News, Views Etc . . . Torres!

The bulls are still around, but they seem to have had a makeover!

http://www.notcot.com/archives/2013/07/torres-sangre-de-toro-bulls.php

S is for Space Paratroop

After the paratrooper post the other day I found two more shots in Brian's folder, one of which should definitely have been in that post (Jaru card variant), still, we will return to paratroopers again and I'll try to remember to use them both then!

In the meantime we are looking at a Paratroop toy with no parachute!

These turn-up as single figures, loose, from time to time as they were probably quite common once, however it's nice to see them in the packaging, and who needs a parachute in space!

Copies of MPC spacemen, but with lenticular faces behind fish-bowl visors which gives them a quite realistic look . . . who am I kidding; you've probably all seen them in the flesh . . . they look like lobotomised starey dolls; the Stepford Space Paratroop!

S is for a Shed-load of Shelfies of Saurapod Sets in time for Santa!

Both Brian Berk and myself have been busy since August taking shelfies of Chinasaur Dinosaur sets, which have been gathering in a folder with a vague aim of doing something at Christmas in the back of my mind, this is that something, it's nearly Christmas . . . so!

Starting to recognise the different shelving in Brian's shelfies I think these will be found in Walmart, 'State-side? Largish-looking scale/size wise and nicely decorated; since the Chinese started finding such well preserved evidence in their sedimentary beds, toy makers (and dinosaur artists generally) have got more experimental in their decorating of them, particularly the larger models.

Although tending to use snakes and lizards for their guiding-influence, rather than birds, as they probably should, true reptiles being a separate branch of the taxonomic tree - I believe - from dinosaurs; the two groups existing side-by-side for hundreds of millions of years.

The back of the box has the sort of info-panel kids' love collecting, cutting them out and keeping safe in 'their' drawer or a little folder or something! But spot the deliberate (not!) mistakes!

Ten out of ten for Kid Galaxy from this critic! Four more; the . . . Monoceratops, Multiceratops (? Front-horn's too long for a Styracosaurus) is particularly striking I think.

Meanwhile I was over in TKMaxx taking shelfies as well, these are less well decorated (or 'traditionally' decorated - blast from an angled airbrush both sides and brushed highlights in a contrasting colour!) beasts from HGL (formally H Grossman) being sold here as a four or five lot (check-out the blue one's neck for a bonus!), but also available . . .

. . . as a proper old-school play set! Twenty-nine dino's and a tree . . . and a volcano!

The volcano being filled with mini-saurs and - despite picking-up a lot of mini-saurs in recent years - not instantly recognisable - so possibly new sculpts, or new to me anyway. I was tempted, as well; 16-quid makes them just over 50p each, cheap as a bag of junk at a toy show! But it's a 'big ticket' at one swoop and they'll be in charity shops for less eventually, so I'll wait!

Back to Brian's snapping and we have this set of 55-pieces, most of which also seem to be Chinasaurs, rather than scenics or flimsy transparent volcanoes! Also in Walmart and the count is in part arrived at with duplication, but even if it's 24 sculpts and a tree, it's gonna'be good value for younger relatives this Christmas!

These come with a mildly amusing story of uptight British mannerisms - I needed to buy a small paint-tray, and no one in town had one (well, Baker's would have but it was a Wednesday afternoon so they were closed!) that wasn't part of a large set, every other piece of which I had no yearning for!

The chap who's recently taken over the odd & sods shop did have one, but it was less than three quid and I only had my card on me, so feeling guilty as we walked back to the till, I grabbed these two as I felt I needed to 'make-up' the amount; terribly British nonsense, but there you are - by accident of birth!

Anyway, they were 1.99 each and took the total over six pounds so 'honour' was restored, or achieved or whatever the Brit's think they are doing when they unnecessarily buy stuff to feel better about buying stuff from someone who sells stuff - for a living!

The orange one seems to be the least well painted of the set of six we've seen some of before here, sold singly in Poundland (or 99p Stores before their demise) and shelfied in TKMaxx last year as a threesome (I've seen them elsewhere in ones or threes) this one branded to Tobar.

The other is new and gives us another tag; Out of The Blue, a German importer, how he ended-up sharing a shop-stock box with the Tobar is something only the stock-keeper knows!

