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.

Monday, November 13, 2017

T is for Two - British Farm Items

This post should really be F is for Four... as they all came in different lots! These are a few items from recent charity shop buys, which happened to fit together!

The calf came first (with one of the goats below) with a mixed bag of mostly zoo animals and I was chuffed to get it as it's a flocked calf from Wend-Al, about a week later I picked-up the farmer in a bag of farm people . . . well I say "...farm people", there were a couple of mechanics and a superhero too!

He is Wend-Al too, so I now have a burgeoning Wend-Al farm collection of err....two! I rather like his painting, compared to some of the versions in the Philip Dean book, this one could pass for Richthofen or a young Goring walking out to their World War One 'string-bag'!

The calf from both sides, one (left) side is a bit threadbare (or should that be flockbare!), the other (right) is a bit grubby, but they are hard to find in any condition so I'm quite pleased with him. As far as I can tell from the aforementioned book the flocking was undertaken by Wend-Al themselves, some firms tended to use contractors?

One of these came with the calf in a bag of mostly zoo animals, the other came in a bag of mostly farm animals, with a few zoo animals, such is the logic of charity shops, they were bought at the same time from the same self!

The other came in an entirely different lot altogether, but both are Cherilea, the smaller from the old lead hollow-casting mould, the other - the first's replacement - designed for polymer injection-moulding and slightly larger.

However they share characteristics and were possibly from the same hand; the treatment of the fur (hair? I think goats have hair not fur!) is very similar, but the second sculpt has a better handle on animal-flesh and a slightly less static pose?

Since the chickens came-in earlier in the year and especially since the start of Barney Brown's series in Plastic Warrior magazine I am watching out for these, and it turned out there was another kicking around, this one with slightly better paint and the belly-mark; missing from the new one.

They both also have the red starey-eyes (or remains of) Barney mentioned in relation to the pigs in part one of his series - part two may be in the next PW which will be due in a couple of weeks, PlasticWarrior's Blog; if you need to subscribe! They are all a bit tatty for purists, but they will suffice as 'box-tickers' until something better turns up.

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