About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

I is for Itlerpud - Part One; Bits & Bobs

Which sounds like one of Adolf's paw-prints, but is in fact ITLAPD . . . AaHaarrrrrr! Mee'Artieees! It be Int'ernationaalll talk loik a Poirut day! Again begorra! It be almost loik it's everry yearrrr?

Thaall'be foive postin's to come this foin day, this'un be'in the firrrst ov'em! AaHaarrrrrr!

I think that's enough talking like a pirate, so long as you're seen to be making the effort! So, the first post will look at the odds'n'sods that I have picked-up or found since last year's ITLAPD "Aa'haarr!"

These were 'unknown' last year (or the year before? Mass nicht!) in different colours/poses, but I recently found them on my old phone, taken in 2009 in clearance store Poundstreatcher (I think? Mass nicht!), they were attached to the backing card of a large window-boxed 'Pirate Ship Play Set' and branded to Halsall (now HTI), they would have been branded to others/nothers elsewhere and are really generics, but it's nice to put them in a named-place if you're a UK collector!

I think this has missed a couple of TLAPD's "Aa'haarr!" having been put in the unknown/TBS civilian box as a kid in dressing-up clothes, which he is, but they are Pirate clothes, so he should have been included in a  previous TLAPD "Aa'haarr!"

He is - as some of you will have recognised straight away I'm sure - a Hong Kong copy of the old rubber Thomas Toys dolls house child, others included a girl dressed as the Statue of Liberty. I have somewhere in storage a similar copy of the Dutch Boy with his ill-fitting trousers, and when I say similar; I think it's the same 'army-man' green plastic. So from a set of kids not from a set of pirates - but definitely piracy!!

As we're on copies, let's stick with them for these two pirated pirates pirating (centre, yellow) who are 'based-on' copies of the Ideal pirates (outside, grey, here re-issues by Glencoe), they are not exactly the same - the left-hand one having simpler buckled slip-on shoes (against bows on the original), no bows on his stockings, no pistol in his waistband and no hat, in addition his collared-shirt is a sleeved affair, open to the waist at the front with the sleeves rolled up as opposed to the string-vest of the original sculpt.

The right-hand diminutive imposter has lost the turned-down 'cavalier' boots in favour of the shoe/stocking uniform, has added a neckerchief to his otherwise equally bare chest, replaced the waist-belt with a cummerbund and had a haircut!

I've had a Google for them and found zilch, they have some of the look (and size) of 1970's European bubble-gun and ice-cream premiums by Gelados Olá, Mundi bubble-gum, Tito, and the rest, but they lack the typical release-pin holes in the undersides of the feet typical of those makers/issuers figures, still,  someone must know of them?

22-09-2017 - Paul Morehead, revered editor of Plastic Warrior magazine, thinks they are Poplar Plastics which makes sense, but then why didn't they scale-down the spacemen or Romans; 'cos they had the moulds?

Finally in this introduction to TLAPD "Aa'haarr!", are the chaps I picked out of Peter Bergner's rummage bins, thinking I didn't have enough for ITLAPD "Aa'haarr!"; how wrong I was, but, here they are again; generic Chinapirates!

I've seen them in various colours and two versions; some are less well-fed than these - and look a bit better for it, these are not terribly realistic having the squat look of badly designed war-gaming lead. Someone suggested they were Toy Major, I can find no evidence for it, although Toy Major are a jobber and have carried all-sorts, but this lot aren't in their current inventory.

Now known to be Tai Sang's 'Redbox' and carried by various wholesalers/generic or phantom brands


That's it for now, next part of ITLAP Day "Aa'haarr!" in a couple of hours . . .

2 comments:

Andy B said...

Just a thought- wonder if the child figure is meant to be Peter Pan?

Hugh Walter said...

As far as the Thomas Toys original goes Andy; Yes, in the 1950's if you were 'dressing up' as a pirate you were either having fictional Peter or Hollywood Errol in mind!!

H