W is for Window Shopping

Continuing the 'show and tell's' from Brian's holiday in Italy earlier this year, and we come to what he found on the retail front, or at least some of it, there's more to come! The first seven images are of the window of a toy shop in Naples, the only one Brian found, suspecting Italian kids have mostly gone on-line to find their toys?

These first three shots seem to be mostly Schliech and/or Papo types (double -checking the shots; mostly Papo), and while nothing to write home about, they make a fine, and colourful display! A mix of Romans, medievals, fantasy and a few Pirates.

 

The other four look to be more domestic, and a mix of resin and whitemetal, some maybe locally commissioned? Two Napoleonic Brit's looking a little out of place in Naples! I can't make out the name on the labels in the background of one of the shots, can any Italian readers help out?

 

 

The above were to be found in the gift-shop at Pompeii, where the little four-euro one would seem to be role-playing size (28/35mm), and the other four are antiqued in the style of antiquities, but not copies of them, having a modern styling/sculpture. I suspect resin for the teeny and a base metal for the four fake-bronzes?

This is the window of a shop in Capri, and again a mix of metal and poured-resin, we will be looking at the eight-euro black knight in a further post, in fact it'll be a good excuse to dig out a few more and do what I did with the ceremonial odds-n-sods the other day!

 

In Brian's own words - "The [...] shot of red cardinals and chili peppers for some strange reason figure big in Amalfi Coast culture.", there are more ecclesiastic subjects to come, from the trip.

These two were found in a shop outside the Pompeii site, and may have more basis in actual artefacts or monumental masonry of the time, also resin, I think anyone who likes ancients needs one of these in their collection!

Thanks to Mr Berke as always, you can't beat a roving reporter who roves and reports! Cheers Brian!

T is for Two - Donations

On two recent meetings Adrian Little of Mercator Trading has given me small tubs of odds and sods, some of which are quite rare, unusual or interesting, and having found the errant pig hiding in one of the folders yesterday, I thought I'd better get the rest up here and shared with you.

Two of the pretty ugly, but quite rare Cherilea dinosaurs start this little parade of past plastic playthings, and while the Pterodactyl is reasonably complete, if rather playworn, the something ...nodon (tyranodon?) has lost a leg and the bit of the tail with the start of its name on! But, these will go with several others, some also a bit broken, in a growing sample.

 

Another handful of Blue Box Japanese, I will have some spares for swaps once they are all brought together and sorted for a final time, which is ironic, because for some time I had so few Nazar Marchenko sent me the missing figures as one of the first contributors to the Blog. Since when I've found and shown colour variations, painted examples and several mounted have either come in or been seen courtesy of Chris Smith!

 

Four Marx and a Deluxe Reading/Topper 50mm air-force/space types, very timely, as with the others in storage, they will be useful for a forthcoming comparison shot, and quite compatible with each other.

 

Another of the Taiwanese issue of the old European Asterix ice-cream/bubble-gum premiums, I opened the previous bag to shoot for a post here at Small Scale World, so I'll be leaving this one intact, as it's the less common one with shield etc . . .

 

I think these may be from Starlux, but are unmarked and probably from a boardgame, issued as premiums or possibly sold as die-cast vehicle set accessories, a' la Solido? I honestly don't know, and Starlux did have some unmarked stuff, and did issue unpainted toward the end, so?

 

Two of the figures from the MPC playset, on Planet of the Apes, the figures are in the style of Marx's made in Hong Kong WoW and Disney stuff, gloss-painted hard polystyrene, and while quite common are nevertheless nice examples of a subject which didn't get many toys outside the Mego action figure types.

This is fascinating, and anything you can add will be eagerly digested, it's a polystyrene novelty elephant, which is in two halves, apparently joined by a large ring and cavity thing which had me momentarily thinking it was a secret safe, hidden cavity type thing, before realising it's glued to its base (which also looks like the lid of something), even though there's no glue between the two halves which join tightly with no flash.

 

It could be the [sliding] lid of a vesta-case, cigarette case, or visiting/playing card case of some kind, maybe another version without the base does do service as a secret stash? Quite a good shade of 'ivorene', it's a charming, yet enigmatic little thing? 

Then, the other day, Adrian gave me a small tub of mostly die-cast vehicle accessories ad model kit figures, and these are the smaller ones with Lledo, Scalextric, Hornby and an unknown lead/whitemetal figure (O-Men?).

