D is for Donation - Peter - Odds and Sods

Isn't it typical? Last week I probably lost a few pounds working a six-day'er in that heat, with gardening at both ends, tonight I got rained on! Anybody would think the weather's trying to get rid of us . . . oh! Still, before we slip of this planet, there's still a lot to do, and this is the penultimate post of Peter Evans and Chris Smith's recent donations to the Blog, being all the stuff which didn't get put in the previous posts, and haven't been sent to RTM!

 

An assortment of novelty bits, parts, and what I suspect are the rubber caps from a clothes-horse or drainer? The pea-shooter brings back memories, and you can see from the damage where it was bent against the missing mouthpiece, the downfall of many such weapons!

 

Kinder horse, farm trailer, barbed wire and other scenics, this stuff all has a place, they all have a tub or box where they are sorted by type, annotated when ID'd or otherwise wait for more info' to turn-up, often in eBay lots or old catalogue shots, Argos and Index are useful, but so are the earlier home-shopping ones from Freemans, Grattan, Littlewooods and the like.

 

'Made in Hong Kong'

 

'Hong Kong'

 

'Blue Box'

 

'Superior'

(T. Cohn) 

 

I don't really want to be accruing this stuff, as I have no interest in doll's house accessories, except - of course - that they are part of the history of early plastic toys, and the companies behind them, and I was well aware that one or two members of the Higher Council of the Old Guard had a few shoe-boxes of this stuff, purely for research purposes, and now it seems I am fated to have some too! A car-boot job lot, if nothing else, it's a clear sample of the Superior mark, and Blue Box colours!

 

All polyethylene soft plastic, except the Blue Box items which are in the brittle polystyrene.

 

Various items of Britains Garden, and the original lead stuff, not the plastic, of which I also have quite a sample, more by accident than design, but it was almost the Lego of its day, fiddly, construction toy with endless configurations, and I think I'm right in saying it was a wider range than the later plastic set?

 

A lovely sheep with lamb, and a home-cast or penny-toy battleship, which has seen better days, but if it's the only sample, it's very welcome!

 

A cake-decoration Robin, needing foot surgery, but fascinating in painted plaster and lead, and more dolls house accessories, but with the sort of age which makes them ornamental, or decorative 'white elephant' bric-a-brac, rather than tacky-placky!

 

The two jugs (or jug and vase) are lovely, they are bisque, and probably German, although they could be Japanese, but very fine work, compared to the white glazed earthenware of British doll's china of the time (which you often find while gardening in older locations), while the smoothing-iron's stand seems to be die-cast?

 

This is fun, and an amazing survivor, from the 1950's or 60's? It actually works as a bell, is clearly a tree-decoration, but is also figural, with a Santa Claus handle, If I wasn't giving these things a home, they'd be lost!

 

We would have never been allowed something like this, our parents had a dim-view of plastic, and all things Hong Kong, and it's a bit kitch, but sixty-years later, it's pretty extraordinary!

 

These really should have been in the TV/Movie post, except the guardsman belongs in the Ceremonial and Historical post, so they ended-up here, they are all Phidal, and I can only assume the Guardsman is from some London/London Sights-related book?

 

This is also amazing, and I don't know if it's Hong Kong, something French, or even more local, it's marked on the sidecar R C I, of which I can find nothing, and in conversation with Peter when he showed it to me I said "I can shoot it in a comparison with the Airfix and the other one", but I can't remember who the 'other one' was by (Fairylite? Co-Ma?), and I was thinking of the ice-cream carts, while this is actually a motorcycle and sidecar, so I was talking nonsense!

 

Mostly Airfix, but mixed so they ended-up here, the yellow chap at the back is from a board game called Fortress America, which I haven't covered yet, despite having them in the stash, from MB Games, and a cross between Risk, Shogun and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (which all play for zones or chunks of territory), it has recently been reissued in an updated form, from Ink Voltage.

 

Cones! There is a whole tub of them waiting a proper sort and ID session!