A is for Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

I'm not posting anything complicated until at least Tuesday or Wednesday of next week as my Hard Disk Drive is slowly dying! It's been doing so for a couple of days and I don't know how long I can steal extra time from it, but it just took over an hour and a half to get online,  half of that was the CHKDSK running, which it did automatically, it hasn't cleared the problem, which Windows first flagged it up two days ago, but it means that when it does die, it'll die all clean and well-ordered!

Fortunately I ran a full back-up over Christmas so I only have to save the stuff I've downloaded in the last few weeks and late December/January's photo's, most of which are still on the camera! But I'll be sad to see the thing go, it's done stirling service for over 12-years, and it was all image heavy . . . Wise Disk Cleaner has deleted nearly 600GB's of crap, there's about 3TB's on the dongles and external hard drives, all of which went through this little Lenovo Z570 Ideapad, it's probably a miracle it's lasted this long!

I bought it with some of the the money my late Godmother left me (along with paying for the 3DSMax course and getting the Volvo roadworthy after the Berkshire mess), however I've ordered an HP 17 for Monday (no more Chinese stuff, they are as safe and trustworthy as the Russians!), and an external disc-drive (laptops don't have disc-drives anymore!), so I can regard that as payed for with my late Mother's bequest.

It's like there's a great spiral of time, we get thrown on it at birth, spun-round, sometime too fast, sometimes not fast enough, and then - at some point - thrown off it again; a few of our memories remaining, but only so long as others we knew stay on the spiral themselves, holding those fragments of the past.

H is for Horsemonkey!

Like a Horseman, but a monkey . . . obviously! And so to London for the Toy fair at Olympia today, but this was already in the queue, and pertains to the previous post.

Picked this oddity up a while ago, recognised the code/marking as standard Lik Be 'Funimal' branding (No.A30 MADE IN HONG KONG in a typewriter style/engineers stamp font), but it was in hard styrene and obviously a tad more colourful than the usual Funimal fare, however I have a big folder with all that stuff in, against the final A-Z post, or an interim 'page', so quickly ID'd it.

Here it is in the Culpitt's 1985 book/catalogue image, you can see it carries a similar code to the Lik Be astronauts previously cropped-out of that page, but that doesn't count for anything, the BV prefix is used for a lot of unrelated products! BV5319 is described as 'Assorted Circus Animals', which at that time it seems were issued as a set of five.

Mine came individually packed in a cellophane envelope, so probably dispensed from a  counter-top box with the other four similarly packed, but whether that makes them much older, younger or just a year or two either side of the catalogue is anyone's guess!

You can see the soft 'ethylene ones (blue) are hand-painted with the good-old stab-and-hope style, in two colours (typical for Funimals) while the Culpitt one is stencil-painted in five colours.

In the 'States Wilton included the more common polyethylene one in an expanded line-up of 12 of the Funimals around 1977 (the date of this catalogue image), although interestingly I have that cat/fox . . . foxy-cat (white plastic, top left) somewhere, also in hard polystyrene with the same stencil decoration, so Culpitt's may have issued two smaller groups of 6, only one making it into the book? Or bags of five randomly taken from the twelve?

F is for Follow-up and Fervent, Faithful Flag-waving, Fifes & Drums!

I think I mentioned back in the autumn, or possibly during Rack Toy Month that one of my bad habits is to post something, then, after I've alerted/reminded you all of them/the subject, go off to evilBay and see what's [still] there! I did it after the AWI post the other day, and managed to find a charity lot (yellow & blue ribbon icon) with six sets of cake decorations!

Among which were these three, so I grabbed the lot (cheap, buy-it-now) and they got here a couple of days ago. It's some of the other Sprit of '76 branded stuff, with the figures I described the other day as "...short-fat-kid caricatures", here - on the left - a patriotic flag waving lady-girl and what is their fifth drummer - within the line. On the right we have patriotically-dressed kissin' cousin's!

