C is for Chris's Autumn Parcel - Transport

'Planes, Ships which might have seen trains and automobiles'! Some interesting items were among the vehicular portion of the parcel from Chris, and we're looking at them in this post, starting with my favourites . . .

. . . two anodised aluminium artillery pieces! One slightly crushed! I mean on one level they are the cheapest of cheap tat (and Chris is in agreement on that point I think, I'm not slagging-off a donation!), and as Chris pointed out, probably made yesterday, but on another level they are fantastic, you will by now have figured I like the eclectic, the unusual, the not necessarily seen-before, and these tick all those boxes!

Imagine for a second, these, on a shelf, with some of those 'home cast' spirit painted semi-flat colonials, or sub-scale hollow-cast penny toy soldiers, in shiny pink, heliotrope red, apple green or turquoise? D'you see? Fantastic!

So really pleased with them; they are constructed in a similar fashion to tin-plate toys - slots, folds and soft rivets - but are all lightweight aluminium, and while you may well find similar in an Asian import emporium tomorrow, equally, items like this have been around for years, and this kind of stuff barely ages if looked-after, so they may have some age?

I think the 'napoleon' gun once had some kind of wire or tube trail, which slotted into these two fold-backs, so I will at some point make a replacement with a piece of heavy-gauge brass wire, or tubing, but to stop it tarnishing I'll have to varnish, I suspect? Bending tubes this small is hard without kinking them and would require long thin springs, so it'll probably be wire . . . a sharp A-frame with two tabs to slot into these channels?

Likewise - with the naval gun, I have inherited a brass ring-sizer, and various tiny silversmith's hammers, so I think some gentle tappity-tap-tapping will restore both ends of its barrel and a gentle squeeze in the middle with a leather wrapped pair of pliers will sort the whole thing out . . . then I'll probably find one, pristine, in a charity shop! 

The truck on the left is marked Snap, so had to be Kellogg's Rice Krispies, and there's a page for that! Cereal Offers have the whole story! I had thought it might be a Kinder Unimog upon first sighting, but that'll be for another day. The bulldozer is one of the early, post-war replacements for the card counters in Monopoly sets!

These need further work, probably French premiums, others exist but I don't recognise the ASM mark on these. In 'the stash' I have several sets of these; Bonux has a set I think and they are similar to EKO's commercial set (Spain), while some of INGAP's are already on the Blog, but they were probably copied from someone else and 'W.Germany' was in there too?

On the right the Hong Kong copies of the MPC 'Minis' we've seen before, but there are variants and it's always worth checking them against the rest, while on the left is what I suspect is the forth model in the British comics giveaway we've also seen here, but not this one, which is a Stirling Bomber I think?

This makes sense as the other three I've found (bits of!) are two figuters (Spitfire and Me.109) and a German bomber (Heinkel?), and they were sold in packs of two, so maybe you got two bombers or two fighters, OR two Allied or two Axis? Anyone get Fury, Valiant or Warlord back in the day and can tell us?

The little concord is a mystery, possibly a cereal premium, but a bit small so more likely a capsule-machine/Christmas cracker type, I may have one, in red or green? The rest are 1/600 scale naval aviation machines from model Aircraft Carrier kits, the twin bomber probably being from a USS Hornet kit of the 'Doolittle Raid' (Revell?). Look how big the Tomcat is compared to its WWII ancestors; it can probably carry more war stores than the weight of one of the old planes!

Motor cycles consist of a rack toy in chrome-finish which is new, a cracker/gum-ball type in hard plastic (never have too many of them!) and Indie's ride, loose which will help future comparison shots, along with two larger scale figures for the tub of such chaps, one of whom appears to be an Evel Knievel knock-off!

While on the vessel front we have another lovely Viking tourist memento, but, is it from Scandinavia, or York? The motorboat is a real treat, I have somewhere a survivor of childhood in a badly painted (by me) MTB, which came as a set of four, and while I've seen them on the card (a whole trade carton full at the NEC show), the seller wanted far too much for them, so I passed, therefore it's nice to have one come in, out of the blue.

The two life-belt rings (another came-in today, red/white one!) will go in that bit of the spares zone dedicated to such things, they are often off-the-shelf separates in various sizes, sold through Hobbies, Polk's or Billings and turn-up in loose lots when collections get dispersed by surviving relatives! While the last item is in one of the canoe posts already, and lacks a Smurf crew-member!!

Another 'thank you' to Chris Smith for all this, it should have published much earlier, but today was bitterly cold, and the fire nearly went-out twice, keeping me busy staying warm, or keeping Boysy-boy warm . . . what - he's got four bare feet!