B is for Booty-Box of Beautiful-Bounty for the Blog - Chris's Parcel I

Chris Smith has sent another fantastic bundle of goodies to the Blog but when I say 'another' it belies the quality of the contents which are arguably the best yet, the box was packed with stuff and none of it was unwelcomed, truly; a Christmas present . . . which I'd better quickly share with the rest of you!

Initial sorting into piles that seem to make sense as it's happening, numbered for this blurb, I'll start at one and work through; All vehicles, buildings, scenics or parts thereof are in 1, 2 is ancient medieval and prehistoric, although they joined the dino's at 7 after the photograph was taken!

3 is ceremonials, ethnic and national dress and touristy things, 4 are the parachute-toy paratroopers and 5 is the Wild West. Back over to the left and 6 is animals (wild and domestic), 7 is the aforementioned dinosaurs (two nice rubber ones and another we'll be looking at again shortly), 8 are also to be Blogged, 9 were the novelty/cartoony stuff, 10 - cracker toys - are getting a second mention in these posts and a post to themselves and 11 are divers.

12 was footballers, but some ice-hockey players and cyclists were added to the pile later, making it 'sportsmen', 13 are fridge-magnets we'll look at closer 14 is all the space, sci-fi, fantasy and TV/movie-related character pieces while 15 is the last hundred years military (proper 'army men') although as I write I've spotted a cyclist in that pile - who did get sorted-on! Finally 16 is all the other civilian stuff

So working through some of the piles in numerical order for a few highlights (a hard choice as it was all so good)  we're back to pile 1, where we have an interesting Hong Kong army van, which one might expect to be from the old Matchbox range, but I don't recognise it, there was a municipal rubbish lorry with a similar cab but it had a arcing bin-store body with sliding doors, this looks more French . . . an early Majorette copy maybe?

To the right are two HK copies of - originally - US-made mini vehicles, which will join a larger sample sent to the blog by Brain Berke several years ago, and since joined by some storage ones, all of which have been photographed - with other stuff - for a series of articles which are still in the queue; novelties tend to get pushed back by everything else (all those Shopkins, Moshlings, Zomlings and 'Bones are a couple of years overdue now!), but it will all happen, eventually!

Another HK car might be Blue Box, but early with the windows blocked-in (?), or any one of a number of similar pirates, while the Jaguar in front is very interesting . . . I have one somewhere, either the same green or a pinky-colour, but mine is so crushed (I always hang-on to damaged stuff of it's the first/only sample) I never knew for certain if it was a Jaguar or a Citroen! I now know it's a Jag', but also it seems to be a very good copy of the Lone Star Treble-o Trains vehicle. but with a much thinner skin that the die-cast donor and in a polystyrene. Did Lone Star replace their metal ones with plastic at the end? Anyone know anything about this? Deck ornamentation for a ferry model-vessel kit?

The rocket is fun, the trees have been nailed in a forthcoming post and a Merit gas-lamp has been posed with three really useful Victorian street lights which would be ideal for 1:76/72 war-gaming or diorama-building. I suspect they are either accessories from something like those Silvercorn/LP suitcase sets, or a Mighty Max/Polly Pocket type thing?

Another bunch of parachute novelty paratroopers including a proper, marked, Imperial 'Poopatrooper' in snow-white, a 'space paratrooper' and the camouflaged one from carded sets we've seen here at Small Scale World before.

I needed a loose one to re-do the size comparisons of the three types of these Small Soldiers-like sculpts I've found now, some with help from Brian and Peter, so he's really useful despite being the newest in the line-up!

But with the previous - similar sized - bunch of these also from Chris, and another lot from Peter Evans (I think), I will have to re-do all (or most) of the images in the nascent paratrooper article/page? Not a hardship!

The Wild West lot are all interesting, or useful, or both! Royal fail and/or Parcel Farce managed to brake the black, two-part epoxy totem-pole, but as you can see it mended OK, and joins two similar tourist type poles in the collection, while the other (Jean copy) totem might be a variation of the one we looked at a while ago, necessitating a follow-up to the - at the time - follow-up!

Two more of the Lone Star shooting-game Indians, one a colour variant, I still have to locate the sixth figure a bison-head, but I know he is due to appear in PW at some point (with the sixth base points-value), so 'least said' and all that!