Flag lady could double as a pencil top, while the seat of the kissing pair is of more interest, as I have suggested for years that the based-set of Airfix piracies are by Lik Be, due to the similarity of the bases to both the marked robot/alien types and the late set of two astronauts and flag with lunar lander, or at least (as it was in One Inch Warrior magazine I think, so years ago and 'LP') that the maker of the astronauts was the same as the maker of the Airfix Washington's Army pirates . . .

. . . and here, courtesy of Bill B's catalogue is the same bench-settee/love-seat, now providing a place of repose for an elderly couple, in a Lik Be trade advertisement. So I get to use the 'Told you so' tag which annoys some people; but it's the reason I use it!

Clearly LiK Be were supplying (among 'ethylene monsters, 'styrene space stuff and 'funimals' in both polymers) a lot of the wishy-washy white polystyrene plastic cake decorations carried by many brands both sides of the pond.

While these might be by another maker and are obviously another brand, the reverse of the card says "made and packed in Hong Kong", so Emilie is probably a pseudonym for dozens of outworkers!

I'm guessing we have Betsy and Abe here! But the same over-sentimentalised 'kidults', this time with just the big heads, and the painting of the Lincoln-alike hasn't reached the 'stars & stripes' excesses of the Spirit figures!

L is for London Toy Soldier Show - December 2022 - White Tower Miniatures

While I was at the London show I shot a few things, and these are some of they, from Matt's White Tower Miniatures stall, while I umm'ed and err'ed over what to purchase! Blurb-light because the images speak for themselves'.

Normans and vikings, all buildings are also available from White Tower

Round stone-walled hovel

Kievan Russ

Not Russians; early Cossacks - Slava Ukraine!)

[Moscow was still an uninhabited fen-land swamp]

Mounted Normans

Pirates, the third time we've had a pirate ship in January!

Close up of the rascal's vessel!

Wild West - lots of character figures

Townsfolk

A cowboy band!

Annie Oakley (R), Buffalo Bill Cody (L) and Calamity Jane (behind/between)

Medieval Fort

Robin Hood and his Merry Men!

Harrying the North?

And White Tower Miniatures can be found here;
https://whitetowerminiatures.co.uk/

F is for Follow-up - Odd Germans

So, days after I posted the two unusual German Infantry (second image down) which Chris Smith sent to the blog in the Autumn, I spotted a trio on-line in Italy, but these three were die-cast alloy, not yellow plastic? Obviously I bought them before anyone else saw them!

We now have an additional officer who looks a bit like the chap - Simon Cadell - who was always playing German Officers when he wasn't being a rather wet manager at Maplins!

They are twice the size of the Peltro/Westair/Dover figures later claimed by Kinder collectors, and therefore a trio might 'be it', a small, probably transparent or windowed carton for tourists to purchase at a museum's gift shop? Westair still sell larger figures, now soft whitemetal, but singly.

This is not to say they are Peltro, but that could then involve (in a roundabout way) Fontanini/Fonplast and even Cáne? A reasonably extensive search of eBay.it has failed to find any more in metal or plastic, nor under any of the brands, but the fact that Cáne did several Italian sets, a US Marine set AND Japanese, yet don't seem to have been credited with a set of Germans yet, might be a telling snippet?

Can anyone check the back-cover of a PW from a few years ago which showed a shop display of various Cáne sets/sculpts under another brand . . . CGGC-Grisoni? Mine are in storage . . . again!

Back to the figures, their bases are slightly deeper than the plastics, with four shallow studs underneath (yes I should have taken more shots, but it's a bit 'up in the air' here at the movement, and I hope we'll be returning to these), but the same 'clipped coin' edge design, so the plastics are straight copies with thinner bases, and each is marked in Italian;

•          SOLDADO TED
•          FANTERIA TED
•          UFFICIALE TED

Ted is for Tedesca, the Italian for German, so we have

•          German Soldier
•          German Infantry
•          German Officer

Obviously more to discover on these, both the metal and the plastic, but I'm on the case, and if anyone can shed any light on the subject, it would be appreciated! Underlines above are for the dunderheads!

H is for How They Come In - London Show December 2022 - Mercator Trading

I try to always credit people where they've helped the Blog, given me stuff, or let me have stuff for peanuts, but equally, if I pay for something it's mine to do what I want with, without crediting anyone, well, it would be ridiculous to try and credit everyone you've ever bought from, even if you wanted to!

