M is for More to Come . . .

. . . but we've sort of sorted some of it out, for now!

This wasn't in the queue a few days ago! I bought a nice (well; tatty!) set of Shackman novelty pencil sharpeners from New York a few weeks a ago, which were going on the back burner, but Chris Smith posted some nice thematic shots on the Friend's of Plastic Warrior Facebook group earlier this week, which lead to a flurry of activity there and here at SSW Towers, leading to this post!

First a quick look at that Shackman set; it's been mucked about with - I suspect end-of-line/ex-shop stock, put back in a box and sold as a set when it's meant to be broken down in a small stores? There's an extra Beefeater and the Indian is a suspect inclusion, but a nice sculpt in a civilian role as hunter rather than war-path warrior.

Quick confirmation of the empirical evidence for the doubting Thomas's and make-it-up-as-you-go-along-brigade, Shackman were a jobber specialising in the novelty/tourist trinket end of the market (a bit like HCF here in the UK), I'm also collecting their novelty-matchbox pencil sharpeners with 'Mocherette' in them (I know, I know, I'll get round to it, but probably next year now - most of the photo's are done!), although, further back (1950's), they also imported some of the Erikson/Authenticast copy sets from Japan as more mainstream playthings.

If the boxes were sold as sets, I suspect the chap here would have been one (?) of the missing figures, the pair in the two central shots are Chris's, the sharpener on the left is mine now and the other pair on the end are an Internet couple! Tyrolean dancers who could be German or North Italian . . . Austrian or Eastern/Alpine Swiss!

Back to the set, and they all (including the Indian) have plug-feet and separate bases, which are glued to a standard pencil sharpener which I remember being included in cheap Christmas crackers, and have seen on gum-ball vending machine cards. The Indian however plugs straight into a flimsier pencil-honeing device.

Chris's however are integrally moulded with base and figure as single moulding, not two pieces. Now I already knew - and you may remember - we had seen the Beefeater before here, when by coincidence Chris and Adrian both gave me examples a few days apart, neither of them are marked, but a policeman we will look at in a minute has a small KT on his base in an oval cartouche reminiscent of the aforementioned HCF's little gold stickers?

My dancer has a fuller set of marking (as do the 'Internet pair' in the second image) and a stock/cavity number/code; 315, while Chris's lady (who's base has been home-painted/re-painted white over the original balck) is coded 673, her partner 674 and lacking her ® mark? The sharpeners, meanwhile, can be found with or without a pretty bog-standard HONG KONG.

The earlier Beefeaters, along with the stationary policeman from the boxed set have a disc-shaped blemish which people (including me) would more normally, and erroneously describe or assume (never assume huh?!!! Heeheehee!) as/to be mould-release pin-marks, but which are clearly blanking plates or pins to hide the smaller mark of the policeman.

In the conversation at FoPW, Chris had managed to find another figure on-line, which reminded me that Brain Wagstaff had sent two to this Blog ages ago, as they were clearly influenced by the Commonwealth/Van Brode/Codec 'dancing doll' sets. The 'Brain pair' having no mark on either side of the integral base, while the Internet one - also having an integral base - on a pencil sharpener; neatly tying all the above (bar the Indian?) to the same series.

Meanwhile, or actually closer to the Beefeaters and the start of this little odyssey, Chris had spotted a policeman on feebleBay ages ago, back near the start of Lockdown One, and I thanked him for the heads up and watched it half-heartedly for several months (it was really too pricey), now . . . I can't remember if the price came down or the seller listed something else to combine . . . but in the end I did get it in the autumn/recently.

Here we see pencil-sharpener and non-pencil sharpener versions of both Beefeater and policeman together, along with another Internet shot of a new sharpener colour - new to this article mind; many colours dropped out of Christmas crackers!

By this time ( a couple of days ago)n it had dawned on me that the Highlander was also rather familiar, as we saw him here at Small Scale World not that long ago - green sharpener! Now, a point of note; it would appear one is attempting Black Watch (left, 'new' one) and the other the Gordon's (right, 'old' one). It may be the out-painter was just running out of yellow on the brush, but it seems to be a deliberately different shade of green and has not been applied to the haggis-bag or the lower reaches of the pipe's webbing?

Which leaves us with the Indian from the boxed set and a conclusion to formulate!

The Indian, is lovely, I don't know if he's based on a donor, most of these seem pretty unique - only one of Brian's is a direct copy - as sculpts, and the hunting with raptor is quite a German/East German pose (if you know what I mean), however, he is plugged into a thin-walled base which has a different sharpener, glued in, and it - the sharpener - has a different blade design.

The differences outweigh the similarities; plug-in feet, gloss-paint in a stab-and-hope style, so for now he must remain a question-mark, there are other sources of figural, novelty, pencil-sharpener as we saw not that long ago here.

But I suspect he is from the same source, but the thin-walled case for the sharpener was easily damaged, and the extra glue-step of a separate sharpener was more expensive, so he's likely an earlier variant.

The conclusion is that with the possible exception of the Indian, these are all from one, evolving series, from the same source, and differing either for reasons of increasing the ease of production, over time, or to comply with caveats from different clients, such as Shackman, from contract to contract.

They can be plug-in, or moulded with a base, which may or may not subsequently end-up glued to a pencil sharpener which is also available separately elsewhere. A variety of marks or no-marking can be found on the separate bases, the integral bases and/or the sharpener-units.

There must be more 'world dancers', possibly another Indian or two, and matching quantities of cowboy, still to be found, maybe a Welsh lady and etcetera. I would also put a fiver, at least a fiver, on HCF being found to have shipped some of them into UK, and dare to say Tom Smith was in-there as well?

The only likely "KT" I can come up with is Kitoys Traders Co., who were making/marketing mini-deform, pull-back-and-go, 'hot hatch' novelty cars in the late 1980's from Connaught Road, West, Hong Kong and may have been responsible for something like these figures a decade or two earlier, if they were around then?

Despite the question-mark I will put them in the tags, as I have one of the little cars to Blog - one day! And many thanks to Chris Smith for several involvements in this 'Discovery', plus the photos, Bill B for the Kitoys reference and to Brian Wagstaff for the other images.

Small Scale World - weaving magic, with lots of help . . . and more to come!