T is for Two - Young Ladies . . . & A Gentlemen . . .

. . . and their bloody out-of-control livestock, running about all over the place.

It's Little (and not so little) Bo Peep, and the other peeps, they've all lost their sheep, what the hell did they think they were playing at? You take out sheep with no sheepdog, the outcome is a foregone conclusion isn't it? Didn't they do a taking-out-sheep course, or something? Jeez!

Gem Model's Bo Peeps vary in shade from cornflower- to powder-blue, and seem to go from large and all-matt paint, to small and glossy, with the final issues having no chalk or other paint-adhesion additive, but two extra paint colours . . . swings & roundabouts?

They're at your feet! I've posed the chalky Bo with the larger (also chalky) lambs, and the smaller glossy Bo (a Culpitt commissioning thing?) with the smaller glossy lambs, I'm sure that's the correct order!

Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was as white as snow, she threw it up into the air and was arrested, charged, found guilty of animal cruelty and banned from keeping sheep for a period not less than five years.

I haven't found a smaller one yet, the one on the right looks smaller due to it's being a tad bent, and the effects of the angle of the photograph, shown only to illustrate the fact that base colour could vary.

Little Boy Blue, he lost his shoe? Lost his horn? How could he lose his horn with all those pretty ladies in the meadow? Or did he blow it . . . I think he blew-off his horn for the Ladies, didn't he? See - I told you he was blue! He only went and brought a cow to the party . . . what sort of idiot brings a cow to a picnic AND a lamb?

None of these lambs are tagged, I notice; it's going to be madness trying to sort them all out at going-home time! Chaos . . .  the meadow in Nursery Land is bloody chaos - I tell's yer!

Well . . . I found them -  and I wasn't even looking hard! The older, larger sculpts are on the outside, the smaller, later sculpts are on the inside. In the catalogues (post 1979) Code F11 (which had been 'Running Lamb') became 'Lambs', I suspect that it was a pair of the smaller animals?

Lovely carded versions of Bo' and the Blue Boy are to be seen in the Plastic Warrior magazine 'Special Publication' on Gem (pp.11).