Equally, once the stuff has been broken down and sorted into the collection it gets harder to re-credit, you can't keep track of everything . . . you'll understand if I say I give a lot of thought to the subject, I wouldn't say I lose sleep over it, but I do always want to do the right thing! One wants to credit fairly, not leave anyone out, but not be over-patronising . . . it's a hard balance sometimes!

Adrian Little of Mercator Trading, often lets me have little bits and/or saves me a tub of the same, equally he lets me have things well-under their market value, but I will also pay full-whack for bits or ask him to get something for me, the last London show involved all kinds, but I did seem to come away from the show with a lot of stuff from the one table/seller/mate, so here's a post on all of it!

I actually ordered this in advance of the show, having watched it not-sell to several interested buyers at a previous show, and I wouldn't dream of telling you what I paid for it, but it was considerably less than the market rate, due to the damage to the collar and shoulder, but it's my first 'Porcelain Head' composition figure (and probably my last!), and if you're going to tick that box, you might as well tick it with an example of the head-honcho!

As you can see, he also has a moving arm, but it's giving the full, straight-armed Sieg Heil, not his commoner, strangely bent-wrist, flicky version which always looked like he couldn't really be arsed! And the podium came home with me too!

A interesting trio here, on the left a French Napoleonic figure which might be CL (Charles Lannoy), RF (Rene Fisher) or JSF? All the dongles (and the external hard drive I put them on so they'd all be in one place) with that info' are at the flat, and I'm not!

In the middle is my first Arjoplast from Belgium, the [ceremonial?] uniform escapes me (and my pitiful attempts on Google) but might be some administrator's uniform from the Belgian Congo/colonial era?

While the chap on the right is also a bit of a mystery; I'm pretty sure I've seen (may even have -  I've rather neglected the nappies here at Small Scale World!) a couple of Napoleonic French Grenadiers with the same base, but this chap seems to be another Belgian, except Google says paler-blue top and darker trousers, while I can't find the braid at all? The bearskin however is quite a likeness with the white drop/plume and star-plate, although some of the guards on Google have a side plume in red.

The rifle is toy-like and a separate piece glued into the arm.

While these might be new to hobby, are definitely new to Blog and could be New to Internet! Consequently I can't give you much of any use, but there's plenty to say! Not least that while two of them have damaged rifles, it is of no matter; when dealing with such unusual figures better to have a broken one than none at all!

The first one seems to be a copy of an old Elastolin or Lineol figure, and in that material could be mistaken for a poured resin or even 3D print, but I suspect a test shot, due to the remains of a runner's gate-mark, and a slightly resinous hard-plastic which is sort of semi-opaque. Could it also be Argentine? They did copy some composition in plastic.

The second feels like Portuguese to me, semi-flat or demi-rond, and silver styrene are both traits of their production as seen with Plástico Osul, and the Portuguese used the British MkI/II-'Brodie' helmet for the duration of WWII (and beyond I believe), so that's the clues for this one?

While the third has a different base to the silver one and a more rounded countenance, but may be from the same source, depicting a  neighbouring Spanish soldier of the same or similar 1930-60's era, but could be something else entirely, another South American maker, they liked their 'Jerry helmets' over there!

I think this might be the Apollo moon lander from the Hing Fat sets, we've looked at some previously here, but my sample has the rover and other stuff. Quite well done as it happens with a sticker detailing the stay-behind section's flat top and various plug-in retro'/maneuver jets and radar dishes.

While this . . . is not on Alphadrome as far as I can find, no one on Friends of Plastic Warrior could help, no one on Brian Heiler's facebook group knew anything, so again, possibly new to hobby, Blog and Internet!

Isn't it lovely! The arms move, but the legs are factory-glued, as two separate, pose-specific, left/right pieces, with angled feet to keep it standing up. The head is also glued and the paint seems to be original.

The closest I could get was the 'Dime Store' maker, the Ball Manufacturing Co. who had similar products (Captain Radar) - or the French Rex, who's spacemen could be considered close (they are also quite close to the British Christmas cracker prize spacemen), but both are pure conjecture.

