P is for Plunder Post - 2. Plastic Warriors

The PW guys brought stuff to the show for me and we're looking at some of that today along with a 50p tray-load!

Peter Evans dumped this huge sack next to me and told me I'd like it (he took so little for it I think we'd both be embarrassed if I mentioned the amount) and . . . I liked it!

The blue bag is full of Hestair Kiddybricks-call-me-Betta Builder from Airfix, which I don't know what to do with, but there is a load more in storage, so (as it's a styrene polymer) I may make-up a few of the 'official' pamphlet models and glue them solid one day, as permanent examples? The trouble with Betta Builder is it stuck with the donor's design (as per early Lego), which makes it looser than the 'exploited design' Lego then ran with.

The big bag was full of rack-toy stuff, mostly loose figures and AFV's which again makes them mostly spares (out of context), so the bulk will help to benefit Dr. Banardo after I've sorted them, but I will keep one or two of each figure pose or mould variant and have already had a photo-session of the AFV's - we will return to them in Rack Toy Month!

Other stuff in the bag included two of those little celluloid carts from Japan you see occasionally on evilBay or in those multi-stand indoor flea-markets, I have another one here so we will look at them in close-up soon, and I have a bunch in storage, including some with a draft cow instead of these donkeys, so we will look at them again in the further future.

The Solpa rack-toy will been shown on the HK Blog soon and raised a couple of interesting points, the fish we looked at the other day (I've only found two at the time this shot was taken, there were five more in the big sack!), while I think the Daleks may be the new Warlord Games ones? Similar to the old Games Workshop ones but NSD's and with the front section as a separate piece - to help keep all the bobbles even-domed - like the magazine freebies we've been looking at here.

Some of the animal flats we've looked at here before are very useful as there are a lot of poses and a lot of colours, while the two solid siege-engines are from Safari, and like the wagon and Tee-pee from the Wild West sets; make better HO-OO accessories.

The 'pre-sort' sort, excluding the stuff in the other two bags, most of this will be sorted into other bags when they join the ones upstairs, of interest is the bag of 50mm firemen; they are the same as the ones I showed about four years ago here and can't remember the name of (for the second time I think!) Halsall . . . Grossman/HGI? It doesn't matter, the point is, this lot were half duplicates and half new poses, now as the carded set we looked at that time had pose specific blisters, it would seem that larger/other sets had a higher pose count.

To the little bag of guards . . . these are basically 30mm copies of Britains Eyes Right figures, and one of the more exquisite things to come out of the pirating-dens of our former colony! I think there should be eight or ten in a full set, and they usually come with food-picks or icing-spikes as they were sold as Cake Decorations, these have had the rods cut short to fit HK swoppet piracy bases - clever idea.

There's a bass drum missing, trumpeter, maybe a couple of others (flute?), but as memory serves (I have some in storage*) this is how they came, originally; moving arms - separate on the drummer - even paint wise; really nice little things. Note how someone's put the cymbalist's arms on a side-drummer torso.

*I was working for a dealer about ten years ago, and saw a set on eBay, there was no clue as to the size, and I didn't even think about it, just mentioned them to him as I knew he liked that sort of thing, and they were obviously HK copies of Britains, he did like them and duly bought a set - you can imagine his disappointment when they turned-up in a jiffy-bag barely big enough for the address label! As I was then still a small-scale only collector, he gave them to me and I've always felt a bit guilty for having suggested them in the first place.

Brian Carrick also brought a small bag of freebies to the show which included some Bonux bits, some more of those Galoob mini action figures (with three of the really useful, always missing, bases) and a few bits of rack-toy stuff, along with a mini-take on Playmobile which I guess must be an early'ish Kinder toy?

We were discussing the probability of the white lumps being teeth at the show, and why you'd give plastic teeth away as a washing-powder toy-premium, only for some Hong Kong-copied ones to turn-up on feebleBay a week ago! They are for a game of knucklebones or something; like Jacks, I think; the seller said they were ex-Gum Ball prizes.

These were from a 50p tray and I can only count 18 pairs, as I must have been rounding-up to a twenty note, there are four items missing which must be mixed in with everything in the next post! I know I was rounding-up as the Maysun ringmaster Crescent-copy is clearly not as good as the one I already have! But otherwise an interesting lot, with four Dimetrodons!

There are also four of the Gygax/D&D 'chinamonsters' which are quite sought-after these days. For those Toy Soldier purists who don't know the story - the original handbooks for Dungeons & Dragons included a guide to the denizens of the 'fantasy universe' with a few pen-&-ink sketches illustrating some of the more esoteric (made-up by Garry Gygax and his co-conspirators rather than found in Tolkien or a medieval bestiary) entries. Those sketches were based on some of the weirder models in rack-toy bags of chinosaurs! Of which 'Lobster-tail', 'Gator-man', 'Aadvarky' and 'Beaky-head' (my names) were among the stars so rendered!

The airfix alligator copy is useful and the lot also had a few premiums and Kinder bits . . .

. . . including a nice group of astronauts and their vehicles.