C is for Call Answered

Chris Smith eMailed me a week or two ago a with a link to an eBay lot which I bought there and then, even before thanking him . . . it answered a question posed here a couple of times I think; the 'like late / Toyway-Timpo' highlanders, and revealed new poses!

Credited to a Scottish International Gift, Scotland and clearly a touristy gift-item, it's a pretty standard window-box with a tombstone-card at the back that could be pierced for wire-hook peg-board hanging, but something which isn't done in the factory. A potted history of the bagpipes is provided on the rear of the extended card, along with a code NO. 6000, which as a round number is almost certainly a stand-alone, with no similar items in the (or 'a') line?

I can't remember which new pose/s we encountered last time we looked at them here; was it the bass drummer or the pipe/band major? No matter, you get one of each, with two-each of the commoner side-drummers and pipers, which - of course - is why they are commoner, or turn-up more often, loose!

I took them out on one of those warm days a while ago and marched them round the empty bird-bath past the weeping cherry!

The next day - I should add that paint and material wise they are very similar to both the late Timpo/Toyway factory-painted Highlanders and the Hong Kong Salvation Army band set, only the bases being the obvious visual difference, this is not to say there is any connection, painted PVC was big in the late 1970's through the bulk of the 1980's.

"You told me I couldn't eat them
so I'm not even going to see them!"

Many thanks to Chris for spotting these and facilitating my sharing them with the rest of you! Funny thing is I think I recognise the box, so JB probably had a set when I was helping him, and if I'd paid more attention to large-scale when I was a small scale collector I would have had the answer all along!

The next day - I may of course be confusing the box with the painted sets of Ecsi 1:35th scale figures which I think were issued under the A-Toys branding, I also think they were in silver/grey boxes?

T is for Two - Webbs Rack Toys

Previously these pirates (1st set below) have been attributed to Dollar General in the US, I now seem to have a UK brand-mark, while the knights are 2nd or 3rd generation copies of the original 1970's Britains Deetail copies out of Hong Kong, now marked 'China' (like the pirates) and being hawked by the same rack-toy name - Webbs.

Packaging is about as generic as it comes on the front, but there is a consumer info panel and what looks like a phantom branding (but is actually S Webb and Son of Menai Bridge, Gwynedd) printed on the otherwise plain back, and the WST048 set's blister is 'space-filled' with spurious shite!

The spurious shite includes an injection-moulded copy of the old Noah's ark props and a rock wall, but the boat and cannon are useful and make up for the village-pond-with-coral-reef play mat!

There is another pose (swordsman, seen in black plastic in the rack-toy round-up, last ITLAPD), but of interest to the blog is a new pose here, the lady. She looks like she might be being made to walk the plank as a victim of wicked pirates, but is in fact holding a pistol in the small of her back with the clear intention of giving someone a third eye or a hole in the heart - generous girl! And don't worry - plenty in the bag for ITLAPD this year!

The seller is offering these in threes should you be tempted; and with the knights each assortment differs, but each blister (set WST051) gets two identical riders, so you need multiples to complete the set.

No filler and lots of separate weapons make these very useful purchases, although the play mat is "...far out there man" . . . with Frisian cows, stud-fencing, nicely-trimmed hedges and dry-stone walls sharing space with a pterodactyl, veggie'saur, giraffe and lion, while a Napoleonic grenade appears to be stuck half-way up the cliff . . . or is the pterodactyl bombing the mud-river with rocks??!!!!

That's them - they're still out & about there somewhere!

T is for Two - Mighty Antar's & Conquerors

We looked at both these back near the start of the blog and have revisited features of them once or twice I think, but the opportunity to do 'full line-ups' wasn't to be ignored, indeed; sorting and packing was held-up for a day while I struggled to find the Matchbox one, the others all lined up on the green-baize, with a gap ready!

From the rear/right; Raphael Lipkin/Pipin Toys (1:30^th'ish), Dinky (1:43^rd), Airfix (1:76^th), Budgie (damaged), Matchbox (painted, badly!), unknown - might be Scotia? The last being two at approximately 1:125^th 'box scale' and one 1:300^th 'micro-armour' scale.

Anomalies include the Lipkin load being an FV 214 Conqueror rather than the Centurion (from Mk.5/1 - FV 4011) everyone else went with, the Budgie having the later cab design of the Mk.III [not 'mighty'] Antar with narrower bonnet and Matchbox having a simple rendition of the Sankey 50-Ton Tank Transporter trailer along with the error of the name 'Thornycroft' as "Thorneycroft" moulded on the base of the tractor-unit.