I also tried - and failed - to nail it to a pulp-movie robot, but that's not to say my search was that exhaustive, and there were one or two similar beasts, so it may be based on a half-forgotten B-movie one?

Not new to hobby, not new to Internet! Boo! Looks like it's a Portuguese copy of a Spanish robot by Sel-Mac, but that would tie it in with my suspicions of Portugal for a couple of the other figures in that lot?

https://www.geocities.ws/robot_ole/selmac.html

and it WAS on Alphadrome, just not in the Robot section!

http://alphadrome.net/forums/topic/15347-sel-mac-robot-from-barcelona/

and

http://alphadrome.net/forums/topic/21254-vigia-del-espacio-robot-sel-mac-spain/

Still, it's all fun! And I may have the pistol, but I may be getting confused with either the MPC one (boxier, soft polyethylene) or the US gum-ball one - altogether cruder? Both of which I do have somewhere!

Some nice pieces here as well! Polish large scale and 54mm Napoleonics, the way things are going on the Polish blogs, and among the contributors to the FoPW Faceplant group, I'm hesitant to say PZG for either of these!

The base on the right-had figure seems not quite right for PZG, while I think someone gave a alternate maker's name for a different pair of the left-hand one the other day (but I can't find the post now, trouble with Faceplant is that stuff soon drops off the page with no tags!), although PZG did have a larger sized Napoleonic line, theirs had slightly larger bases?

The new-to-collection 'Toy Town' sentry box is all-wood and rather charming, the chick is composition or chalkwear while the stool is one of the most copied pieces out there; reappearing in all sorts of guises, from Marx 'Kins' window boxes, through those fairy-tail sets, gum-ball capsules, dolls house rack toys and charms, a Hong Kong- made bear's picnic, all sorts; this seems an early phenolic or 'heavy' styrene one - if you know what I mean!

The chap with the tyre is another Cararra slot-racing set figure, my fourth in a few months, after having none for years!

Two more of the Royal Armoury (Real Armería de Madrid) models from Spain, I love these, I don't know how many were issued, and I guess they sold well (as tourist souvenirs) as you often see them, but getting them in good condition is the tricky part - these both appear OK.

They seem to have changed the base/plinth design at some point, which may give completists at least two sets to find? Factory constructed plastic-kits, my guess is ten or more with three or four mounted and the rest on foot, they all seem to be from the main hall, which is the one that comes-up when you Google the Spanish Royal Armoury Museum.

Three interesting animals on the left; a flocked giraffe in reasonable condition, probably British but who did a giraffe with integrated base? The Western horse is heavy rubber, while the cart-horse has such good paint it might be repainted, but more info sought on all of them?

To the right, a couple of Reisler's; a sailor and an African soldier, and yes that's factory paint, I think they were around the time of all the Congolese trouble (??? It's still going-on, 70-years later!) and represent UN Peacekeepers from somewhere? A Betterware cowboy flat, MPC ring-hand cowboy with accessories and a lady wagon-rider from . . . Starlux? Reisler? . . . Polystyrene anyway!

This is a really nice crossover set from the all composition set we've seen here before with Mosquito fighters (now P-38 Lightings) and the later all lead sets with a smaller metal pilot, so very pleased to add it to the pile. Timpo planes and Zang for Timpo 20mm pilots, with the box missing but the card intact.

A handful of Hornby/Dinky Dublo figures (left-hand five) and Wardie/Mastermodels workmen (right-hand trio), with a driver from early Matchbox or Moko-Lesney? Lead for the Hornby's; die-cast alloy for the other four.

A Kellogg's 'Jig-Toy' flat-bed truck and Quaker cereal-premium racing-car join a lead motorcycle in the motor-pool, and - as is becoming a habit - I raided Adrian's cheapie-trays at the end of the show, the most interesting of which is probably the one at the front, who is a die-cast Mazac/Zamak alloy, he's semi-flat and around 28mm.

