G is for God!

I forgot to mention . . . It's BP Fairs' Sandown Park Toy Pair today, so if you're at a loose-end, mosey-on down to Esher and see if you can grab yourself a bargain, he says; still half-asleep!

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Ephemera

As I posted some of this back in lockdown and as the lockdowns are all a couple of years ago, they might as well go here too! A rather eclectic collection, but the 'Seen Elsewhere' folder is one I have managed to migrate, find and get to grips with.

 

From the Hong Kong firm Star Toys' catalogue, their range of Timpo/Britains (and other makes?) wagon/coach clones. Amusing to see both Stage Coaches ripped-off, and Britains horses on Timpo bases.

This is from the retailer Josef Kober of Vienna's catalogue, from the mid 1970's. We see Timpo Indians attacking a Timpo cavalry/union-manned fort, while Elastolin cowboys get up to all sorts down in the town, including laying in wait for a Timpo stage! Wooden buildings exclusive to Kober.

I believe the shop only closed in the last few years, and when I posted it previously Gubányi István of Hungary recalled the shop was popular with Eastern European visitors during the Cold War, presumably due to Austria's NATO/Warpac neutrality.

This went on Brain Heiler's facebook group, where they like a bit of early evening, older kids, TV serial-related stuff, preferably Canadian, but this is British and another retailer (or actually; wholeseller)'s catalogue, Dekkertoys. I might even have a couple of those fake medal/badge 'Bling' items somewhere! Childhood Fun!

Not intending to park my tanks on Moonbase's lawn, it just happens there's a few white-button/wind-up, giant insects down the bottom of this collection of plastic kits from Bandai's 1975 catalogue, all of which have the clockwork 'walking action', I previously posted this on the STS Animal Forum over a year ago.

At the same time as I posted this image of the Marx prehistoric playset by Burbank Toys, presumably - by then - a Dunby-Combex sales vehicle (also marketing some Mattel), although originally formed in 1957. They also sold the last version of the Guns of Navarone playset, both in contents-photo' box-art, along with a third which I think was a Wild West set, with fort? It'll go on the A-Z listing in the end, with lots of other stuff!

N is for Not Phidal, Oh, No, no, no, no, no, or Not?

By which I mean I would happily put a small wager on these having come from the same factory and/or design team who work with or supply Phidal, but they are not sold as Phidal, but rather as total generics in blank packaging - some warehouse somewhere is shifting them to anyone who wants them, and there are several sellers on evilBay, and Amazon I think.

This is not to say they mightn't be clearance from Phidal, there were a lot of early sets about which I know little, as the style, painting and bases are all very reminiscent of some of the Phidal output we've seen here before, but they are unmarked and direct copies (pose wise) of a Disney Stores 'exclusive' set (which are marked), which suggests unlicensed knock-offs? A third near-identical set exists, with metallic painted figures.

How they arrive, six heat-sealed pockets in a rolling double-sheet which is then cut and stuffed in another vacuum-packed bag, causing the warped bases on what are otherwise quite substantial figurines; and a hideous carbon footprint, and they are a little larger than typical Phidals at around 65/75 mil.

When I say "unmarked" I mean they don't even have a '©Disney', which is a pretty good sign of some Chinese (they don't have 'China' either!) ner'do'wellness! But they are nice for what they are and will go OK (not necessarily perfectly, but 'OK') with the larger Marx and other more modern figures by Bully, Kaiodo, Schleich etc.

Those unmarked bases, just for completeness! As hinted at above, the packaging will likely leave one or two requiring some hot-water reshaping. And you may have noticed; the Cheshire Cat's a peculiar colour . . . that's never going to make a Bagpuss!

News, Views Etc . . . Herald Toys & Models

Barney's been busy this winter, another release from him reads . . .

"...this week we have an exciting collection of 'Swoppets' from Poole in Dorset, including some superb C15th Knights, some of which have come straight out of a boxed set and are in pristine condition. We also have some nice early Herald ceremonial figures from the Manhattan Collection, including a group of four very early Guardsmen, marching at the slope, all with the "British Made" Zang trademark to their bases..."

As always Barney's stuff is to be found here Herald Toys & Models

 

F is for Follow-up - AWI and Cake Dec's

When I originally posted these, in a rather irreverent article, I mused on the origins of the red versus blue versions of the Airfix Washington's Army figures, a while later I actually saw some blue ones, on a US sale page, so that part of the mystery was solved and my improbable tale of how the UK came to have a bunch of redcoats seems more plausible now!

But, anyhoos, the other two sets in the recent charity shop purchase were this pair . . .

 

. . . both in SSCO packing (I've seen them in others now), and showing one way the Americans got them, six infantry in one pack and the mounted officer (glued to his horse in this case) in the other, so while still outnumbered by my redcoat sample, they have a fighting chance now, and the three musicians of the previous post to chivvy them along!

 

Alternate angle/close-ups, they are the same figures, almost certainly from Lik Be (formerly 'LP' . . . or IDL!), they share the same base style and marks as both the redcoats available over here and the pair of astronauts which joined LB's diminutive chrome-painted robot/aliens - of which I picked up a few, mint, the other day in a charity shop!

