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.

Sunday, May 29, 2022

S is for Sandown Park - May 2022 - 1 of 3

Following the pattern of the Plastic Warrior show posts, I've just shot these in a random order and they happen to have worked out - after a few collages - to eleven shots per post, three posts!

I bought this in the stand-scrum which occurs outside, before setting-up, although it wasn't much of a scrum this time; only four or five dealers set up on the terraces last Saturday. This is unmarked but probably British, and would have a rubber-band to twist/wind, for motive power.

Four mini-cars; another colour variation of those Quaker premiums, the green one is unmarked but identical to a Beeju example I have (I think!) and the driver is very Beeju, so it must be one of theirs! The yellow-one is very simple and reminiscent of the educational bulk-lots, but thinner-walled plastic and the grey one might be Minic or Joef, but from a rail-wagon car-carrier I suspect - it's not got the chrome underside or Minic mark, but some marks have been blanked-off the tool?

F.G.Taylor's rabbit burrow and pair of rabbits! Aren't they delightful? The sitting one has a carrot and the other is rushing back to share it!

Tin-plate pieces; I think I have a better version of the tree, and the garden fence seems to go with it, set wise, both are probably ciggaret-pack premiums, while the guardsman is a bit older I suspect, a penny toy (?) in two peieces - the guardsman and the base he's pinned-to, the others make their own bases with a quick bend!

Before and after cleaning; this is interesting, it's a bath toy, it floats, we've seen 'em, had 'em in the past. It's marked 'Made in England', could be any one of a number of makers, all the 'usual suspects'; Airfix, Tudor Rose/Kleeware, Thomas/Poplar, Bell, Merit . . . but, I would like it to be - Fraser & Glass! The upper (deck and superstructure) is beginning to curl-up with age and has the properties and colour of F&G's Crazy Clowns . . . nothing empirical, just a hunch/wish! Some of the six side fenders are damaged.

Couple more Captain Video's who are probably Winco Condar! Both in a heavy 'styrene of a a dark silver or gunmetal shade.

Starting to track down a few of the real rarities! Playland Products (M. G. Southall)'s pulp fiction figures of Sir Hubert Guest in a green spacesuit and the eponymous Dan Dare in the yellow.

Now, having never been happy with the Thomas/Poplar attribution for the origins of the Frog Bloodhound Missile kit's crew figures, something I have gone on record saying, more than once, I have to say, there are a few similarities here. The baseless feet in heavy shoes, the size, the casual poses (four out of the five in this set are just standing around - like the RAF geezers, only Digby's active; waving weapons around like a reckless redneck!), even - to a lesser extent - the sculpting, so I wouldn't be surprised if it were found that Southall were behind those contracted buy-ins?

I got eight key-rings in three purchases, but they have gone-on to the various posts in the medium-to-long-term queue, so you only get a glimpse here, but what can you make out; I had the skeleton as a teenager, it ended-up on my denim 'cut-off', XandriaHenson's Muppets, the cannon is nice, and another Highlander!

Now these are interesting, six sexy Manga babes, to compete with the Marx Misses we saw here recently! They are actually a limited (50 sets apparently?) edition, in resin, of plastic 'Pit Babe' figures issued with Scalextric Japan for a limited time - quote from Worthpoint (so eBay!):

"The 2004 JGTC [Japan Grand Touring Car (Championship)] series of cars released by QuattroX (Japanese Scalextric) were a hit with kids all over Japan but later shunned by parents due to the seductive anime style "Pit Babe" . Such a controversial outcry provoked Quattrox to promptly remove the cars from the shelves, later re-releasing them minus the race Pit Girl."

A mixed lot of metal and composition from Adrien's rummage trays on the Mecator Trading stall, metal for reference in the future, composition because I can't pass on it! The three pilots I've probably got, but I grabbed them to make sure I could produce the next image, what with all mine in storage!

Combined with the stuff from the PW show, two weeks ago now, we have a shot of all known - to this author - versions of composition pilot; 20, 54 and near-60mm. I think Dave Scrivener sent me a shot of his before he left us, which I should have somewhere, so we may well return to the subject again in the future?

The new, brown one, is similar in execution, but has a better base, and, more importantly; a different arrangement of harness-straps, so a second maker is likely, as Zang/Timpo/Timpolin stuck with the same pose and uniform for all the other versions. The new one doesn't have gauntlets either.

2 comments:

Terranova47 said...

Nice to see those elusive Spacefleet/Dan Dare figures turn up.

Hugh Walter said...

Cheers Terra', three still to find, but it's a welcome start!

H