Another shelfie from Brian, but this one taken in a British seaside town during one of his visits to the homeland, and it's a seaside classic, baggy ethylene sack with flimsy card header claimed by Kandytoys and all ready to populate a sandcastle! They look to be older sculpts from the 1970's or '80's getting another outing?

I'm not sure 'Go Back To 180 Million Years Ago' is quite the message our tourist destinations should be broadcasting in these Bwreaksit times though? Although, maybe they're preparing for the end of tourism, the shackling of horses to cars and the re-learning the art of living off swede or turnip soups' when not waving two fingers at 'Johnny-foreigner' over the Channel?

Finally, some vintage 'Frankosaur' action with this charming Stegosaurus I shot on Adrian's table at a resent Sandown Park toy fair. Starlux (for it is they) did some lovely sculpting for their prehistoric range, given the age they were made and this is a little peach, if a tad miserable-looking, but eating tree-ferns and cycads all day without getting eaten by something bigger can't have been a particularly joyous existence!

A is for Another Box Ticked

'Cos some of the figure purists feel miffed by the sort of post we had this morning!

This really is a box-ticker, left over from a photo-shoot I did ages ago (March 2013!) and missing a hard-plastic one in creamy-white polymer I thought I had somewhere? But I may be getting confused with the Lone Star ones . . . or the Charbens Guards Band!

Charbens - 6 poses (I thought there were eight for the longest time!), the two to the right-hand-side are French 'bazar' or rack-toy copies, I think, but I'm not sure, Charbens had lots of different issues themselves. One is the pose missing from my factory-painted sample; chain-mail striking with sword; a re-working of the axe-man next to him, or was it the other way round?

W is for Wheelimals!

A real Box-ticker today, you may well have seen these on evilBay and wondered at their parentage, unless you already know what they are in which case there may be something more interesting here tomorrow!

Tri-ang. That's the box-ticking element done! Seriously; it's just to get them in the tag-list, I think they were also associated with Minic and Mettoy and possibly later under the Playcraft label, so they're all going on the bottom. I call them 'wheelimals' for want of a better title as they follow a tradition going right back to early hand-crafted wooden toys; of being attached to 'carpet' wheels.

Images:
Left; Vectis I think (link)
Right; old low-res feeBay image

The toys they accompany are 'big box' type 'Christmas & Birthday' toys, the ark being nearly three feet long and solidly built of ply-wood with metal door hinges, the roof opens to get the animals out for play and to store them in the meantime or inbetweentimes!

The lorry being more of a garden toy, in tin-plate with large solid-rubber tyres, and a hinged rear-door/ramp.

I believe there was a Farm Lorry version of the truck toy, coming with a five or six-inch figure of a farmer which looks exactly like a Marx cowboy; a sort of reversed Seth Adams pose, striding with a double-barrelled shotgun instead of the rifle, and a distinctly US style 'cowboy' hat! But he may have come with the smaller (two-axle?) horse-box toy that included the two giant Britains horses?

Elephants and Rhinos, one of which has been got-at by poachers! Although; the sad truth is that both animals are at risk of extinction, not just in our lifetimes, but within a decade or so at the current rate of predation.

Sheep.

Lions and Tigers, two lions in Noah's Ark may have raised a few small 'c' conservative eyebrows in the past, but hey, if they loved each other and considered themselves a couple, why not!

Camel

Considering their core purpose is for use as hard-wearing playthings for younger children or older infants; they are surprisingly well sculpted toys, they lose a bit in the leg department, but even then the outsides of the feet, hooves or toes are well executed.

Sets - known or suspected;

Tri-ang Circus Van (Tin Plate)
Tri-ang Noah's Ark (Ply-wood)

Horse Box?
Farm Truck?

Wheelimals - known or suspected;
Donkey
Dromedary
Camel
Elephant
Giraffe
Hippopotamus
Lion
Panda
Bear
Rhinoceros
Sheep Tiger

Cow?
Pig?

G is for Ge-Models Gemodels and Gem, but never Gem Models!

