C is for Centurion

Bit of a box-ticker, this one; another Sandown September purchase, and I didn't really take enough shots for a whole post, but it's been off to storage for a while. Nevertheless a useful beast to add to the pile, not terribly rare, but interesting, and it will need comparison with the Dinky one I picked up in that Charity Shop plunder, a few years ago . . . and the various Hong Kong plackys!

Not the US Premier (Premier Products Co. / Premier Plastics), the  Palmer subsidiary, of Brooklyn, on the opposite bank from Pyro, it's actually manufactured in Japan. The box is a bit tatty, and I need to track down the correct ammunition, which I'm lead to believe was plastic, but the tank itself has been well looked after and is very clean, it will be even cleaner after a dusting!

Arguably the Centurion was the best tank ever made? While others were very good at specific times or for specific purposes, the Centurion brought together everything we'd learned about tank warfare in WWII, combining the best of both British concepts - Cruiser Tanks and Infantry Tanks - into one 'main battle tank'; fast, yet heavily armed and armoured.

It gave rise to the whole post-war Vickers family of  Centurion-Chieftain-Shir-Challenger, and it's ideas, design concepts and DNA are to be found in the M48/60, AMX30 and Leopard I, it performed well against T34, T54-55 and 62/72, and the aforementioned M48/60's in wars from Korea, through India-Pakistan and the various middle-east conflicts, and went into Angola with the South Africans, who still operate a heavily modified and upgraded version called the Oliphant, while Jordan (and possibly the genociders next door) still use the chassis for various specialised or second echelon vehicles.

Aiming at the US market with the number sign, or 'octothorpe' (Bell Labs), now known as a 'hash' (British Telecom) or 'hash tag' (Chris Messina), rather than the '№' which would have been the acceptable symbol in the UK at the time, and online it seems to be known as the Premier #144 Tank.

It has a novel firing mechanism, with breech-loading from the turret-end of the barrel, and cocking via  a leaver which leaves a rather unsightly slash through the top of the turret, while firing is achieved by pressing down on the commanders head!

Somewhere between 1:50th and 1:60th in scale, only a side-by-side with the Dinky will settle that for me, unless you know for sure? It's a mostly die-cast alloy model, with a tin-plate baseplate, and what I suspect are silicon rubber tracks of some recipe/compound, due to their lack of drying, brittleness or deformation over, what, 50-plus years?

H is for Horror of Horrors!

On a trip to an art supply store, our roving reporter in New York found this lurking on a shelf; the scariest Halloween mask ever, it's named DEATH DEALER and dates from 2020, he thought it would make a good face for a Guy, come November the 5th!

 

Clearly dating from the period whence came the pooping Donald key-ring, and bog-brush Donald, which we've seen here passim, and the world will be a better place when all trace of the buffoon has been wiped from it's collective memory, something which may take centuries!

 

Now, I've posted my views of the orange loon before, here, but I'm also vaguely active on Quora, a strange website, half useful answers to serious questions, half completely rabid garbage, which makes the discourse on Faceplant or Ex-Twitts  look sane, and I have slowly been honing and tweaking my summery of the current President, in answer to the various MAGAts and Anglophobes who pop-up there with their trolling questions, such as this recent one from someone calling himself 

'Baktash Swearwords'

, who claims to be autistic and to read a lot of philosophy!

 

Is President Trump seen as a hero among the British people as President Churchill was?

 

To which this was my answer, and it remains my current firmly held belief;

"No.

"When a clown moves into the White House, he doesn't become Presidential. The White House becomes a circus."

Trump is no Churchill, Roosevelt, or Truman, he isn’t even a Clinton or Obama. He's a cunt. The draft-dodging felon is the worst US President of all time (a field with several contenders already), and he is the least statesmanlike leader of the ‘Free West’ ever. He is uneducated and suffers from significant intellectual limitations; he lacks wisdom, is ‘unread', incurious and a dim-witted fool. He is classless, charmless, and uncool. He is an untrustworthy, insincere, inveterate serial-liar, a fraud and fraudulent, so he lacks credibility. He is a sex-pest and sex-offender. He has no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace. He’s an embezzler, a bad-payer, master grifter, a bully and a bore. He appears to be a Moscow shill, and yet is afraid of China, so is also a coward, indeed, 'The' back-pedalling TACO coward. He is rude, abusive, and insults his friends and allies as if they were his enemies, throwing tantrums like a five-year-old. He eats shit; this makes him a fucking fat cunt, and he’s ugly, with his beady eyes, teeny mouth, weeny teeth, and tiny hands, topped-off with that weird pubic-wig, often caught in the wind, praying for its own end. He is a racist bigot, homophobic, misogynistic, pathological, socio-psychopathic and a megalomaniac. Guilty of violating campaign finance laws, he regularly practices perjury, obstruction of justice, contempt of court, bribery, malicious and vexatious litigation and malfeasance. He is a self-absorbed, self-serving, self-obsessed, self-aggrandising, selfish, conceited, malignant narcissist. He's foul-mouthed, and he talks too much yet fails to address the topic/subject/problem, wandering off on unfettered flights of surreal fantasy - out loud, on camera! If he gives you a gift, expect a bill, and a knife in the other hand. Because he IS dangerous, he has disgraced America, sullied its word, turned away its friends, destroyed its standing on the world stage, and damaged trust in its institutions. Fuck Donald J. Trump, the orange-painted Trumplethinskin turd and despicable human being, 'Diaper Don', a panty-shitting, pulsating pustule of a monster in a Trumpanzee meat-suit."

