F is for Fort Mavrick, without the E!

Heay! For years, they thought I was 'only' dyslexic! We had a group-project at Uni', where we had to renovate/rebuild/replace (the choice was rather ours, but front and back walls had to line up) a crescent, down near Elephant & Castle, and after weeks of individual project work, Design crit's, building crit's, more crit's and so on, we were required to place them altogether for the end-of-year exhibition, to which parents and the like were invited, which left us having to fill the empty corner with something, we whacked in a roundabout I think, and some formal beds, but I thought the kids who might live in our eclectic collection of . . . . dewllings (?) might like a play area, so this was born, literally overnight, as it wasn't part of the marking process!

The base was just a sheet of sandpaper! The whole thing got a bit warped in storage over the years, and realising I'll never be an architect now, it went on the fire back in 2016! I had no use for it, everything dies in the end, and at a scale of 1:50 it could really only be used by Space Marines, and they are too busy with Morlocks and Slitheens and suchlike, to find the time to relax on my wobbly rope & log bridge!

 

The two end pieces however, taken from old Hi-Fi equipment I think, or a TV set, are that compressed, die-cut hardboard I mentioned in the previous post. The one having bundles of wire directed through the holes, the other separating wires on the prongs . . . it must have been a TV!

 

There's a PC element to the construction, with no gates, easy access and the lookout accessible from the fort, but outside of it, although the leftie elements are balance by the fact that they could hurt themselves easy-enough, but - I like to think - in a non-terminal, character-building sort of way!

P is for Police Department

Just a quickie tonight, it's a Hasbro dime store type, which is unusual in itself, but more so for having a folding roof, with no apparent purpose, by which I mean the internal compartment won't accept figures, there are no holes for torsos, and it may have had a small bag of candies, but it would have been very small?

What do you make of it? I took too many shots of the underside, and not enough of the top, but it's in storage now, I think? The hinged roof only invites damage? Marked POLICE DEPT., lengthways on the bonnet (hood), readable one way only, and HASBRO 1 MADE IN USA on the underside, it's a lovely shade of ultramarine!

Q is for Question Time - Unknown Plastic Truck

 Can anyone help ID this to a maker;

It's unmarked, about 1:50 or 1:64th, and I'm hoping someone may know it local to their territory - US, Canada, Australia . . . to work out who may have carried it or imported it here, or indeed, where it came from?

O is for Old Fashioned Cars

I finally tricked myself into getting six posts off Picasa, I can't tell you how long these have been ready for publishing, but while needing Blurb, the images have been edited and/collaged for about four+ years!

I announced they were due on a post on Moonbase Central about three years ago, since when they've done them again, twice, I think (I'll try to find the links) and Ed Berg has posted some too. While the article folders have been on the desktop 'ready to go' several times and quietly put back in 'My Pictures'!

But under the most tenuous of links with the previous post, we're kicking off with these Huilor premiums. Huilor is a manufacturer/seller of cooking oil, and issued various premiums back in the day. These were made for them by Cle, Del and Injectaplastic, with one or two still debatable, but the similarity between the vehicles, suggests co-operation of some kind between the three makers/lines, who are all, also, connected to other 'novelty' stuff.

Fully marked on the undersides of the chassis (another connection between them all), and with me not knowing much else, further blurb would be superfluous, and strained, so I've just annotated the images with the base markings . . .

 

Early racing car

 

Paris-Vienna Rally car

 

This is the only Injectaplastic in my sample.

That tenuous link!

 

People will say they are copies of this, that or the other die-cast (Brum, Rio or Matchbox 'Yesteryears') but the fact is these were very popular when I was a kid, along with pictures, posters, printed tiles, crockery & mugs, matchbox/matchbook labels, place-mats, beer-mats and coasters, 3D wall plaques, pipe-rack, ash-try or pen & ink stand ornaments and etc . . . and they were all of real vehicles, so some similarity is always going to ensue!