The micro-armour one is a curates egg, seemingly based on a ballast-body variant (draw-bar trailers, for the use of) it nevertheless has an articulated, fifth-wheel, DAF style trailer like the others, and may be based on the RAF's lone C6T variant, but with added 'saddle' fuel-tanks? The fuel tanks being used as tool-bins on the Lipkin biggie!

The recent purchase of another Conqueror from [The] Lucky Toys meant that while the Lipkin was out . . . anti-clockwise from the top left; the red version I got at Richmond-call-me-Whitton (the . . . no . . . THE Plastic Warrior show!) a couple of three-years ago!

Then the standard green Lipkin one that came with the transporter (you may remember we looked at the individually boxed version a while ago and both colours were on the box-art), while bottom left is the new Lucky one - I believe a home paint in gray over the chromium-finish still visible on the tracks and running gear, and about the same as the Dinky Centurion at around 1:43^rd scale.

Then the two version of Tri-Ang Conqueror (approximately 1:72nd [00-guage compatible]), one from the Minic Motorway sets (I believe) as a tank, the other from the latterly Hornby-Triang 'Battle-Space' line of the wider railway range, as a well-wagon/flat-car load with twin rocket-launcher turret and finally two box-scale (1:76^th'ish or smaller?) Tri-Ang Minic's configured as imagi-nation armoured cars but with scaled-down Conqueror turrets!

Instead of an anomaly, we have a coincidence with these; they are all equipped with push-and-go motors! Actually - maybe the train one isn't; just free-rolling? I've sent them to the storage unit now!

For those who don't know the Conqueror; it was a post-war super-heavy tank in the same family as the Soviet Russian Joseph Stalin - JSIII and American M103. The Lipkin is probably the closest to the real thing, turret-wise, but none of them really do the actual vehicle full-justice.

The Lucky Toy's model (new to me when I saw it on evilBay for no money! What else is out there?) is clearly a copy of the Tri-Ang rendition, scaled-up and with an integrally-moulded, non-revolving turret and equally integral radio-aerial.

Base-mark; aft of the forward axle's push-and-go motor housing, which is very similar to the one fitted to TAT (see tags)'s Universal/Bren-carrier, and their dime-store lorry-copy. I don't know if there is any significance to the 'v' suffix of the model-number, or if it just means 'v-ehicle' range?

T is for Three-of-a-Kind

I've been sorting all the AFV's in the attic, bedroom and garage, into one 'master collection', only to find after I'd taken 70-odd boxes and tubs to the new Storage unit (hopefully more temporary than previous times) another box of unsorted AFV's! As I was going I was taking various shots as chance presented the opportunity, and one was this little line-up!

From the left; the Crescent original in die-cast metal alloy (the red paint probably home-added), a Blue Box copy in hard Polystyrene (PS) and a softer sub-piracy in polyethylene (PE), which may Ri-Toys; they both had a bash, and I didn't compare with the carded sets.

In fact it too has some home paint and then there's the pale blue-grey version from Blue Box and a cleaner Crescent somewhere, so we will have a proper look at all of them one day, but this'll do for now!

B is for Bobbing Bunny!

We've seen bobbing tanks here several times in two designs, but this came-in with a mixed lot of mostly British/Canadian 'dime-store' type plastics, and I'd forgotten all about it until someone came round the other day and we were going through them, indeed, if it hadn't been for that visit and Brian's kindness a few days ago there would have been no seasonal stuff here today at all!

In fact I got two mixed-lots recently, this is both lots together, some (from Mercator Trading) have been seen here in the past, others haven't, and a similar-sized lot came from a charity-lot on feebleBay, among which was the target of this post.

I know I've spelt probably incorrectly - Doh! And the wreaker-truck turned-out to have faint PP's on the wheel-hubs so is another Poplar, but the motorcycle-rider is PVC so probably a Thomas left-over. while the Cheerio's are half-and half 'Canada' (yellow wheels) and 'England' (black/white wheels).

It's a Bobbing Bunny! He appears to be driving the bastard-child of a White's scout-car and an Indian Pattern Chevrolet as supplied to the Long Range Dessert Group (LRDG)! And that's all I can say about it really, it is what it is, and you can see that for yourselves!

I'm not saying my diet's that healthy at the moment but I made the little bugger work for his sugar-coated,Mr Cadbury's Parrot, chocolate mini-eggs! Up and down the carpet, up and down the bedspread, up and down the table, up-and-down the mantelpiece, he's quite versatile and delivers all sorts of treats!