The full story for which is covered in the Plastic Warrior 'Gemodels Special' but suffice to say they seem to have been briefly Gem Models at the start and everyone refers to them as 'Gem'! I say "they" - it was a he; George Musgrave, and he was quite prolific, but it's all in the aforementioned publication, and we have looked at their output before here, as well as these Lifeguards, however following-up on May's post Jim sent an interesting item in his recent parcel...

... a carded set of Ge-Models Lifeguards; a full set of four poses, beautifully minty with 98% of their paint (gem are terrible flakers!), although as we look at the item in more depth you may begin to suspect repainting - for obvious reasons!

I have the standard bearer loose in storage along with all the Horse Guards (my preferred choice of the Household Cavalry, don't ask why? I don't know!), but it seems Lifeguards have been coming in quite regularly this last few years!

Base marks are often not terribly clear, but there's usually a smidgeon of a mark if you hold them to the light and angle them properly. Marks can vary from a simple 'Gem' to a full 'Gemodels Made in England [with code number or registered trade mark number]'.

Very like the Festival figures, and a quick note here; I have in the past suggested a link between the two, even to discussing it with Barney over at Black Dragon once, I've since noticed that there are plenty of Festival items in the Musgrave museum displays, so the link is firm, but the relationships remain to be sorted - particularly with Culpitt's, for instance; why are there so many Hong Kong versions of Festival figures compared to Gem copies?

The officer has a bigger base, I don't know why, as it's the standard bearer who needs it most!

But back to the card; first mystery . . . it's clearly a copy, it's a high resolution scan and print, but it's the same side twice, with the old staple-marks not Photoshop'd-out, and from the size of the staples used for the copy, along with the smallness of some of the text on the card, the suspicion is that the original card was bigger?

Not that Mr Musgrave wasn't above a bit of plagiarism himself, if you thought the card's artwork was looking a tad familiar, it's because it is! While lots of people used scroll logos in the past, these are a little too similar!

And it doesn't stop with the logo! It's not exact, and certainly different enough to keep it out of court, but I'd argue the one has influence over the other? Even to both showing a red plume, despite the fact that Gem always painted theirs white?

I think the unreadable-bit probably read 'High Impact Material'

A quick comparison with what I have here, left to right;

Top Row

Gemodels, Britains Herald (ethylene), Britains Herald (vinyl), Britains Hong Kong, Britains Herald (ethylene), Britains Hong Kong x2 and Gemodels.

Bottom Row

Gemodels, recent from-hollow-cast (Charbens?), Hong Kong copies of Britains x2, unknown (Cavendish or Hill?), Timpo (looking a bit 19thC despite being the same as the others!), unknown from-hollow-cast and Gemodels.

All (other?) versions of Charbens still missing, still in storage.

And many thanks to Jim for putting this curiosity to one side for me to share with you, now we need to find an original and compare card-size; also - you can see why I suspect the four in the pack may be re-paints, it doesn't matter; as if they have been, it's been done to the same style (standard/quality) as the originals, but if you've gone to the trouble of reproducing the card, it's a small matter to strip and clean a tatty set and re-paint them? I think they are original paint though . . . just exploring possibilities!

The second mystery is - why haven't more of these cards shown-up? Who was behind them and when did they appear? The one sent to me has seems to have some age of its own, over and above the reproduced stains of the scanned original.

A is for Annual Fix

It's been ages since I fed the Airfix addiction here and I found these the other day looking for something else, it's a bit of a box-ticker, but we haven't had one of those for a while either! Gets them in the tag list.

I seem to have taken them late in 2010 as my second Fuji was giving-up it's electronic mental-stability, so they may not reproduce well, but I've left them un-collaged, apart from the two 'wooden bench' shots.

I think they must have been a purchase from the penultimate (or last?) Dave McKenna-run Birmingham toy soldier show which was a few days earlier than these are dated, I did do a show report, but there was a lot of stuff, and A) I only blogged the highlights and B) I know it never got sorted, it went into storage still mostly together in a spare box!

From the Airfix Motor Racing header-carded, bagged-set 5089 Track Officials & Spectators, a set of twelve figures, including 2 older fans seated.

