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.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

F is for Follow-up, Q is for Question Time, W is for Well, Well, Well!

Chris sent an interesting item to the Blog the other day, or pictures of it which is just as good! Further to the water wells I shew (like showed but shorter!)* the other day . . .

*Heay, cummon' Throwed/Threw, Growed/Grew, Knowed/Knew . . . can someone get all those wiggly red lines off my word.docx?

On the left of Chris's line-up here is the F.G Taylor well we saw last time, on the right is the Speedwell again, but the one in the middle is a newie! Chris wondered at Blue Box, I though similar and consulting the farm guru; Barney Brown over at Herald Toys & Models brought a confirmatory response, although he was no surer than either of us, it's just a hunch we all share?

There are two problems with calling-it for being Blue Box, the first is a Google search for all the various Blue Box and clone 'Home Farm' sets and similar items don't reveal this well, and secondly; it's not marked, which most - if not all - the larger items from their farm sets (window-trays or big-box) are/were.

It has some of the tropes of Hong Kong production though, the spray-painted bright green, thick plastic winder, shiny-polymers, even the mould-release pin-marks under the rim? An alternate proposition is that it might be Barratt & Sons, as if the Taylor's inherited the mould in the great post-war divvy-up, the Barrett's would have needed a well for their farm?

Note the separate plug-in woodwork for what is otherwise ostensibly the Taylor design, and the plastic bucket. I'm sure I've seen one of these, I remember the kink in the winding arm . . . possibly when I was  a dealers apprentice! Barney's seen them as well.

I even checked the Codeg Camberwick Green sets in case I'd forgotten an accessory from the larger village boxed-set! I hadn't.

Anyway having contacted Barney I also sought and gratefully received permission to use the image I had mentioned last time, both to embiggen this post and  . . . well, to grow the well of knowledge of wells - I should be stopped!!

It shows another variation of the Taylor design (far left example) which could be any of the Speedwell stable-mates (Trojan, Kentoy, Una/VP), newer 'old' plastics (BMS, BR), or Barratt, or even (shiny polymer!) a Hong Kong pirate? barney says it came in a 'substantial' collection of Taylor farm though?

So; follow-up followed-up, the question marks are does anyone know for definite who issued/made either of the unknown wells . . . well?

Thanks to Chris Smith and Barney Brown for the above images.

Barney Brown of Herald Toys & Models cleared up the Barratt question here, so we are still looking for two other names to pin to the unknowns!

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