 

While these would appear to be the incomplete contents of both versions of the Airfix Old Bill/Omnibus kits, a Matchbox, a Dinky and a Britains Stage Coach lady passenger. I wasn't sure about the standing figure, but he's a heat-shrink which someone has painted-up anyway!

F is for Follow-up - Q is for Question Time - Sheep Joins Pig!

I'm sure the pig was a question time, but it might have been in a show report or contribution post and I forgot to Tag it unknown, however, I can't find it on the Blog now? I have shot it again below, but. sure of its existence on the Blog, I've concentrated on the addition, a sheep!

So this is the beast, it's very similar to the pig, in the crudity of it's sculpting and moulding, but still very naturalistic lines, 'Sculptural' is I think the term? A three part tool, with a large belly-block beneath two body halves the over the top split-line having been heavily fettled, the belly line less so, and the colouring the same yellowish-gray and charcoal/black, applied on the same neutral plastic.
 

The two together with a BMC figure for scale (they announced three new colourway pirate sets for later in the month, earlier today!), you can see scale in on the bigger side, and I wonder if they went with a tin-plate farm-truck or trailer, maybe even a railway wagon, but that's unlikely? Whatever, answers on a postcard if you have one . . . answer or postcard!

An hour or so later - I hadn't published it! This came from Adrian a couple of months ago, and I shot it, with Britains sizer, but never got round to the planned Question Time post, so, anyway, here it is, in better detail than the above, still looking for info on both though!

C is for Ceremonial Roundup!

I picked up and shot these first two the other day, and thought it was a good excuse to get a few of the 'odds & sods' images out of the Ceremonial folder and share them with the Loyal Readers, no particular theme, but I left the Spanish, the Cossacks, the Majorettes and others in the folder, so we're looking at UK production of UK figures, even if some came from Holland!

 

So these are the new additions, a second sample of the maybe BR Moulding/maybe Hilco kneeling infantryman of the Victorian era, I'm not sure if it was in the BR mould-list? And a Sacul drummer, the Sacul sample is growing slowly, a few others have come in, and I am looking forwards to shooting them all together!

This was sent by a loyal reader back in 2021, during a conversation about either Sacul, or unknown guardsmen, which I was thinking were from the Crescent sculpt, because of the epaulettes, but as pointed out it's the Sacul moulding.

 

And, further, the correspondent pointed out that the smaller drummer (second from the left) was probably also Sacul, issued as a drummer boy? The unknown is next and another probably Sacul forth, with the common Sacul varient on the left. And, if I recall the conversation correctly, the feeling was that all four were probably Scaul, with the [3rd] nylon'y one being maybe a late issue, early 1970's?

 

These were all sent to the Blog by Theo van der Werden from the Netherlands, back in 2018, again as part of a conversation on his - then - recent purchases, and because I'd covered most of them, I sort of filed them, with a bunch of other stuff, anyway here they are, three Britains 54mm and some nice examples of Cherilea 60mm types.

 

I really like the lifeguard (upper pair in middle image), he's a very unusual toy soldier, being that sort of late Georgian/early Victorian uniform.

 

We've seen better here in the past, but they came in with some mixed lot, or another, and the shot shows the three poses of Gemodels in the less common Horse Guard's blue colourway, which happens to be my favourite! Note also the two distinct shades of blue plastic.

Having mentioned BR, these are now known to have been issued as part of their home-moulding exercise, and here are three very different treatments of the same pose, with a hard 'styrene on the left, odd-coloured, unpainted polyethylene in the middle, and a marbled pinkish one on the right!

 

Finally, also a bit tatty and from some bulk lot, are these; four Herald and a Zang original (larger figure to the right) of the highland infantryman of the late Victorian era, just before the switch to khaki uniforms. The four on the left are not rare, and I may well repaint them one day, if I ever pick up that eye-glass prescription!

 

While (finally finally!) this is a 'seen elsewhere' shot from the archive (and from another folder, 2008) and shows what other bugger's can achieve with a bit of paint on these figures, four of the later Herald in a variety of late 19thC/colonial era uniforms, original on the right. It may have been on the Blog before?

 

There's lots of this kind of stuff in about 30 folders, and I'll try to get some more cleared in the run-up to Christmas, many thanks to Theo and Anon for the images indicated above.