Among the HK efforts is a really nice Union cavalrymen copied from the Britains Swoppets who are getting so brittle now, they will soon be but a memory, their horses out-living them for a few more decades! But there's obviously some HK copies to replace them with! The two eagle-dancers are from separate sources (Royal Fail/Parcel Farce worked their magic on the red one . . . actually I think it was Hermes?), some Marx and Airfix piracies (one Italian) or re-issues are joined by two of the six-gunner's we've looked at in depth before and I'm not sure if the two painted ones (middle-right) are home-painted or comercial, but they are rather nice versions in a sub-scale.

There's a lovely little Pocahontas (bottom right), who was glued to a larger base or plinth-display of some kind (McDonald's premium?) at some point, but is now perfect for all those camp-fire scenes.

While over to the left is a trio of figures we've looked at recently here (Waddington's, Britains Miniset and the lucky-bag flats), so they will go away for a while until a time when a return to the subject or an A-Z entry gets them out again! Finally the painted Indian next to them is Safari, but bigger that the 'small-scale' (actually mixed-scale) figures I remember from the 'Toob' covered by Plastic Warrior magazine a few years ago.

The Space-Sci-fi-TV-Movie pile is a right-old heap of pure eclecticism with a wotsit-cat, several doobries, a thingamabob and one or two of those what-a-names! There's even a Star Wars action-figure baddie, but 'es 'armless!

Highlights include three board-game Magic Roundabout Dougal-dogs, I have pictures of the game (off evilBay) somewhere as a 'wants list' item, so they were a real treat to find, I think it's a six-player game, so still three to find, but that's the fun of collecting.

Does anyone recognise the elfin chap in red shift and boots - middle-right?

I guess the large purple lady and the gent on steroids are from the same source, but I don't recognise either character? I also like the babe in blue . . . a sort of power-ranger, but helmetless? Another highlight is the 'evil santa' (top right) with what looks like a Russian Orthodox priest's hat, could he be a Technolog (or similar) Russian novelty?

The military section had lots of stuff, a lot of gap-filers, or one-offs and various things we've seen one way or another, so I haven't shot them all today, but there were enough PVC figures to produce this size comparison of most of the figures mentioned in that series of posts a month or so ago, which may be of use to some of you - so I shot them as they were. The Remco chap has an M16 so large he looks like a kid in a muscle suit - Don'pushmeeeee! 

If you pop-back up the page and study pile 15, you'll see all sorts of other interesting stuff in this lot, among which were the (capsule?) figures sometimes found with a separate belt and for whom I'm still looking for the weapons, Chris's lot contained three or four of them with new colours and a new pose I think. There was also stuff for the khaki infantry page and the next round-up/follow-up to the Tim Mee GI's, including new (to collection) Toy Story variants.

From the civilian lot is a similar sizer, including new firefighters from Remco and Soma, but there are more below, and Brian Berke let me know over Christmas he's getting his firefighters shot for the forthcoming page, so that will be a priority target for the spring I think, and there are more . . .

. . . in the main body of the civilian stuff.

Highlights include . . . well . . . pretty-much all of them! There's so much of this stuff, most of it rather anonymous accessories for die-cast or plastic vehicles or sets of one kind or another, from probably half of all toy makers, over seventy-plus years, that the fact that people like Chris, Peter Evans, Glenn, Jim, Adrian, Michal Melnyk, Trevor Rudkin and Co., save it for me and/or send it to the Blog is really humbling to me, and good news for you, loyal reader, as it's slowly getting to 'all going to be in one place' . . . one day!

A particularly interesting item is the green, child-like farmer (top right-hand corner) with spade, who from style (semi-flat), paint (basic) and material (dense ethylene or propylene polymer) is probably from the same source as those rather atrocious Chinese Warriors I picked-up at PW last May?

Also of note are the two kit figures, who look like they came form an early 1950's model kit of a US car, but are in a marbled plastic of maroon and blue, which might point to them having been either factory-painted at some point, or chromium-plated? The white girl above them to the right is a more standard kit figure in a single, neutral, white colour; all three are polystyrene. She looks like she's standing on the end of the caber-tosser's pole . . . ooh, missus! He's a metal 'mocherette'.

The motorcycle in HO is probably from the Merit Driving School game, he's better detailed that the normal cracker/capsule fare, while the chap falling to the ground (top-middle) is - I think - from the old Accoutrements/Archie McFee set of movie victims from about 20 years ago? I also like the two tampo-printed red-plastic F1 racing-crew figures that are new to me and the two sub-scale vinyl farmers with yolk and scythe.

The three bottom-center are all the same make, solid, polystyrene, but unmarked and the Russian dancer is a flat, soft polyethylene and possibly an addition one of the many sets referencing the old US comic-flat '100 Doll' set.

Thanks very-much to Chris - next we'll look at some of the novelties and juvenilia within the above.