H is for How They Come In - December 2020 - I Adrian

Because we were all in lockdown for the umpteenth time, this time last year, there was no 'Christmas' Sandown Park toy fair, and therefore Adrian Little (Mercator Trading) kindly sent me the little pile of bits he sometimes puts aside for me and which I would otherwise have picked-up at the show.

I managed to absent-mindedly shoot them with an eBay lot which arrived in the same post (cordoned-off in top right-hand corner!), so we'll look at them in close-up in a minute too. Highlights were the Zang composition aircraft, the De Havilland Mosquito is undamaged, the other three (two Spitfires and a Gloster Whittle) will need restoration at some point.

Merten deer set, two smallish horses (one modern PVC, one vintage HK PE) and Hong Kong copies of Gem's golfer and  Robin Hood also stand out, along with the circus lion, he's cartoony and I think I know where he comes from but it's hidden in the files . . . a Cecil Colman window-box import or Cowen De Groot/Codeg?

The little train is delightful, the rolling stock are PVC or full rubber and have moulded-in wheels (no locomotion), with staples as coupling-hitches. TMR could be Triang Miniature Railway?

I suspect there should be clip-in roofs, possibly tin-plate, and they MAY have had candle-holes? The things which look like release-pin marks may be for the bases of candles, allowing the train to celebrate up to age-nine's! But I don't think it's likely, far more plausable is its being a dolls house train set for 1:12 doll's houses?

While this Beeju canoe (my third) reveals/confirms (?) that while the hull and upper deck are always mono-coloured, the sandwiched interior 'deck' and paddler single-mouldings are always a marbled polymer, so far; always with red as one of the colours.

The other parcel was a mixed lot of Soviet era Russian toy soldiers which I bought for the paratrooper, he's a copy of the Acedo who was then further copied by Trojan, so getting another version was very pleasing! Around the same time I got another Acedo and he's different from my first, so the number of variations of the one pose continues to grow.

The row down the bottom are similar to the Malysh (Kid) Napoleonics in material (PVC rubber) and colours, so I suspect they ARE Malysh and will say so in the tags (assumption huh?!!), while top left is an early Progress figure in hard 'styrene, the same material being used for the unknown pink sailor.

Many thanks to Adrian for the little parcel of goodness!