A is for Antiques!

So, that show the other weekend, was possibly even more disappointing that I had feared, not only was it - as I suggested in my newsflash the day before - all  ". . . wooden games, barley-twist marbles, balding Teddy Bears and old dolls", there were in fact no marbles, few wooden games and really nothing beyond dolls and bears (and other soft toys), there were a few Gollies and Golly-related things, going under the evilBay police radar, but no tinplate, not even old carpet trains, not much dolls house stuff/furniture, just lots and lots of dolls and bears, which is fine if you're into that kind of thing, but a little disappointing, if you've come looking for other antique or 'properly' old toys other than those two genres?

 

However, the organiser's table (Daniel Agnew - ex-Christie's Auction House) did have a wider range, Adrian's table had everything but dolls and bears, and there were the odd tubs of interesting things, on some stalls . . . actually baskets, the antiquey-people use baskets! And I managed to find a few pieces of interest.

This was fascinating, obviously you find the same items in early Christmas crackers, but the five items are similar to those found, to this day, in Irish Halloween barmbrack cakes/puddings, which in the 'Brack are: a pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a small coin (originally a silver sixpence), a ring, and a bean, the ring in both cases signifying marriage in the forthcoming year!

 

But it's also interesting is showing how traditions can be lost in a generation as well as created, as while in my childhood, the sixpence (not even included here, but maybe you provided the sixpence and bought the other five?) survived, we didn't have the rest, and now, apart from a few families putting a pound-coin in their Crimbo-pud', most people put nothing in their puddings or cakes?

 

In a similar vein, I bought these, probably also from Christmas crackers, but possibly from an actual charm-bracelet, but of a budget or penny-/market-stall variety? Some plated on a base-metal, the other items in the group-shot are a fancy 'brier' pipe, and two pairs of opera-glasses.

 

Obviously, these were on Adrian's stall and I grabbed both, just to have something substantial to take away from the day! We've seen the Thomas/Poplar plastic jobbie before, while the die-cast piece in front is from Morestone, and although rather tatty, does seem to come with the original gift-bag, nearly always missing, or replaced with some shiny-new thing, and it ticks a box!

 

This is also silver-plated, but on brass, and maybe an apprenticed smith's exam-piece, or just a small 'objets d'art' to be put in the family curio-cabinet or something, they were simpler times!

 

'A Gentleman in Kharki' (older spelling intended), the iconic figure of a Boar war soldier, which I will wax fully on, in the near future, but for now suffice to say this was made by Britains, but was a stand-alone figure, I believe, and probably sold with charitable intent, at a rate over the ordinary unit-price.

B is for Boney Boustrapa Blownapart!

Oh, get over yourselves! As with the Martial Artists, this is a combination of an archive shot, actually seen elsewhere a while back, and a new purchase, and I'll start with the new purchase, as I had to look him up!

 

He was obviously French, however, I felt the base was a little thin for Starlux, and he's unmarked, but a quick Google search revealed his Toy Soldier Company commissioned reissue in a paler grey greatcoat, with braided cuff and different tricolour, so Starlux 8000 series, but original issue!

 

And he will join these guys who have all come in over the last few years, and one or two which I had already found, and just to confuse, I've already posted a better image with two additional nappy's, Blue Box and Kresge, so  this is more of a Picasa-clearer , than a box-ticker!

K is for Karate - Kung-Fu!

T is for Two Pairs! An oddity in the annals of toy solder collecting, or toy figure production first. One can see the thinking behind it, and had it succeeded we may have seen a pair of Boxers, Wrestlers, Fencers, maybe even Ninjas, but it didn't succeed and no further sets jointed this rump-line of the Deetail range.

 

The Karate Kung-Fu pairing from Britains, sort of a good idea, but not all good ideas are practical or desirable, and this has no play value beyond an ornament. And you do tend to find them in this condition, near mint, I've even seen near complete shop-display boxes of them over the years, so many were left unsold first time round. Now, of course, it's a gap-filler/collection completer!
 

I've shot this pair too, Kinder's martial-arts chaps, they can, at least, be posed and played with as two separate individuals, to tell 'stories', or whatever, and are pop-together polyethylene against the PVC of the Britains figures. Kinder, of course, did do Boxers and Fencers, while there are quite a few Wrestlers around now, and plenty of Ninjas have been produced!