B is for Bargain!

This little lot cost the grand sum of one pound Stirling and fifty additional pennyworth! The two Black Panther/Jaguar types being the quid, the rest being a meer 50p the lot! With a couple of tails to tell between the lot of them.

All from the same stall-holder and as I never turn-away from black cats, they were an absolute, and then I spotted a Starlux clown in a bag of metal scraps, the seller said 50p which is fair for a single Starlux small scale, so I paid up without worrying about the other bits which turned out to be very interesting.

The fox (probably from a home-casting mould) is a fun thing, the camel is also probably home cast, Britains driver (late version) and two halves of a Corgi kit elephant are present too, although his tail is missing. Also a 15mm war games figure of a Bedouin or Dervish warrior for a later 'what is it?' post and a home-cast cow, probably pirated from a minor maker's railway-scaled cow - not Britains Lilliput and not Crescent, but there is a third maker we looked at years ago here and probably others.

The other large elephant (only about 20mm scale); also with a broken tail (that's both tails told - I'm not terribly sophisticated!) is very weird and if anyone knows anything about him I'd be interested to know more; he's made out of a rubbery yet crumbly material like some heavy-duty builders filler, or double-glazing sealant or something, not silicon, more like composition, or old 1950/60's ink-pen/typewriter erasers? And he's in two halves; the head - complete - on one half.

There was another, but more damaged in the tray with the big cats, so I left it. The other was in a conventional walking pose, while this one seems to be performing, so from a  circus set, or home made to a high standard . . . could they be 3D printings, coming on to the second-hand market already?

Then there were all the small scale circus bits, which may or may not be home made and may or may not be from one of several sets/sources, maybe someone will recognise them? The lion jumping through a flaming ring is lovely, but small (for a lion) if it's from the same set as everything else?

Among the other painted bits is a pair of trapeze acrobats, a guy in a singlet who should be holding something (lion trainer's whip?) and a clown sitting on a case/box. To which I have added the unpainted bits left from the whole lot, which may or may not go together and include two home-cast (?) copies of Airfix bears and a copy of the small-scale rack-toy copy of the Maysun (and other HK maker's) copy of the Crescent for Kellogg's elephant standing on a tub.

Now; both Germany and the US have traditions of small scale circuses which grew out of the HO model railway world and the sets of both circus and fairground rides in that scale, so maybe they are from one of those countries markets? However circus in general is always popular so they could be from anywhere, or home made (they are quite crude, especially the non-pirated figures), any one seen them before?

The two Airfix piracies, because they were originally from different sets I have posted separate comparisons on those pages of the Airfix Blog, but here they are together.