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 26, 2020

F is for Follow-up - Bits & Bobs . . .

. . . or a bloody eclectic trio right now! A few things which pertain to or reference previous posts here at Small Scale world and we have figures, animals and scenics!

Crescent; Dwarves; Elephant Toy; Elves; Fontanini Dwarf; Garden Ornaments; Gorilla; Harvey Series; Leprechauns; Lone Star; Play2Discover; Poundland; Sentry Boxes; Sentry House; Sentry Shed; Slikka Toys; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Togga Toys; Toy Elephant; Wild Animal; Woggles;
I took a family 'group-shot' with the two Peter Evans sent me, before I sent him the other one which Chris Smith had sent me! I think they are more Leprechaun than 'true' gnome (or dwarf!) and while they are Hong Kong, seem to be 'after' the output of Fontanini, although whether it's homage or like-for-like pricey I'm not sure?

Crescent; Dwarves; Elephant Toy; Elves; Fontanini Dwarf; Garden Ornaments; Gorilla; Harvey Series; Leprechauns; Lone Star; Play2Discover; Poundland; Sentry Boxes; Sentry House; Sentry Shed; Slikka Toys; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Togga Toys; Toy Elephant; Wild Animal; Woggles;
Both sides and different view-points.

Crescent; Dwarves; Elephant Toy; Elves; Fontanini Dwarf; Garden Ornaments; Gorilla; Harvey Series; Leprechauns; Lone Star; Play2Discover; Poundland; Sentry Boxes; Sentry House; Sentry Shed; Slikka Toys; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Togga Toys; Toy Elephant; Wild Animal; Woggles;
So; we're up to four of six, which means we're up to eight of twelve! I picked up another of the Poundland PVC animal sets the other day, sadly I'm hardly going to Poundland now (over a month since the last visit) as they've stopped doing my vape juice, but I discovered it in ASDA, so I go there instead, the [Covidiot] risk is the same, so one venue is enough! But it means the last two may remain elusive?

Crescent; Dwarves; Elephant Toy; Elves; Fontanini Dwarf; Garden Ornaments; Gorilla; Harvey Series; Leprechauns; Lone Star; Play2Discover; Poundland; Sentry Boxes; Sentry House; Sentry Shed; Slikka Toys; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Togga Toys; Toy Elephant; Wild Animal; Woggles;
Chris Smith sent these in as a follow-up to the sentry-box posts, and they are fascinating, marked as you see, I suspect they are from a wooden or tin-plate fort or box-accessories from a die-cast vehicle set rather than 'toy soldiers' per se, and give us another tag! See below!

I recognised them when I saw them, but had no notes on them, I suspect I saw them in JB's collection years ago, I'm pretty sure they were the same green (with a red painted roof, not clear in the above shots), and they were definitely in the same warped or twisted condition, which will be due to instability in what appears to be an early polystyrene, but could be thick celluloid?

Also - having suggested a lack of connection to Lone Star's later plastic toy soldiers, I have a half a thought Slikka may have been mentioned in Plastic Warrior magazine (years ago), but that might be a false memory conflating with the die-cast Togga novelties?

Added later after checking, but before publishing - pp.121 of Norman Joplin's 'Big Book of British Hollow Cast' shows a DCMT set with two lead/hollow-cast guards in these sentry boxes (not, or barely distorted) along with a mounted horse-life-guard hybrid! Presumably all from Harvey, so these were probably DCMT's first foray into plastics as they had previously carried a metal box in the style of Crescent's tin one but in lead.

Makes you wonder if Togga's Woggles weren’t also DCMT?

2 comments:

Paul Morehead said...

Bloody good memory Hugh. We had them in PW issue 145, October 2011. I believe they are by DCMT, before Lone Star, and before Harvey was involved.

Hugh Walter said...

Hi Paul, Cheers! Joplin thinks the hollow-casts that came with them were Harvey, but that like Zang-Herald & Britains, they were an independent who DCMT worked with before buying? He thinks they also shifted Crescent as a distributor?

You probably shot the same one/s I remember seeing round Johns!

H

[review coming, but I'm clearing some stuff off the laptop!]