The current decision of the White House to move closer to Putin, is despicable, and it's decision to push Ukraine (and all of Europe, by extension) out into the cold is shocking, and a betrayal of every sacrifice of Americans in World War Two.

And so, it is incumbent on all fair minded, democratic Americans, to count on absolutely nothing and drag their arses to the polling booths on Tuesday, to end this surreal, Kafkaesque madness.

R is for Resin Rascals

I meant to post this last night, but I ran out of time, or, work ran me out of time, which is a different state of being altogether, if you know what I mean, but anyway, heeeeere's Horror! Brian managed a visit to another discount chain; Family Dollar, and found this pair of rather nice sets of ornamental poured resin delights!

 

Imported by Midwood Brands, LLC of Virginia, we just don't get little sets of small scale stuff like this over here, there are large boulders of resin crap in most of the supermarkets, and TKMaxx is good for a shed load of unnecessary, easily chipped crud in the several-kilo's category, but these are nice.

 

So many thanks, again, to Brian for finding them and shooting them, and it reminded me I had some resin downloads in the Halloween 'junk' folder (there's probably more on the dongles, but these (below) were to hand), so a post developed!

 

Dated to 2021, and I converted it from a bitmap, so I don't know how it will show on your machine/'device', but here's a whole group of similar, small scale, novelty Halloween stuff, including, front-right, a long-dead pirate!

 

And here's more pirates, which as we had a coronary-related non-ITLAPD this year, is about as good as it's going to get! These are apparently copyrighted Spoontiques, of China, and I seem to have found them a year ago (November '25). Real West Country gift shop (rather than specifically Halloween themed) faire, I suspect they are about 60/70mm, but they could be a little bigger, or even smaller!

Z is for Zulus

Something a little different today, and to be honest a rather unloved corner of the collection, as I do have most of the Lone Star and Charbens African Warriors, if not all of them, somewhere, and unpainted versions of the Marx reissues, seen below, but they don't seem to have got a decent outing here at Small Scale World? Trying to redress that omission slightly, I bought a small sample of mostly home-painted figures from Adrian a while ago, ostensively for the Fontanini chaps, and this is they!

 

Both Zulu and 'African Warriors' are used pretty loosely in this post, as the whole subject has been equally unloved by the trade, with most examples being pretty fantastical, rather than based on any historical or cultural accuracy, more Hollywood than high accuracy!

 

Five of six, in PVC, with number two missing, and he'll be a bugger to find on his own, these come-up quite infrequently!  They are the smaller 45/50mm version, but I say that not knowing if they have larger versions, as the Fontanini dancers and pirates do?

 

Paint conversions from a Cherilea (54mm Indian) and Toyway (Egyptian).

 

Marx reissues, these were very Hollywood, coming with a bunch of White Hunters/explorers to serve, but aren't actually that bad, sompared to some out there!

 

I think this is the far more accurate Zulu rendition from A call to Arms, and having said I haven't done them justice in the past, this is a bit of a rush-job/box ticker, too, but I have to go to work!

T is for That Tudor Tug Tractor

Or is it a tractor tug? Except I never said it was a tractor, or a tug, but it is! As mentioned earlier (a couple of hours ago to you, last night to me!), I saved this Tudor Rose toy from the long-queue, where it looked like it was headed, a day or so ago, actually shot back in May, at Sandown Park, and we can look at it now.

 

The sort of larger, diesel tractor with an electrostatic gearbox you might have found in a bigger warehouse, yard or working Terminus platforms next to the smaller electric trolleys, and while probably a quaint toy to our eye, the 1950/60's were a different time, and things like this were new and exciting. And it's a big, tangible toy you can really get your hands round, manufactured in a selection of bright colours.

 

The churn cargo, they are a bit too big, even for the large sized figure, as we saw in the previous post. I well remember my Mother explaining 'milk trains' to me, and seeing the churns on their little platforms as we flew North from Kings Cross!

 

A full set of Tudor Rose marks, and I can't work out if the trailer started it's design-life, destined to be a rail car, or if that's supposed to be some kind of suspension Maybe we're supposed to think it can go on the rails like a hand-cart?