There's some good stuff above, and Adrian saved/gave some of it to me, and let me have some cheap, so many thanks to him, Mercator Trading always have top-end stuff, either on their website or on evilBay, and . . . guess what - the Plastic Warrior show is only four months away now!

F is for Follow-up - Mini Models Disney Jungle Book

I had this from Peter Evans a few days after I posted the last lot of Dave Pomeroy stuff;

". . . the Jungle Book, there is a drawing on the Mini Models box of Sher Khan. I think this was a proposed range that never went into production- maybe even cereal premiums."

There was more on the Napoleonics but they will get their own follow-up when I shoot the rest, but anyway I messaged him back;

"Pretty much my thoughts on the later, but I did see an orange Sher Khan the other day in an overpriced mixed-lot (took the image) painted like my yellow-one, so they may have been factory-glued and cleared in counter-boxes? Those old white ones with him on it . . . which I'd forgotten, so thanks for all that . . ."

Only . . . it wasn't overpriced, and I had left a bid, which I'd already totally forgotten about when messaging Peter, until the following Sunday when I got a 'You have won, pay NOW you tightarse!' message from fleaBay, only for a mixed lot of mostly shite to turn-up a few days later!

Anyway, this was among the shite (along with a complete Marx Rollykins Dalek!), it's the only one I think I've ever seen, and has the same [white] paint as my yellow one, but with added black eyes and stripes (mostly rubbed-off now), so some kind of issue must have occurred, if only limited, or local to the South East coast? A awful lot of Minimodels stuff has appeared locally, some of it at Reading (Swallowfield bypass) or the A3 car-boot sales, over the years!

And the box, with the tiger on it, which I'd also totally forgotten about was seen on the blog many years ago, here, but only as a very small thumbnail (first image); I wasn't as good at imagery back at the start of the blog, so maybe we'll re-do some of the older posts in the future? Although it's all destined to appear on the A-Z Blogs eventually!

However you can see it's the same sculpt pretty much, so at some point they must have been included in/issued with the standard counter-top box, which is quite small, but would hold maybe two-each of the set? He's lost his tail, but seems rareish, so he'll do for now!

H is for How They Come In - London Show December 2022 - General Purchases

And so to London, as the saying goes, with the final toy soldier show in the calendar at the Haverstock School, Chalk Farm, where I had quite a good show, given it's mostly metal these days, but various 'Plastics' guys are there and between them gaps were filled and rarities found!

This came from a mate, and he actually had two different, but I only grabbed one and it'll feed my need for regular injections of horse-drawn stuff, but it is both a delicate and space-consuming heft of packaging, so one is fine, my first Brumm, known from the catalogues which aren't rare and of which I have a few and very well-made when you actually get to see/handle it.

Modern combat forces got a good boost, with a bunch of Frenchmen from Cofalux, Starlux and one or two others . . . I picked up a few more a week or two later, then got some more in the machine-gunner lots, so I've done well on Frech plastic this past autumn/early-winter!

To their right are a bunch of Japanese from Britains Deetail range, I knew I only had one or two, and realised (quite late in the afternoon) I had seen all of them on two different stalls, so having some cash still warm in my pocket rushed round as people were starting to pack-up and purchased both lots.

Thus giving me five of six poses, alternate painting of the advancing chap, and two different treatments of the LMG, along with the US recoilless rifle re-purposed to the Land of the Rising Sun, to keep Britains' costs down! I'll have to hope the missing pose is among my existing few!

Below is two shots of a very clean Trojan jungle fighter, I seem to be building my Trojan Japanese, Australian/Anzac and 14th Army samples one figure at a time which isn't the cheap way, but it'll be fun when I find the last one - about another ten years at the current rate!

Now, I didn't shoot or record the maker (on the back of the cards) before they went up to the unit, but I may have some of these already in the collection (I've certainly seen them before), so when everything is sorted out, we may well de-card a duplicate, set them up and have a return post with all the details . . . modernish (1970's?) and aimed at the tourist trade I suspect.

