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, April 13, 2024

F is for Forts

A couple of 'seen elsewhere's and a more recent scan from . . . probably Military Modelling, I can't remember! Forts and things, mostly wooden, all scanned from the archive.

Some confusion over this one, I thought it had come from the James Chase collection and been supplied to Plastic Warrior at the same time I got mine, but in fact it was an A. Hood of Cumbria, who sent it to PW (issue 62, 1997!), my cutting (with surrounding articles) came into my possession around 2005/6? I thought it was probably die-cut, printed, pressed hardboard, but Mr. Carrick reports that they are individual slats tacked into place, probably box-wood or a similar knotless-softwood?
 
This was in the James Chase ephemera, and I think it's a FAO Schwarz catalogue, but I can't swear to it, as there was a fair bit of SS Kresege stuff as well. And we have the Crescent Hollow-cast, Tudor Rose (?), Lido et al., here as T Cohn, wild west figures, with those comedic pot-bellied cannons which can fire both matchsticks and BB pellets! The fort and rock emplacements are tin-plate.
 
While this is card, and designed for displays/shelf backgrounds, with a shallow countenance and two shelf-battlements, I don't know what happened to CTA, but they advertised for a while in the modelling press, around the turn of the 1980's?
 
And as a bonus, to bring a bit of colour to a grey post, here's an old Hamley's catalogue page from 1972, with a mix of commercial (Britains [riding school], Exin [fairy-tale castle] and Blue Box [garage, I think, or Fisher Price?]) and more locally sourced/craft stuff in wood, ply I suspect, certainly for the slot-together Western fort, not so sure about the medieval castle, while the farmyard is probably that pressed hardboard.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had the Britain's farm yard.
The western Fort I had was I think called Fort Dallas and I would certainly like to have it again....most of the forts....Cherokee, Laramie etc are basically the same.
Circa 1960 and years after I had a castle which I now know was Triang...actally very dangerous as it had spikes which slotted into the base.
A few months ago on an online auction site which I won't name I bought a half sized version.
Life comes full circle when I am buying the same toys my parents and grandparents bought me

John Mooney

Terranova47 said...

The C.T.A. Facade at £45 was clearly for adult collectors, not toys for kids.

Hugh Walter said...

It seems to be what gets us all in the end John!

Oh yes, Terra' and it might be 1990's? I used to cut things out without the diligent note-taking I employ now, sometimes!

Cheers both!

H