 

Close-up of the driver, which I took for future ID'ing, little knowing Peter would donate one to the Blog five months later! From the fact he is in Wild West waggoner cream plastic, rather than any of the Tug's colours suggests he may have been from a tool with some of the other larger figures, maybe the two biggies from the large-scale stagecoach?

 

It's all soft polyethylene,, and the figure will be about 1:16/1/20th, somewhere between three and four inches. And thanks due to Adrian Little who let me shoot this on his table, at the show.

C is for Civilian Contributions

I think these are all from Peter Evans, a mix of convenience store finds, car-boot sale's plunder, and the odd visit to the Toy Project store in North London, and they were in three folders, although they are in the order I shot them, which is vaguely the order they came in!

 

Fireman Sam figurines, from Simba, blind-boxed, there were a bunch of these, and I've saved them for another post another day, but here's a sample, with boxes, bag and figures, manufactured in a modern, PVC replacement, and quite nicely done I thought? And they seem to be clearance from a German series, you can find English language versions

 

Nice unknown firefighter with the 'jaws of life', a Corgi fireman from the Simon Snorkel, and a 'Christmas Village' figure - I've already promised myself I'm never going to try and annotate all of them, but hopefully by the time I get round to the A-Z pages, there will be enthusiasts pages to link to!

 

The other figure is from the Teamsterz sets, and is the third of four road menders (the other two came from Peter too), and I was only sorting them the other day, I now have four firefighters, four police, and with this, three road crew, although we may have seen the other in a shelfie at some point; I'm not sure how well they've been Tagged!

 

Another set of firefighters, red, is, as always, a bugger to photograph, but I suspect six of six poses from a rack-toy set, and not one we've seen before?

 

Funny, I found the post where these (Poundland?) wrestlers were shelfied on the cards, the other day, looking for something else, and, at the time, I said something along the lines of, they'll come in in mixed lots in a few years, and, indeed they are starting to turn-up, these aren't the first we've seen I think, just the first since I saw that old comment!

 

I need to sort all these out, but some are to hand, some are deeper in the unit, so it'll have to wait for another day, but I think we've now seen them all in both sizes, and all of them, bar the smaller set, with packaging, from three or four brands/brand marks (here PME), in teams of three-a-side with a referee, and seven-a-side, no referee!

 

This is interesting, and a nice box ticker, but these are the poor quality Hong Kong/China copies, commissioned by Hornby Hobbies, of their own, better-quality Scalextric product, from the previous Lines-Triang iteration, with a loss of details and basic painting. When the pit crew had matching cardigans!

 

More for the unknown seated/rider zone, except I know the big one is Tudor Rose, and he's in the folder I mentioned the other day as sliding into the long-queue, I'll dig him out as a follow-up!

 

Despite being in two colours these seem to be from the same set, and again would appear to be new to Blog? Although possibly copies of others we have seen already.

 

Cakeboards bowls playing cake decorations, I don't know if they are still going but they seem to have produced quite a few of these resin figures, between about fifteen and eight years ago? The missing sliver of the lady's hat is in the bag, so must have broken off on the journey back to Hampshire, I'll get it glued back on! We've actually seen her before, sans hand!

 

Compare this ice-cream or snack vendor from Scalextric, with the featureless figures above, I've never fully got my head round these, because as well as various generations, painted and unpainted, hard 'styrene and soft 'ethylene, there seems to be a set of scaled-down figures as well, and I've never understood where they fit in the line.

 

Next to him is a Timpo policeman, and I'm not sure which of the set I have, which I need, this one's leaning a bit, had a wee dram against the cold of a night-shift! Unknown motorcyclist, probably from an Hong Kong plastic jobbie around 1:25th, and another anonymous construction/road worker.

 

These might go with the four figures above, they were in the same lot?

 

And to finish, some smaller chaps, being three more of the Hornby plastics, which with the ones the other day is most of a loose set in a few weeks! A Dinky police officer and another Merit platform staff, moving a milk churn. Tanks again to Peter for all these, more useful stuff, and more images for loyal readers!

A is for Atom Bomber

Ah, yes! Alongside the white heat of technological advancement, let's have the white heat of atomic annihilation! Originally a Thomas Toys hit in the late 1940's USA, Poplar Plastics carried it over here, maybe in the early 1950's. 

 

No real/specific scale, but maybe around 1:144th?

 

Sitting somewhere between a B29 (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)/B50 Superfortresses, and the C97 Stratofreighter (the bulge and fold-line down the fuselage), it's not really any of them, and is a typical dime-store approximation! Mine has probably lost a bunch of stickers/water-slide transfers, but it was still an awesome find, at the last Sandown Park toy fair.

