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, October 28, 2019

T is for ♯♪♫♫♪ They Just Hope Their Legs Don't Break . . . ♫♪♪♫

♫♫♪. . . Walking . . . on the Moooon! ♫♪

I mentioned the other day that we'd have a look at the sub-scale astronauts, and while this probably isn't the Post I had planned in my head - because the complete-sets are still buried in the garage somewhere - here are a few of them, loose for now.

Astronaut; Astronauts; John Wong & Co. Ltd.; K&M; K&M Astronauts; K&M Spacemen; Kin Ming Toy manufactory Ltd.; KM; Luna Explorer; Luna Lander; Luna Walker; Lunar Module; Moon Landings; Moon Shot; NASA; Pioneer Hong Kong; Pioneer PVC; Pioneer Streetmachine; PVC Figurines; PVC Plastic Toy Figurines; PVC Rubber; PVC Toy; PVC Vinyl Figures; PVC Vinyl Rubber; Realtoy; Smart Toys; Smart Toys Creative; SP Toys; Space Program; Space Programme; Spaceman; Spacemen; Supreme Toys; Supreme-SP; Wing Mau Trading Co.;
I only have one of these and he's a stand-alone for another reason, as the rest are PVC-alike, while he is a hollow, two-piece, glued polystyrene construct. ID'd with the help of Bill B's catalogue we can add another brand to the cannon - Kin Ming.

As you can see he has two holes in his base, there is a further oblong slot in his backpack; which I forgot to shoot, but between them they suggest he was possibly fixed to something (perhaps temporarily, pluged-in) and/or tethered to the same or something else! So possibly an accessory for a larger Kin Ming plastic, or die-cast toy, maybe a Space Shuttle?

Astronaut; Astronauts; John Wong & Co. Ltd.; K&M; K&M Astronauts; K&M Spacemen; Kin Ming Toy manufactory Ltd.; KM; Luna Explorer; Luna Lander; Luna Walker; Lunar Module; Moon Landings; Moon Shot; NASA; Pioneer Hong Kong; Pioneer PVC; Pioneer Streetmachine; PVC Figurines; PVC Plastic Toy Figurines; PVC Rubber; PVC Toy; PVC Vinyl Figures; PVC Vinyl Rubber; Realtoy; Smart Toys; Smart Toys Creative; SP Toys; Space Program; Space Programme; Spaceman; Spacemen; Supreme Toys; Supreme-SP; Wing Mau Trading Co.;
We looked at these K&M (aka Wild Republic) astronauts as a set in a Post a while ago, but three samples have now been combined and here's an assortment of base-colour and visor-colour variations, while the sharp-eyed among you will also notice that some have had their red and blue highlights hand-painted (typically; the paler-based ones) others are all-stenciled, however the flag is stenciled on both types.

Astronaut; Astronauts; John Wong & Co. Ltd.; K&M; K&M Astronauts; K&M Spacemen; Kin Ming Toy manufactory Ltd.; KM; Luna Explorer; Luna Lander; Luna Walker; Lunar Module; Moon Landings; Moon Shot; NASA; Pioneer Hong Kong; Pioneer PVC; Pioneer Streetmachine; PVC Figurines; PVC Plastic Toy Figurines; PVC Rubber; PVC Toy; PVC Vinyl Figures; PVC Vinyl Rubber; Realtoy; Smart Toys; Smart Toys Creative; SP Toys; Space Program; Space Programme; Spaceman; Spacemen; Supreme Toys; Supreme-SP; Wing Mau Trading Co.;
The more interesting of the four samples here; the storage-sample has a note on the card saying (in my handwriting!) 'Probably Wing Mau Trading', now I'm pretty thorough - you won't find me running about the Internet making things up as I go along and x all else, so there will be a reason both for the attribution, and the 'Probably', which is with the lost sets.

I suspect Wing Mau are somehow associated with one or more of the sets but not one of the others with the same figures (sounds like a vast sub-set, but I think there are only two or three sets!), and further, as Wing Mau are actually John Wong & Co., that they may end up being tied in to either Pioneer or Realtoy, or both!

'Trading' is not factory, manufacturing or engineering, and I think J Wong's Wing Mau were middle-men passing stuff through from the Hing Kong manufacturers to the European, US and other end-uses, and that these will end up being associated with several brands, brand-marks or phantoms. As I said the other day; I think one of the missing sets may be Galaxy International, aother possibly Ocean, or Pioneer but don't write it down yet, I'm not putting it in the tags - thorough see!

As to the 'Pioneer and/or Realtoy' thought; although all a PVC type material, some of these are as hard as the Dacron/Sky Line armymen, some are as soft as the Pioneer stuff, and they are cavity-(?)-numbered on the base in the same alternate-codes' way as the very crude SP Toys small scale soldiers from Supreme thus;

1A /1B - Cordless Scewdriver
2A / 2B - Ring [metal?] Detector
3A / 3B - EVA Suit

They all have an additional 'Made in China', the base of the flag (in which it swivels freely) having only the national identifier.

Astronaut; Astronauts; John Wong & Co. Ltd.; K&M; K&M Astronauts; K&M Spacemen; Kin Ming Toy manufactory Ltd.; KM; Luna Explorer; Luna Lander; Luna Walker; Lunar Module; Moon Landings; Moon Shot; NASA; Pioneer Hong Kong; Pioneer PVC; Pioneer Streetmachine; PVC Figurines; PVC Plastic Toy Figurines; PVC Rubber; PVC Toy; PVC Vinyl Figures; PVC Vinyl Rubber; Realtoy; Smart Toys; Smart Toys Creative; SP Toys; Space Program; Space Programme; Spaceman; Spacemen; Supreme Toys; Supreme-SP; Wing Mau Trading Co.;
Finally is this little orphan, marked Made in China and with a numeral '2' and in a dense PVC-type polymer he's quite Realtoy but smaller than the soldiers, he's also ticking some Pioneer, Smart and Supreme boxes, and might be one of a group in the storage sets?!

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