C is for Comedy of Errors!

About eighteen years ago, Andreas Dittman said he'd dropped some stuff off with a mutual-friend, and subsequently a small bag of bits turned-up at the flat in Berkshire, which, while interesting, didn't seem to fulfil the promise held by the description, as given by Andreas!

 

Anyway, you've probably guessed the rest . . . they turned-up the other day, when the third party was having a sort-out! So, with thanks to Andreas for all sorts over the years - both before I had the Blog, and in the early years of the Blog, I didn't post everything as it came in, like I do now, so a lot got sorted into the collection without credit - let's have a look at this little lot!

 

Both sides of a nice coach, probably from a transport set, I like the busy legs of the horses! I didn't record any of the brands as I took these, and they were sorted away, awhile ago now, but Cleverstoltz, Heudebert and Wagner were featured among them, I think, with quite a few unmarked generics.

 

Might be Manurba, but issued by several brands, Peter Konrad's books can help there!

 

Snowballer and snowscene, probably the same set?

 

Buildings, not sure the stage, front-right, goes with them, it looks like the kind of platform Americans might use to try or lynch slaves or cattle rustlers?

 

 

 

There are only a few of the very early Wiking vehicles which had a figure/driver, I have the jeep and a sport-car, Mercedes, of course, but finding I've had the other two for years without knowing it, was a treat! Of interest also, given the 99% 'styrene of Wiking's production, is that the forks of the fork-lift are a flexible polyethylene moulding?

 

Two more of the dancers, we've seen before, and indeed looked at several versions of!

 

Interestingly, the 'plane may be a British export, or a mould swap/borrow, with someone like Tudor Rose or Kleeware, as we shall see in a future post, where a Made In England set carries the same aircraft.

 

The train will join all the others, away from the flats, 'Euro-premiums' often involved transport, and trains were common, but they are all slightly different, especially in their means/method of coupling, and they all have separate bags to be added to, piecemeal, with items like this!

 

There appears to be a lot of wooing going on here, with a possible proposal on the left, an invitation to dance, the 'young people' doing a duet in the salon, and a basket of fruit being offered! I am reminded of the interminable first chapter of War And Peace (which I have never got past), and the never ending (because I give-up reading, before it ends) ballroom scene, where just about everybody comes across as insufferably arrogant, eager to die for an idiot flag, or just a bit bloody stupid!

 

Three colourways of the same beer/bier premium, possibly hung round the necks of the bottles on a little string-cord? One of the most depressing threads on the old HäT forum, was a thread on beer, and how all the brands I'd enjoyed 20-years earlier had gone! Pfauen-bräu, which you could only get in a few dozen bars in the streets, or surrounding villages of Tuttlingen! Henninger Bräu was out of Frankfurt.

 

Colour is not common with premium or margarine flats, and while coloured plastic does show-up from time to time, paint is even rarer, so these with their one, two or even three-colour spray-painting are a real treat, they are also particularly fine sculpts.

 

A few odds and damaged examples for the spares/TBS tub, it looks like the two gnomes (who clip into the larger moulding, bottom/near-right) are designed to be clipped to a baby's pram, pushchair or safety-pen metalwork/tubes? Although it's a bit fuzzy, I think the Elephant is market Mamot Berlin, a bar or club perhaps?

 

Many thanks to Andreas, better late than never!