Apparently these blow-moulded celluloid
figurines can be highly flammable, I suspect that's a 'crossed-lines' thing
with old cine-film which was also celluloid, but coated with all manner of
chemicals? I can say that despite smoking for 40-odd years I've never had one suddenly
combust under my care! Also I think a fair few of these may actually be
polystyrene?
The dangers of self-immolation aside, these
are a particular niche of the toy figure oeuvre, being almost exclusively a
Japanese thing, and relatively short-lived - 1940-50's. Certainly these are all
Japanese, and while we looked at my small sample a few years ago, more have come-in
and we're looking at them today.
On the left of the upper row are two Royal
Guardsmen similar to those we looked at last time, with a small . . . err . . .
what? 'Gentleman hobo'? Cartoon character from the '50's? Don't know, but
probably a Christmas cracker gift or something of that ilk?
Below them are two cowboys with the same
mark although not to scale, and these are the plaster/chalk filled type. I
don't know how they did it on the mounted figure; sometimes there is an obvious
fill-hole somewhere on the toy, but with this model there is no obvious point
for the plaster to have been introduced. With the standing figure it's obvious,
he's got an open base with the plaster sanded flat!
Marks on the above figures include a plain
'JAPAN' on the miniature, three 'M's round the edge of a circle with an 'N' in
the centre (mounted Guardsman), and smaller 'M' within a 'C' (the two cowboys)
and an 'S' in an egg-shaped ovoid itself within an elongated oval on the other
Guardsman (different to the previous lot) - I don't know any of the makers . . . yet!
Three Elephants, again the one on the left
is a chalk/plaster filled model, the filling prevents the dents and damage
these extremely lightweight and brittle novelties otherwise suffer from only
too easily.
We've seen the middle one before I think
while the one on the right is stylized to the point of being more wrinkly than
a really wrinkly thing that's gone to university and had itself elected head of
being really wrinkly!
A selection of very small ones, these were
probably all cracker or fairground prizes, a forth elephant (I like
elephants!), a larger scale sheep, with a similar goat, a polar bear and a
rather Sqiudgged turtle . . . or is it a tortoise? The bear is just over 2cm.
This is rather annoying as there is a
larger sample of this set in storage (about 12 animals), but somehow I ended-up
with the spares here, still they give an idea and it means we can return to
them another day, also we saw the bear before - I think! I like bears!
Animal marks, most are unmarked, but the
sheep has Japan as do the larger set while the realistically-sculpted elephant
has what looks like Tom/Toms, Jon/Jons or Toni? . . . Tono maybe?
Colour variation on the animal set. I like
blow-moulded celluloid animals!
No comments:
Post a Comment