The painted figure is Preiser I think? Not sure, he could be Merten, but he looks like earlier Preiser (they're all in storage so I'm going on what I can see, not what I can check!) although I can't find him in either catalogues and he looks a bit 'British' . . . flat-cap and newspaper, having a rant (speak for yourself Hugh!), he may be O-gauge from Peco or Slaters? What I do know is that he doesn't belong with the 5089 figures.

F is for Follow-up to P is for Paint Your Own

Brian Berke responding to the 'Paint Your own' posts last week; sent these shelfies to Small Scale World earlier this week! Having thought there may not be Paint Your Own's on the other side of the pond he proved himself wrong by finding Decorate-Your-Own's and produced a follow-up post into the bargain!

From an outfit called Melissa & Doug, they are a bit cartoony and judging by the paint-pots; larger than the ones we looked at the other day, which explains the similar pricing, although these still come in a little cheaper than the UK sets we looked at, but equivalence in polymer used is there to be seen!

As with the more cartoony ones last week; paint will hide a multitude of sins, as the caricature'ness of them is mostly in the expression which can be hidden. Also note that the paint-strips looks very familiar, here we get lots of useful desert colours! And the brush too, is a better one than the old stiff craft things I mentioned last time.

Sea creatures, again, fill the goggle-eyes and paint well; you'll lose the slight daftness, and a lovely choice of colours with this set.

Thanks to Brian - as always; and are there any paint-your-own (or decorate!) sets in your neck of the woods?

M is for Minty'mals

Editing the Land Rover reminded me I was going to post these two, and as the 'Rover post was a bit sparse, I thought I'd chuck these up here as a sort of 'Bonus Post'!

I think these are from Dave Scrivener's collection, in a roundabout way, purely from where I found them and the reason I bought them is simply - they are near mint. An oft misused word, and the paint isn't perfect on the Ant Eater, but these Cherilea animals are notorious for shedding their paint if you so much as look at them wrong, so to find these in such condition is a definite feather in one's cap - and; (Vichy!) that's not me being big-headed, that's me stating a fact and proving it by sharing them with everyone else!

The Otter, as this is smaller than the one I'm more used to seeing I'm guessing (not assuming!) it's from the hollow-cast sculpt, and would be therefore; the earlier, the more common one is much Larger, but I don't know for sure.

Again this is smaller than others I've seen, as a matter of fact this is the first time I've seen either of them in this size. Possibly not the best rendition of a South American ant-eater; it looks more like a hyena with a long nose and very furry tail!

Who remembers David Attenborough standing next to one (anteater, not hyena) and saying something along the lines of "the reason I can stand so close to this animal is that is eye-sight is not very good and it's nearly deaf, so as long as I stay down-wind of it, I can get very close" at which point; as if on cue, the animal turned and peered at the cameraman (clearly up-wind) and flicked it's tongue like a snake, as if to say "...but I can smell you!"

Monday 27th - Looks like they are actually Hillco? Cherilea did a larger Otter, but it must have been a scaled-up piracy or after they obtained Hill's intellectual property?

Because the above is a bit brief, I've tacked this on as an afterthought. Does anyone know why this particular PVC model elephant, marked 'MADE IN TAIWAN' is so blinking common? I think I have a few other animals with a Taiwan-mark somewhere in storage (one of this, one of that), but I've picked up six of these without trying in the last few years, and have a bag-full in the storage unit.

Literally every mixed junk-lot of animals and/or small-scale stuff you see on feebleBay seems to have one, every rummage tray at shows, every animal bag in charity-shops, it's as if there's a secret never-ending supply of them somewhere.

It's not Corgi (nor Dinky or Matchbox), yet at some point was issued somewhere in large numbers. I wondered if it was the Arco pair until we blogged that a year ago, I'm now wondering if it was a popular board-game - long since forgotten - some Tarzan or Daktari-related TV Tie-in? If anyone knows I'd be interested.

And it's perfect for smaller Asian (or the mythical Atlas Mountain) war elephants in 1:76th scale!

A is for Abenteuer in Afrika . . . Mit dem Landrover auf Safari

Spidec Spielzeug provide us with today's post, and it's a real curates egg (he says; not for the first time, there are a lot of curates eggs in the toy basket, and a lot of them came from Hong Kong!), being at the same time both a copy of the Blue Box Land Rover AND at least one, possibly two Corgi Land Rovers! Spidec - presumably - being a German importer/jobber (?), I have a nice copy of the Britains-Herald totem pole marked to Spidec somewhere.

