railway/small scale figures included a Blue Box mechanic, several Merit, a metal Wardie/Masternodels railway staffer, the Hornby Hobbies Hong Kong sourced moped rider and two machines (shared with at least two other brands), the boy with horses from the Britains Miniset, and a seated Airfix passenger.

 

Odds! The cactus may be new on me, but it may just be home-paint bamboozling me! Common bit of fence and a couple of weapons from 3/4" action figures I guess. All in all, some nice bits, the Alice Looking Glass/Wonderland set is the definite highlight, anybody know anything else about it?

G is for Glowing in the Dark!

T is for two! One of these continues the Halloween season, the other I got a while ago, and can't remember where but probably one of the supermarkets? And while it wasn't sold as a Halloween item, it's on message twice, so fits this post perfectly!

 

Google says Legogide of Denmark (nothing to do with the Billund thieves), so for now, we'll go with that, but I haven't been to Denmark, so somebody over here is handling them! Various designs of Spider, in various colours, seemingly randomly packed, and all of 'bird eater' or Tarantula size, and . . .

 

. . . they glow in the dark! The random painted black spots being even more effective in the dark, than the light, where they just look like random black spots! Image dates say they were found back in February?

 

These are in Asda at the moment, and at a pound a bag, good value for what they are, that's an old school rack-toy price! Contents vary, with six millipedes in a greenish glow-in-the-dark PVC-alike, only three of my 'love to hate' Flower Crab Spiders (Misumena vatia), in a paler but also a Photoluminescent polymer, and six large flocked polyethylene solids, and they are 'long-haired' flocking, the hippy fucks!

 

Close up of the three separate elements.

 

Loo at it, the long-haired git!

 

Activate glow!

 

 

I shot these back in August 2025, I think we've seen the white ones you find in Buddleia’s before now, it's actually less hateful in this greenish-yellow, but they do have a sinister aura, more so then the incresingly common False Widows, which I've also shot on several occasions. And, I've said it before - Spider Crabs, Crab Spiders, Spider Monkeys, Monkey Puzles . . . we're really crap at naming things.

E is for Eye Candy - Pilots

Specifically a comparison of the various Zang, Zang-for-Timpo and similar pilots, currently within range of a photo-shoot, allowing for a few more being in deeper storage, than the more recent stuff!

 

There are three of these line-ups I keep returning to; this one, the various Britains and similar khaki infantry sentries and marching chaps, and the Acedo-Speedwell-Russian paratrooper, along with the paratrooper plunder line-ups, but they are less comparative.

 

I've annotated it, and we've looked at them all before, so nothing to add, just an image to obsess over!

C is for Combat Contributions

Bit of a theme this PM, but it seemed to make sense to get a bunch of toy soldiers up on the Toy Soldier Blog! There's so much stuff in the short queue, I'm spoilt for choice, on one level, but on another I keep wondering how to do them all justice.

 

Some subjects will make show reports, or more than one post, some are a bit thin, and with stuff from Adrian, two lots from Peter and other bits, they'll go together in the end. This is from all three donation-purchases, in that I paid for them, but at definite 'mates rates'!

 

German Red Cross WHW's, this is the last of Adrian's recent stock, from which I and others have been picking for a few years, now that I've identified at least three issues in bare, and one painted on black plastic, I feel I need to enlarge the core sample, to see how many variants I can identify?

  

 

A nice tin-plate Sikh, possibly a cigarette premium, another Zang Tommy (slightly drunk), and what I thought was a Spanish-made Spanish paratrooper, but I can't find him in the big book, so he might be Italian or Portuguese? Marked '185' on the base underside.

 

From one of Adrian's junk drawers, came these metal bits, including one of the Timpo die-cast machine-gunners.

 

From Peter now; ABC 8th Army types after Timpo 'solids'.

 

Small scale - with a bag of Airfix 1st version German Infantry and 8th Army, two of the Chap Mai figures who need de-gate-mark'ing! And a tatty Blue Box G.I.

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Hong Kong/China odds! Taken from Airfix, TimMee and Lido originals.

 

More ABC or related - I can't remember what was on the base!

 

Modern rack-toy junk, still have their place, but I've probably got them all, I think the bag is the HTI stuff we saw when they were in the shops (probably still are!), while the lot in front seems to be further-generation copies, in that crumbly, over recycled plastic you see men in sandals making from unwashed plastic bags in weird 'industrial' video 'shorts' on YouTube!

 

MPC, need to be sorted against what I already have, but I think the blue chap is new?

 

Late  production New Ray, or good quality copies of the same?

 

A pair of Deluxe Reading and three rack-toy skinnies!

 

The two on the left look like late Speedwell, the Hilco on the right matches them rather nicely, colours wise! I'm looking forward to sorting all the finds from the last few years into the master collection, and giving the Khaki Infantry page a good update/correcting session!

 

God knows! Marked Hong Kong, so copies, but there are so many versions of these; several US, a couple of Canadian and a few HK lots, I will have to do a big sort-out one day, and matching-up the little silver accessories will send a Saint insane! originally MPC.

 

These have the satin sheen of a fine-nozzeled 3D-printer about them, and they are all, indeed, 3D printed, Peter may have mentioned a maker, or download library title, I can't remember, and they are a bit 'Army Man' or generic G.I.

 

The sandy figure is a Monty, complete with both cap-badges, but a little dumpy I feel, smaller, and better fed than the Timpo solid one!

 

Crescent swoppets, a nice clean sample, although I think the colour variation in the green accessories may be down to sun-bleaching?

 

Anyone who saw the shot of the French/British paratroops I sent to Plastic Warrior a while ago, will know I didn't have the sand-coloured one, so despite the missing top of the string-loop (a common fault with these after seventy-odd years), a really nice addition to that line-up!

 

And, after my minor disaster at this years PW Show (the Aussies who weren't!), here's the desert version of the M-Toy or Star (lesser quality?) swoppet copy, stretcher-case I just need to find the porters now! 

 

Finishing a rushed blurbing (got stuck behind a Nissan Juke going no-miles-an-hour on the way home tonight - some people just shouldn't drive in the dark, or in the rain, or at all!), a few of the soft plastic versions of Marx's Miniature Masterpiece Americans, being scale-downs of the larger figure ranges.

 

Many, many thanks to Adrian Little and Peter Evans for constantly putting this stuff to one side for me, it's all grist to the mill, and there's always interesting bits among it, cheers guys! 

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!