 

I haven't got their matching-set here at the moment, so it's a comparison with the slightly larger, baseless set, but you'll get the idea from the previous posts on these, and we will do a round-up of all of them when I track-down the two missing figures for that chap the other day . . . other week . . . month! Another box ticked, more confirmation of previous thoughts!

And [written after editing the article] this isn't a return to business as normal here, despite the fact this was one of the next few in the queue. The MacBook Air went back for a full refund, it was a dated technicolour yawn of multiscreen busyness, and for the price, a complete disappointment - and I've always hankered after one; looked into it about 15 years ago and gave it more thought when first doing CAD back in 2012/13!

 

So with the HPieceofshit17 already on its way back to Amazon, I went back to a Lenovo, if my government is happy for me to buy Chinese shit full of spyware, who am I to argue? But Windows11 is also shit, and I still don't know where half the stuff I have got across is! It's a depressing nightmare, and with everything else going on, I don't know when normal service will resume, but I will try to get out a few easy or new-stuff posts going forward - a lot has come in!

I've actually managed to add some shots to the 'civilian' post of the canoe 'season', but apart from that and the Airfix post (additions to the Commandos) which was to go early too, the rest are still on one of the hard drives and after trying to 'migrate' the back-up, I'm in no hurry to load anything else on here until I know what the fuck I'm doing!

And I've just had problems loading these images, they wouldn't go where I was trying to place them, I tried formatting the page to normal, but they kept going in down the bottom, so in the end I gave up and moved all the text in sections . . . Pain! Still, it's not all negative, I'm back with Firefox; if everything else has changed you might as well bite the bullet and get used to new everything, and the current spellchecker for it is much better even than the Windows Office one!

News, Views Etc . . . Herald Toys & Models Updates

As I mentioned the other day, there were two releases from Barney in the queue, to which another has been added and as I've now taken everything off this piece of shit HP-17 in order to send it back for a refund (it's not right!), an image-free post is a useful one right now! Good news, I talked myself into a Mac' replying to EY the other day, so went and got one yesterday, so  . . . another weeks setting-up and getting used to a new system and I should be firing on all cylinders!

" . . . this week we have for sale a good group of Speedwell figures from the Robin Hood set, together with a smaller scale Speedwell mounted cowboy, moulded in two-pieces. Happy collecting as always, Barney - PS: Royal Mail have now resumed International services, so hopefully the cyber incident from 11 January has now been resolved and normal service resumed!"

" . . . from the Manhattan Collection we are very pleased to be able to offer two rare original Herald catalogues for 1957 and 1958, together with an original Herald New Lines leaflet for February 1956."

" . . . this weekend we have an interesting collection of Barrett & Sons Zoo Series models, mostly from the old Taylor & Barrett hollow-cast moulds, including a Polar Bear Family, Seated Lioness and Cub, together with a very rare Red Deer Stag and Hind matching pair. Some models we have never seen in plastic and are not depicted in the Plastic Warrior Taylor & Barrett Special. We also have a few B&S Farm animals, including a scarce tree, moulded in two parts."

As always Barney's stuff is to be found here Herald Toys & Models

H is for Heeeeerererereerssss Hughy!

I'm back, typing letters about three points fucking tall! You get the biggest screen you can and they reduce the graphics by 50%. I fucking hate Hewlett Packard and I fucking hate Microsoft and I fucking hate technology! Three fucking codes to my 'phone in the last half hour, just to get to stuff which has been mine for years!

Couldn't comment on anyone's Blog because the despicable duo wouldn't let me open the Excel spreadsheet I put all my passwords in, as the Lenovo was dying (China be fucked - I wish I'd bought another Lenovo! The price of principle is some Western piece of shit - which was probably made in China anyway - no spyware but no usefulware either!), or at least; not without paying for Windows365 and some other shit I don't need because A) I don't want my life 'on the cloud' and B) I have a perfectly good Office disc somewhere, which I've already paid for - Bastard Microsoft bastards!

And everything's still on the Backup hard-drive, so I won't post much beyond rants about fucking Hewlett Packard and fucking Microsoft for a while longer, but I'm about to try loading the later version of Picasa (3.9) than I've been using for the last fourteen years, so we'll see how that goes!

Hoping to go to the Spring gift fair at NEC Birmingham tomorrow, still got all the Kensington Olympia stuff from Toy Fair on an SD card, along with a bunch of other stuff so I'll have 'some' output in a day or so, and there are three press releases from Barny and a new PW out there!

Most bookmarks restored and I managed to make a payment with Paypal (which hasn't been working for a year or two), so some benefits to a new machine . . . new anonymity!

Had a chat with matey in Rymans and he had the same thing, the first thing you have to do with these new laptops is delete and/or uninstall three-quarters of the shit that comes with it (MacAfee is shit, get Avira free and bin MacAfee!), and then you find there's nothing useful there, I can't even open zip-files with the software I DO need until I've downloaded WinZip or similar, if I had a machinegun there would have been a bloodbath somewhere in the last two weeks, not Macky-D's, somewhere full of authority figures is where!