Had a good score on Gem/Gemodels, with four knights (from the 'orange paint batch'!), one of the King's Men from the Humpty Dumpty cake decoration vignette (he appears to be laughing and pointing at the 'scrambled-egg'!) and two others, the snowman with an icing spike and a skater in yellow base polymer, along with a Hong Kong copy of the Crescent Santa Clause, I already have one or two in that section, but I think the paint on this chap is far superior to previous finds?

These were from Matt Their at White Tower Miniatures, and while you know my views on 'new' poured metal (as displayed in the last post!), the smaller guys aren’t so expensive (despite having higher overheads/unit costs), so I try to support them when I can, and while I always admire Matt's stuff I haven't previously bought any, so I thought I'd better rectify that with a  swift purchase!

I bought one glossy 'toy soldier' style finished figure from the Robin Hood series, and one matt painted figure from the Wild West range, and they are both really nice figures, Robin himself summoning the Merry Men for some shenanigans, the Indian is from an older hollow-cast moulding I think Matt said, but now done as a solid. Matt also sells all of them as unpainted castings.

This MTB/PT-Boat was nice, some age (dime store type/era), and pretty clean, but there is a small question mark over the opening beneath the conning-tower, and the two openings just in front of it, I can't work out if something is missing, or if someone has had a dig to fit a couple of figures, now missing, no brand or brand-mark, nor the typical Kleeware/Tudor Rose circular mould-release/blanking disc marks, so maker is totally unknown but could be an early Thomas or Lido/Pyro/Reliable type thing?

A pair of beautifully painted Commonwealth 'World Dolls'; Ms's Hawaii and Holland, and painted by George Hanger, who used to paint stuff for the BMSS museum and their magazine articles, indeed, given who I bought them off (who also gave me their history), I'm guessing those Mokarex/Figurines Historiques Musketeers (bottom of post) were painted by George as well?

Polish [French] cavalry from PZG, going for a song in a little bag, I'm not sure on the horses, so gave the most obviously different one to the Trumpeter, and the other odd one to the 'officer' in white!

Smaller single/rummage-tray pick purchases include (going vaguely clockwise from the top left); Kinder fantasy figure, I've several of these come in recently (so not rare) in both blue and green, a large native American Indian type from . . . Lido? Tudor Rose? Someone like that, he's in the archive somewhere and probably tied-in with a Lone Ranger or similar movie? And finally in that shot -  a US MP with pod-feet, again I should know, I've seen him before and I think I have him in dark blue, so this may be a 1990's reissue?

Poplar tractor (another!), an aluminium totem pole (Wend-Al or Aludo?) and a tin of my favourite brown! I have the old Authenticast semi-gloss leather version and the bog-standard gloss, but this matt dark-brown is hard to find these days, or seems so to me, so I thought I'd grab a 'newie' when I saw it!

A Toumoulage French soldier in metallic mauve polystyrene (why not!) and a rather nice-paint Cherilea Egyptian share the line-up with a less common cake-decoration deer sculpt and one of the Airfix (or Frazier & Glass I think . . . now!) cadets.

Finally another big Indian I should know, and another of those teeny-tiny Topo Gigio (Louie Mouse) figures from Italy, which I keep finding (or being sent), I have four or five now, I think in three colours, but all the same pose? Board game pieces maybe . . . or were they an early Kinder or a gum-ball capsule-dispenser thing?

The Toumoulage Indians we've already looked at above, with a mix below; the big guy is a Marolin, probably post reunification? Next to him is a better-quality Hong Kong copy of a Herald sculpt, with a French-made cowboy on the end of the row. In front a Marx 45mm PVC-rubber cowboy and a French (or more likely Polish) Indian with peace pipe, one of several (with pipes) who've come-in recently.

Big Joe from Big, what Jean Höfler became, a Gulliver late-issue copy of an Atlantic cowboy and a Pech y Hermanos artilleryman, the gun in front is similar to the Pech one he should be found with, but bigger and a Hong Kong (or early British garden/beach toy, it's unmarked?) Aussie jungle 25lbr without splinter-shield.

Quick note; I've finally bitten the bullet and switched from Firefox to Chrome, still getting used to it, but it has changed the gaps between images and paragraphs, nothing I can do about it, the Internet like most everything else these days seems to be slowly fragmenting and getting worse not better!