Well, so much has happened in the last few weeks, none of it of that much importance, except the meltdown of the United States of America, which is proving as morbidly entertaining as a crash video where real people are being vaporised by large trucks. But suffice to say, plans went south, and things got left on the shelf, and I won't be going for any posting-records this year!
But, there is a lot to post when I get the time, and I've had a lot of Dinosaur stuff come in recently, which I tried to clear over Christmas, but didn't really more than take the edge off, and have since added to, as have others, so I'm going to try and have a bit of a push to alternate between Chris Smith's Christmas donation of interesting, weird or quirky stuff to the blog, and dino-posts, for the next few days at least. Then a similar bunch of Peter Evans posts is in the pipeline, possibly interspersed with Toy Fair stuff?
One of the contenders for best thing in the parcel was this novelty, spring-loaded, perambulating dice-shaker, with a green-baize dice table in a UFO canopy, on jumpy feet! I mean, it's too cool for clown school! Less commonly, 'made in Taiwan'.
There's a rubber sucker, which may have produced a delayed action, or just be a buffer against rough use? Anyway it works with a flick of the finger, and if I have the time, in the future, I may try glueing the hairline crack in the foot, and resurfacing the sucker with cycle tyre-repair solution and see if it works as a delay/jumper toy.
A few wooden items were in the parcel, older and newer animals, a farmer/villager from the 'red cottage' sets and what I suspect is a figure from a miniature tenpin bowling set, but could be from a wooden Noughts & Crosses (tic-tac-toe?) or solitaire set? A sort of guardsman, that's the storage zone he'll end-up in!
This was nice, I knew of its existence, but still don't know which/what game's it comes from, but it will be a board game, and it will be Triang, Omnia or even Waddington's, designed by Dave Pomeroy, the reason I knew it existed was because . . .
. . . I'd come into possession of the original modelling-clay master, from the remnants of the Pomeroy estate. This is actually the picture sent by the seller, but I did pick it up with a bunch of other stuff a few weeks later. The figure's simplified/graphical arm bears something in common with other game playing pieces, including the godfather figures from Parker's Vendetta, and while the significance of that fact is lost on me, there must be a reason?
These were both interesting enough for Chris to recognise and save from the bin, the pirate lady is from the rack-toy sets we saw under the Webb's Supertoy label, but she's shrunk slightly after leaving the tool-cavity, too hot, and is now leaning to one side . . . after the pirates gave her a cut of Dutch courage before walking the plank, hic!
The other is a very rare Airfix short-shot, where the polymer hasn't reached all the extremities, the opposite problem, resin (or cavity) too cold! Given how tight the Quality Control was at Airfix, a rare bird indeed, who now looks like some stocking-headed Dr. Who villain army-man!
A couple of conversions which Chris passed to the parcel box, the amusing thing here was the glittery headdress on the Indian, made from a Tunnock's tea-cake wrapper!
The post office took their rent with these, the missing bits of the Rocco lifeguard had gone, possibly out of a very small hole in the corner of the box, the horse is most of a nice Elastolin 40mm, but may yet prove a useful donor of legs to another, so in the damaged tub he goes, while the larger Indian is from the same set as the two we saw in a PW show report (FFL and another) I think? Where the other arm is a plug-in and the leg inners transcribe a smooth curve?
Odds & Sods; the motorcyclist will be from a board game, and while he's missing his head, I have quite a few of these mostly in ones and twos, and he will join them in - hopefully - being a new colourway, they are usually tending to sets of four or six, like their cyclist and racing car brethren.
Likewise, the yacht is probably from a similar board game, but rather well-painted it could have some age, late Victorian even, certainly early Edwardian? The dolls' food, while not something I actively seek out, is all fascinating stuff, and they do have their own zones, the two to the left are hard polystyrene, and while not marked could be early Hong Kong production, while the fish-platter looks to be early British, maybe Charbens or Cherilea, or someone smaller like the Taylor's or Barratt's, or even someone like Trojan, Kentoy or maybe early Gem?
The coke bottle will be from crates in a 'big box' delivery truck I suspect, while the metal frying-pan might be older than the cold-setting, modelling-dough 'full English' now being prepared in it?
The metal handful included some useful bits, the three smaller painted figures in the rear row are all from small carts or wagons, and thankfully people like Robert Newson have done all the work on them, so one day I'll sit down and have a session ID'ing them all, as I have dozens somewhere! Looks like two dairymen and a generic cheapie wagoner.
The Indian is from any one of many versions of the Schneider home-casting moulds, and the large cockerel might be French, or a copy of the Cherilea one? A homemade pirate of the Matchbox (or Lledo? I can never remember which lot faces which way!) fireman, from the old die-cast, horse-drawn appliance, the two seated figures look familiar and the pair of wargames chaps seem to be sort of Sci-Fi wild-west or Special Forces types?
A broken Skybirds German and some 5mm wargaming figures leaves a broken chauffeur, but he's very interesting as he may be the Timpo lead one which replaced Zang's composition one, although Kay's did similar figures, so for now he goes in the stash as an only/first sample/example.
The regular 'assorted, seated civilians' shot! Of interest this time is the third fireman from the left on the top row, who isn't from the Airfix kit, but one of several others, mostly American brands, and I won't embarrass myself by stating which one I think it might be, I've only seen them in passing. in the catalogue pile - AMT, Monogram, Pyro, Revell, someone like that, I think even Tamiya did a fire engine in the early days!
The near-naked green guy is also new to me, and I think he may be a waterskier, possibly from a cheap beach-toy, copying something more substantial, or a kit? And the guys I used to think were Napoleonic wagon-drivers (bottom, yellow) are probably also firefighters from cheap polyethylene vehicles, there is a sub-scale copy too, somewhere.
The last shot is the 'cereal premium' shot, even though they're not all cereal giveaways! The fascinating one is the blue baking-soda diver, as he's like the Shreddies 'Freddie Frogman' or the later two Nabisco ones, but they were all masked skin-divers, this chap is in trunks, and suggests a third set/issue?
Another early-learning Mad March Hare, and behind him, some kind of sci-fi mini, possibly a Ben 10 item, I thought I'd posted the watch-figures, but I can't find them, there were small wristwatch type 'bracelets' with clips or compartments which held about six/eight small-scale (20mm'ish) figures, two different assortments, some similar to this yellow-green one, but they had different bases?
The coach bits and penny-farthing rider will go in a large tub of similar R&L type parts, and every now and again I go through it seeing if enough wheels, tyres, or axles (mostly the very tiny pin-axles!) have been found to complete another one! HK copy of Dinky road worker in an unusual butterscotch plastic, and things we’ve seen before in the top right-hand corner, but all grist to the mill, or colour variations, or whatever!
As always, many, many thanks to Chris for putting this stuff to one side all through the year, and occasionally sending me a cornucopia of stuff to share with you, as I said to him in an eMail the other day, I would eventually, probably, hopefully find all this myself, I love a mixed bag of shite, but it would need three lifetimes, but because people like Chris (and the others) save this stuff for the Blog, we may get to the finish in one lifetime . . . we hope!
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