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.

Saturday, June 10, 2023

T is for Two - Civilian Horse-drawn Transports . . . 1hp!

Looking at a couple of very different single-horse power toys today, one the equivalent of a natty-little Triumph Spitfire, the other a Morris Traveller with a misfiring plug! Both are soft polyethylene plastic with a metal axle.

We looked at EG Toys once, a long time ago, and I doubted, at the time, we'd ever return to them here, but this is they, here they are, and isn't it a peach! No mere copy of Britians or Timpo, Morestone or Barrat, but a from-the-floor-up, local-design I think, although the horse has been nicked from Marx!
 
The driver sat easier after I'd moved him to the right-hand side, thereby proving by real sciencey stuff, beyond all reasonable doubt (shut-up at the back there!), that Napoleon was wrong, and the British do, in fact, drive on the right (as in proper / correct), right (as in orientation) side of the road! It's only what the Romans gave us, and it's what ships do!

That Marx horse in full!
 

While I suspect that this unmarked little sports model is a French bazaar type rack-toy? It's a harness-racer, 'Trotter' (also sulky, spider, or chariot), or trotting cart (to make it a pacer you'd need to replace the horse - different leg poses required), and while it looks like Hong Kong tat, it's unmarked, so the French connection is more likely, anyone got a brand for it, Hugonnet-Féral? It could be a premium too, soap-powder boxes would have room! It's a little smaller than the EG, at about 45/50mm.

And apologies for the fact that everything's getting the same background at the moment, but it's a bare table in the new flat, with chair, and window behind, so until I cover it in crap, it's just too convenient!

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