Not there wasn't a lot of copying, we'll see some in the subsequent posts! I'm not sure if they came assembled or as kits? Another connection all these have is being polystyrene rather than the Polyethylene of some others, or the die-casts just mentioned (which we won't be looking at). And the French for 'Old Fashioned Cars' is Vieux Tacots (old clunkers) . . . Bonux next!

Highlander is for US Rack Toys

Seen before here, but I had them out to shoot other stuff in the same tub the other day and as it's a while since we saw the set I took the opportunity to try and shoot some decent close-ups of the figures without de-carding them.

All the info is on the 'Highlander' tag, or the Highlander page in the A-Z, so just a reminder.

The 'gun crew' consist of a loader with shell, a radio-operator and a gun-commander, all kneeling, all unique poses, all approximately 35mm

The set also includes an observer/spotter who can go with the gun, or help the .50Cal machinegun crew do their work. All have got green berets so; Rack Toy Rambo x6! Or should one be John Wane? Nice to see two African Americans in a set of six US figures.

T is for Two - Antique Armoured Cars

Well, they're both older than me and I've been feeling like a bit of an antique myself, after a couple of weeks in the garden! These couldn't be further apart, one a clockwork tin-plate toy from Germany, the other a lump of vulcanised-rubber (now stone-like), probably from the US, yet they are also remarkably similar, in both being a yellow-olive, and representing inter-war period, small-run armoured cars, but of generic lines, and both probably actually manufactured in the 1950's.

Marklin, Bing, Karl Bub? Your guess is as good as mine (unless you know for certain!), compatible with the smaller 40mm composition that both Elastolin and Lineol made a few of, it still works, but the key is long gone, although the Mecanno keys fit I think? And while it needs a new flint, it looks like a Zippo flint will fit, so maybe one day I'll do a video of it rushing-about; spitting flame!

It manages to look quite American in its lines, presumably as they would have been the bigger customer; I imagine it escorting gold to Fort Knox for Wells Fargo! I'm guessing it's from the 1950's but may be from inter-war period tooling?

This has more the look of a locally-produced 'revolutionaries' vehicle, of which the 1920's and 1930's were littered, world-wide. Take a prestige car (with a big engine = heavy chassis), or commercial truck and cover it with steel plates down the local blacksmith's or bus depot's workshops; every town and most villages had one or the other - if not both!

I don't think it's Sun Rubber or Auburn? My book on them is hidden at the moment, not in the attic or the garage, but a couple of feet away . . . behind more books, a pile of Sammelerkatalog and a teetering heap of crazy-clowns who didn't combine as neatly as I had hoped they would and are now waiting a new, larger container! I'll tag it to both but try to remember to come back and correct it if I ever find out.

Markings on the tin-plate car consist of the DRGM registration mark and a 'Foreign' mark (which appears to have been sniped through the 'o'!). DRGM stands for Deutsches Reich Gebrauchs Muster and indicates that a unique feature has been registered with the relevant authority. It has no connection to the Nazi era (beyond overlapping) as Reich is an older term for State. The Foreign was an indicator of an import - I think to BOTH - the US or UK.

Side by side they make quite a team! I think the German tin one is a bit too tatty for serious tin-plate collectors, who like their stuff rust-free, mine's seen quite a bit of action in a damp climate . . . Indochina? The counties which . . . err . . . aren't in Ulster any more (lucky them!)?

Likewise, the rubber one is a bit dry and cracked and the tyres look flat at certain angles, but it's just that they are a bit small, and slightly perished, which has led to the shrinkage and radial cracks.

T is for Two - PVC Jeeps

Looking briefly at two vinyl-rubber jeeps, I photographed quite a bit over the weekend but also went down with a head-cold, nothing debilitating, but it left me a bit 'whatever' when it came to any serious editing, so I pottered about and shot some stuff!

It's odd, but PVC doesn't like long-term storage, these weren't 'mint' when they went in, but they didn't look like this - left hand shot! One has a black mould, the other a sandy deposit (remember the fury, grey Roman). Clearly as well as phthalates and free-radicals, PVC's exude something nutritious to various micro-fungi?

