MOC is for New Ray Play Town

Apologies for the large number of small-scale posts this RTM, as I recognise that if, in a hobby of - for arguments sake - 1000 fans, there are probably only 40-odd aficionados of the smaller scales to the same level of seriousness, it just so happens that one of the boxes in the garage that had to go up to the storage-unit was wedged-in and I could only get it out by tipping it, which required emptying it first, so with piles of stuff everywhere, it made sense to photograph them and they were mostly from my old small-scale exclusive collecting days!

And it gives those who don't rate 'plastic smalls' another day-off from studying my Blog!

These two have been in the collection since I don't know when and I bought them I can't remember where! But it says 1996 on the back, so possibly a cheapie store in Camberley around-about then . . . or Woolies'? Before they folded!

Both from New Ray, they are scaled pretty accurately between 00-gauge (1:76^th) or European HO (1:86/87^th scales), although described as 1:72^nd scale and - I'm guessing here - there must have been a selection (two of one and three of the other, according to the card backs?), from which I took one from the farm series and one construction, both from the overarching Play Town lines.

Backs of the cards give an idea of other items in the range, and the next post, following, will have more of this stuff from a slightly older catalogue.

Close-up of the contents; there was a lot of this stuff around in the mid-1990's, all or near-all plastic, there's a move back to die-cast vehicles these days, in the cheap toy field, I suspect due to the breakability of plastics? Meanwhile, the more highly-detailed European plastic makers have been consolidated under a few larger parent brands; same things happened with HO/OO railway makers/brands.

Best thing in the farm set is the greenhouse! Figures are showing heritage in Elastolin and Preiser I think and we have seen another of these little trays at some point on the blog . . . I'm not sure if it's in this post, or somewhere else; still to be sorted into New Ray's box?

Some of the lose examples include another figure insert-tray, complete and two more of the Elastolin rip-off 'land army' girl in her dungarees with a few other bits. I know I have some more in the TBS box, so we will probably return to these at some point, but maybe only on the A-Z pages, when I finally tackle that project probably.

There aren't many missing though, I think there were three sets of four civilians and one set of four emergency personnel, with a few more animals, only horses and cows?

A few of the just mentioned farm animals and the 'cowboy' from the other side - the ID clues are softish PVC in white, with thickish bases, ovoid for large items/animals, penny-round for figures.

While New Ray's 1:32^nd scale range included a large military series, the HO range was exclusively civilian, with some large sets including ports and battery-operated trains, cranes and suck-like, which will be along here at small scale world shortly!