 

The Thomas versions are shown as having a central nose wheel in the same yellow plastic as the other small parts, so mine may have a replacement pair from something else, but it seems to have age and fit nicely, so it could be an updated feature of the Poplar version?

 

I'm missing a bomb, and I know I don't have one anywhere in the various spares stashes, so I'll have to look out for one, luckily it's quite distinctive, about 3cm, and ringed/winged like a dart-board dart, without the point. Pressing the plunger on the upper fuselage, opens the brass doors, and the 'all metal' bomb drops out, it's not sophisticated!

 

In the US there seem to have been two retail versions,, the plane and bomb, in a box, the box doubling as a target with various military objects to try and hit, printed on the lid. The other is a much more expensive affair, with an exploding battle ship in alternate blue/yellow deck/hull, with red turrets and superstructure parts to fly off! I don't know what Poplar issued, but after finding that submarine and rocket set, earlier this year, it wouldn’t surprise me if they offered both configurations over here.

HB is for Horror Bargains!

And Home Bargains, where I went at the end of August, and found a few bits of interest to readers of the Blog, ticking two boxes here, edibles and white button toys,, and incidentally; I spent a couple of hours last night re-Tagging White Button, which now shares the Clockwork Tag, but Clockwork of the vintage, large or tin-plate variety won't have the White Button Tag, I also added Cable Drum as a Tag!

 

Hallow Scream . . . geddit! Well, once you have a few, you just have to keep getting them! A gangling ghost and a perambulating pumpkin, similar to the garden centre ones we saw last year, and with a growing selection of robots, marching troops and a couple of dinosaurs, not to mention a Grinch (also Home Bargains), it's a race to see who dominates what will become a dedicated tub!

 

I thought the 'BOO!' detracted from the overall character of the toy . . .

 

. . . so I removed it with a bit of hand-sanitiser mixed with de-icer!

 

I also picked up these chocolate eggs, and managed to remove the wraps carefully (another collection of mine is old sweet and confectionery wrappers!), and managed to take the outer liner home with them, so I can scan it for the eventual A-Z listing, which in this case is Mon Desir, the people who brought us the chubby, semi-deform Superhero gift-eggs, about ten/twelve years ago.

 

Pretty standard chocolate, not unpleasant, no white chocolate half, and a fun thing for a lunch box, or even the breakfast table - Halloween falls on Saturday this year doesn’t it?

 

Sadly the contents aren't Halloween related, being 'bog-standard' stuff we've seen before from other minor brands, with the bobbing 'chariot' and  jogging dog-team, both mirroring such items from Kinder's past, the frog a common capsule toy, and the 'space' pick-up truck is fun!

R is for Recent Stuff - Follow-ups 1

A few shots I've been taking as I try to sort this years plunder into the ever diminishing space at the end of my storage unit!

 

These are the 60mm Crescent Mohicans (oooh, spellchecker really doesn't like that!) I bought a while ago, four of six and I need the standing firer replaced with a better one, so fast forward to the pair I bought at the Plastic Warrior show in June, and . . .

 

. . . and I'm still short one! The archer with bow, but funnily enough I think I may have one or two of them in with the standard Crescent 60mm Indian sample, as I'm pretty sure one or two have come in with cheapo' lots, and I just put them in the tub 'with the others'! Time will tell, but we're getting there!

 

The Cherilea swoppets who have come in over the last 36-odd months, these are not the master collection, but in terms of the 1st and interim versions, probably excede the 'deep-storage' sample, but in the case of the final version, only a part figure, against a much better sample, seen here, a fair few years ago!

 

I think we've seen all these now, so time for a comparison line-up, I thought the chap on the left might be Husky/Corgi Junior but he's not, so possibly Galoob or New Ray drive-though ice-cream kiosk operative? Then the Corgi standard ice cream seller, then the giant, might-be-Lucky piracy we saw the other day. Then the Corgi streetlamp repair man, then another 'styrene scale up, from Hong Kong! PVC-PVC-PS-PE-PS

 

Interim line -up of French Marine's Fear! Missing a couple of key-rings I think, from the always-been-in-some-sort-of-storage zone, and the composition one we saw here years ago, but not bad, and mostly from Chris Smith, I bet! Still, the absentees will allow for a more definitive Welsh Ladies shot, another day!

 

The sublime (Tudor Rose) and the ridiculous, a hideous pile of Hong Kong tat, which I ended-up with because someone gave it to me, I think? Hong Kong did churn out some fuggugly stuff! I think it's marked JC on the base, but I don't really care, it's naff, kitsch shite, but . . . figures!

 

Finally I said I though the Airfix 1:35th Quickbuild 'Lego' Sherman was closer to 1:32nd, and here I've shot it next to the CTS/BMC one I got at last years PW show, and you can see it's a lot smaller. The difference being OK for a garden war game, but is seriously going to piss-off a purist!