Nice boxed set with a reasonable afternoons-worth of play value which is all you would have been looking for in 1970-something having paid very little for this off the cheapie rack! Not sure about the artwork . . . He's got two live ones in the back but then gets a sudden urge to blow another away!

Unlike the Blue Box vehicle it's aping, this one doesn't have a trailer, but because it has copied the 'giraffe hole' in the cage (the Corgi Lions of Longleat one had it); both the big cats can escape - I hope they jump out and eat the driver before he gets a shot-off, although - the way he's holding that rifle he's going to hurt himself more than the fleeing lion anyway!

The door stickers are also falling back on the Corgi Gift Set 8 Lions of Longleat (but the Corgi cab had a hole for the guard) with further references to Corgi gift sets 31 (Safari Land Rover with Animal Trailer) and 36 (Tarzan' Rover was hard-top LWB in both sets), while I think the roof-horns are from a late Dinky breakdown truck? There are also shades of the Daktari set (GS14) in the mix.

The model differs from the Blue Box one in the 'ally rims' which although just as leery with their chromium-plated finish are to a different pattern and the radio-aerial which is found further forward on Blue Box models.

A more major difference between the two is that while the Blue Box version (quite common)* is a simple model with clip-in axles allowing for hand-powered motivation, the Spidec Lanny has a push-and-go 'friction motor' for more independent carpet safaris!

* Turns up at shows as ex-shop stock and on evilBay; found with two, one or no trailer/s in recent years; it's as if there's a warehouse full somewhere, they turn-up with French and German language consumer information panels and I think I've seen Spanish ones, so a 'Euro-importer' seems to have lost a batch at some point, or maybe it was just a popular and therefore numerous line at the time?

The lion and tiger . . . "A Tiger! In Africa?"! . . . are pretty common as generics from larger bagged/carded sets or early toobs (they were called tubs back then I think!); polyethylene sub-scale copies of Blue Box copies of Britains sculpts.

Thanks to Mercator Trading for the opportunity to shoot this.

A is for Airborne Armymen Again!

One day I'll run out of decent titles for these posts, but it isn't today! In the lot Jim sent me the other day, there were two large paratroopers of a design we've seen before here at Small Scale World, both in passing and in depth - when I followed up on the Fairchild version.

Well; we now have another UK branded version, this time Rosebud; better known for their dolls but we have also looked at their construction sets here, in the past. There are differences between the two, but if anything they help to sort them out, as while the Fairchild is the better finished, the Rosebud is the fuller-detailed, (rounded buttons against Fairchild's hinted buttons - that sort of thing) suggesting Rosebud's was first and the Fairchild came later when techniques had improved, but there's no evidence for it and whichever was first, we don't know if the other was a copy, or licensed, although both companies were operating on (or off!) the A1/M1-corridor (if memory serves), so they probably had talked to each other about the toy.

The other paratrooper Jim sent is third from the left in the above line-up and is the biggest Hong Kong version to date (here; I may have others in storage), being a copy of the Rosebud sculpt with the larger, slightly lop-sided helmet, as opposed to the current Jaru (et al) offering, which is a re-cut of the Fairchild version with the slimmer/rounder helmet.

Most of the others follow the Rosebud version, the red one has a question mark, as he is so clean he may be a more recent 'China' rather than older 'Hong Kong' moulding, the apparent rifle-but sticking out of his side is the remains of a runner-tip.

From the left, Jaru Shelfie from the 'States courtesy of Brian Berke; Jaru at Asda Supermarkets version bought by me a few years ago and finally Kids Fun from The Works last year sometime? There are subtle differences between the ConUS and UK cards, but they may be no more than batch changes and of little significance.

Close up of the new donation from Jim with the marking in the same place and similar style as the Fairchild one; in the parachute cavity.