Only marking is a Made in England and tool/cavity mark '2' and he probably came with either Jelly-Tots (or similar?) or a great, big, tooth-loosening gobstopper?

Easter is for Exquisite Flats!

In the years Brian Berke has been a friend of the Blog, one of the delights has been the regular eMails containing these shots of Scully & Scully's window display in New York; both at Christmas and Easter they have a display of hand-painted, German-made white-metal 'Nuremberg' flats of such charm and exquisite detail it is a joy to receive them and a pleasure to share them with the rest of you.

Always new sculpts and the blurb has gone before, in previous posts, so let's just enjoy them with many thanks to Brain . . . happy Easter everyone, and if ever there was a year when it's safe to say 'may we never have a worse one' I think this may be it . . . 

Know your eggs! And birds!

Glove puppets! The detail is extraordinary!

We had blossom like this on the Mirabelle only a week ago!

That's it for another year but aren't they lovely . . .

AF is also for April Fools . . .

 . . . all fools or - specifically - this fool in April! The previous post was of course not Teresa May, but the Jon Pertwee (ex-Dr Who) era Wurzel Gummidge, done as a pencil top, although, as Jan spotted; he did look more like Eddy Izzard or even Grayson Perry!

Courtesy of Chris Smith who got the images to me in plenty of time for an April Fool's two years ago, I can't remember why I missed it that first year, but then Covid-19 intervened last year, still, I have said in the past (with fingers crossed) that "...everything will get up here eventually!", and now it's Jon-call-me-Wurzel's time in the spotlight!

I don't know how many there were in the set, or who imported them but for their third non-empirical mention in the last few days; I wouldn't mind betting it was HCF into the UK, they are similar to the Star Wars pencil-tops we now know were HCF imports!

The costume on the left is the day-to-day or episode-to-episode clothing, while the 'Tereasa May' outfit was for finest or something! Britains did the one figure with different plug-in heads! And they are marked Hong Kong down the spine.

AF is for Almost Feminine

I forgot to Blog this a couple of years ago! Chris Smith, friend and regular contributor to the Blog sent this during the 'height' of her power . . . 

Some fool made a whole bunch of Teresa May figurines . . . would I lie to you? He must have a warehouse full of them - unsold! Totally failed to get the big cat-print shoes right either!

M is for Macrobots and [Macro?] Nauts

Pleased to be putting these to bed, albeit more info' is still to be found (European brandings?), but the victory was putting the two sets together as the connection wasn't empirical, nor clear! I had a fetching pink rubber astronaut in the unknown-zone for the longest time, and a robot in the pencil-tops box, but a while ago managed to obtain this mixed lot . . .

. . . ostensively for the rubber robots, they being a growing sub-category or side-collection, but which came with three more of the roughly 50mm (thick bases) astronauts in two new poses. The incomplete red-yellow plug-together - I think - belongs to another, as yet to be tracked-down, line?

I wasn't convinced they actually went together as the greens were subtly different and the robots were configured as pencil-tops with a large hole in their 'catflap' (as Andy Wood succinctly put it, elsewhere, the other day!) against the integral bases of the Nasa'nauts, so I was going to separate them, robots with the rest, Astronauts with the existing pink one.

However, this turned-up on eBay, giving us a branding for the US market (Famus Corporation - new to the tag-list I think!) and showing they definitely go together, which leaves me with a quandary; if they stay together they will be absent from both the robot-eraser box and the Astronauts!

It's a quandary I haven't fully reconciled yet, do I, for instance, put the kharki-green Maisto front-loader with the farm tractors, the military plant (small but growing category) or keep them in a Maisto tub, denying the other AFV categories of their Maisto's too, and while - particularly with the figures - it's increasingly a case of 'theme over maker', it's not fully decided one way or the other, but I think one day I'll be breaking down everything to themes, even the Airfix and Britains?

I wouldn't want you thinking I lose sleep over this stuff, I don’t, but if you then can't find something you know you have in the 'stash' - because having looked in the three obvious/previous places, you forget you started a fourth category just for them - it becomes a pain . . . erasers or pencil tops??!

Anyway another purchase (if you wait a few weeks this stuff all turns up for pennies) gives us the four known robot poses (from the card), three astronauts and a smaller 'bot (also a pencil-topper) in a variety of colours (8 with the two greens, 11 with the carded set), and the box well and truly ticked . . . just remains; where to put them!

And I'm assuming the robots are based on some other-titled Japanese TV-serial robots of the 1970's or '80's?