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.

Monday, March 11, 2024

T is for Thomas Salter

A Scottish toy firm with a convoluted history of its constituent parts following bankruptcy in the early 1980's, which had little to do with the failure of Linka to set the hobby world alight, and more to do with mismanagement, but, while better known for their science and chemistry sets (friendly (?) rivals to Merit and Lott's), they carried, for quite a while, this 'approved' show jumping set, in the style of the Britains one.

Early (most?) sets contain the actual Britains horses, either standing or walking were used and can be found (see next post for more musing on this aspect of the set!), while late sets contained Hong Kong piracies, as mine does, here, both the walking sculpt.
 
Jumps are similar to the Britains ones, with flat-topped or angled wings, what sets them apart from Britains and the Parker-Palitoy sets, is the addition of a base, with the arms of the jump wings moulded into them, they could benefit from some green paint to help hide the bases and highlight the base struts.
 
Poles, planks and a gate were issued, and the red of the red/white visual markings were thermo-printed, on one side only. No wall, brushes or water feature were included though, nor do they give us little Christmas trees in tubs! The jumps are all polystyrene, the riders are polyethylene (Hong Kong) or ICI Alkathene (Britains - also a polyethylene!)
 
The male in hunting pink and the lady in a chic-cut riding/sports-jacket from Hong Kong, are also direct copies of the Britains sculpts and one wonders what Britains thought of losing a small, but useful contract for their product, to cheap copies of the same, from Hong Kong?

There will be a follow post which features these, but musing on other things, and if you can be arsed - a search for these on feeBay will reveal three sets currently listed - one the same as mine, one which might have been mucked-about with and one with two Britains stock, one walking, one standing, and that's important for the next post. in December there were five sets listed with similarly mixed riders.

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