Both the Brits alongside their colonial pirate, the image serves to suggest further that the Fairchild came later as both the Rosebud and the HK copy are heavier sculpts and share some features, while the Fairchild has slimmed in the adding of detail, clearly: if the Fairchild had been around first (to be copied) the other two wouldn't be so well-fed! Also note how the HK copy has 'got' the Rosebud face, the significance of which will be seen after the next image.

When I said the Rosebud had better detail above, I wasn't contradicting the fact that I'm now saying the Fairchild has more detail, it's that the Fairchild has better engraving, but the details on the Rosebud are richer somehow . . . painterly; if that makes sense? And if it doesn't; you should stick to the pictures and not read the blurb!

The HK copy however, is the most fascinating example of the pirates art, there is no sculptural element here at all, whatsoever; from a arms-length away he looks as believable as the other two, yet look closely and you realise he is a series of milling-marks and that’s all, no engraver was involved in the preparation of the moulding, well, maybe he was allowed to spend fifteen-minutes sanding/polishing the face?!!

Layered like a 3D deposition-tank or sintered-powder  model, the fine-lines are where the pantograph has been used to cut straight into the steel tool block (possibly brass but by the 1970's steel was becoming the norm), transferring rough shapes and contours across from the (almost certainly Rosebud) work-piece being copied, and after a test-shot had been taken of that first stage, the decision not to finish the mould-tool by hand was made - time is money. Webbing detail and pockets etcetera; being also and only milling marks - it's crude, but it's clever.

===============

I happen to know the Rosebud original was sold as The Red Devils Parachutist as I have an evilBay auction image of one 'on-the-card' from ages ago in the Rosebud folder on the dongle, and it's interesting to think this pose is now probably over 50-years old, yet the current, well-spread and easily-available Jaru sculpt/re-sculpt is still not shabby!

M is for Minions!

This is an odd one as I was sure I'd handled them before, but once I got them out of the box, they ceased to feel familiar, turns out I'd selfied a similar set last Christmas in TK Maxx, today's was the reduced end of line/scruffy last set in The Works a week or two ago.

This set differs from the one we saw lasttime in a number of ways, firstly - there are no duplicates and secondly there are non-minion items, a monster rock-ape-dog-boar thing and a unicorn?

Now I've noticed that unicorns are everywhere this Christmas (or this autumn if use of the 'C'-word is still too early for your sensibilities!), mugs, toys, cushions, egg-cups, stuffed-toys ('plushies' for those who indulge in baby-talk), fleeces, you name it I've seen it unicorn shaped or unicorn decorated in the last few weeks, 18 months ago you may remember a similar summer fashion trend for flamingoes, that didn't last long!

Another way they differ is that they all have their arms down, the previous set had far more animation in the individual sculpts included. This pre-production publicity shot also has them all with a printed logo on their dungarees which didn't make it to the production batch contained within the box!

The artwork is cleverly arranged to reveal the full extent of the playability; the heads come off and you can pull the monster-pet's legs out, and  . . . err . . . that's it! Although you can also pull the feet out with a sharp tug, they are actually - like the gloves to the hands, the arm-sections to the dungarees and the goggles to the faces - glued on/in.

Lining-up against the new backdrops! Four of the characters have the same basic body, arms and legs (including the pair on the left here) while one is taller and thinner, the other shorter and fatter - whereas the previous set seemed to have more variety or uniqueness between sculpts; with the Despicable Me 3 set only the heads differ on four of the figures.

The other two with common parts, the reason they didn't seem so similar when I'd opened them is that last time I only studied them on-store, and later from the shelfie. Now, it looks in that old set as if they do all come apart fully, but I suspect lost components led to poor customer feedback and as a result with this set the gloves are firmly attached; trying to pull them off stretches the arm, and as it's made of that crumbly new faux PVC - damage would have occurred had I persevered!

Likewise I tried to prise the arm/side units out but they are stuck-fast somewhere in the middle of the figure. However you can remove the feet, by turning sharply until you hear the non-solvent bond between the two polymers snap and then the feet become almost too free!

They also serve who only stand and wait! The previous set had 4 each of 5 poses, this set has one each of six, plus these two.

They're really just Kinder-egg capsules with dungarees and faces drawn-on aren't they, let's be honest; there's nothing new under the Sambro sun!

Be Bad!