In the backgrownd is a Tomte Laerdal Toys model No. 2, the Willy's Jeep, with an Auburn Rubber 1950's Jeep M38A1 in front, but the later 'PVC vinyl-rubber' (synthetic rubber) not the earlier vulcanised rubber (real rubber) before and after a quick scrub-up!

The fact that it's the PVC means it's still quite supple, the old Vulcanised toys are hardening now and breaking-up, but they were different toys and I don't think there was a Jeep, one of the makers (Sun Rubber?) did a lovely half-track! Tomte also experimented with hard rubber to begin with before settling on PVC.

Both crewed with rear-area troops wearing side-caps who can be put in any army with a bit of paint! The Tomte look a bit air-force to me? Auburn's looks like an off-duty Marine (yaay!) or MP . . . boo!

The Auburn appears in the same slight shade-variations of green as the figures, but the Tomte comes in various bright colours of which this blue is possibly the best . . . if you run with the air-force line! Yellow, orange, scarlet, neon-green and [occasionally] white are also found

The M51 is around 1:35th scale, while the Tomte Laerdal Jeep is closer to 1:48/50th scale and the two share pretty similar design parameters, the Auburn losing on the position/moulding of the undercut (or lack of it!) for the steering-wheel, the Willy's having a silly windscreen.

Tomte means gnome in Norwegian, and Tomte Laerdal therefore translates as 'little Laerdal', the larger parent being big in pharmaceutical accessories of all kings, probably best know over here for  Resusci-Annie, the mouthwash kisser!

While there is (or was; I suspect it's died-down a bit, like Kinder prize prices!) a bit of a 'thing' about Tomte in wider collecting circles, there are in fact two or three other issuers of similar ranges of the smaller PVC vehicles in both Scandinavia and Germany ('West' at the time), and while I don't know of another Jeep, I think I have tracked-down 3 of four Land Rover's which we will look at here one day!

Also - as you can see - they survive a lot of punishment and aren't seen as being as rare as they may have been thought to have been when the 'thing' was at its height a decade or so ago. The one big problem with Tomte and the other brands are the clear vinyl windscreens which can harden and break-off with age/handling, got ripped-off - when still soft - by little-hands, or are to be found chewed!

I almost forgot these; they can go here! Brian Berke sent them to the blog some time last year - everything sent by anyone will get used in the end. They are both Tomte; No's 15 - Truck (which I've seen described as a Dodge or Commer?) and 16 - the Ford Thunderbird convertible - hey? Only the best for the streets of New York!

Co-indecently the truck is the best other Tomte Laerdal vehicle for military-use alongside the Jeep while the T-Bird is another with figures and a windscreen, between all the ranges there are quite a few 'soft-tops' and Brian's right-hand shot reveals another aspect of Tomte, the finish is poorer than some of the 'Germany/W. Germany' models.

Cheers Brian - T is for Two + Two!

M is for More on Rafael's Polymer Vehicles

These are in the opposite order to how I shot them as I'd photographed the tank -  as a quick follow-up to May's red tank - when I saw the transporter and bulldozer at a show-and-tell over Christmas, both have Adrian Little to thank for, Adrian's behind Mercator Trading, and has - as his adverts' state - very interesting toys!

'Made in France' . . . not! Lovely artwork and who remembers when roads were often made of concrete rather than bitumen? This is an export boxing of Rafael Lipkin's 'Mighty Antar' heavy haulage transporter in civilian colours with their bulldozer as a load rather than the usual conqueror tank.

Civilianised with the simple expedient of different coloured plastic, it's all in yellow and red, however there is a more colourful one (un-boxed and sans load) to be seen in Andrew Ralstone's plastics' book I seem to recall, and I think he has it listed as 'unknown French'?

Unlike the military pairing (link), where the tank is polystyrene to the transporter's polyethylene, here both vehicles are all-ethylene, with rubber tracks, although there is variance with the carriers wheels. They are from different production batches though, with the road-vehicle in a washier primrose-yellow, the earth-mover a more 'solid' shade.

As stated above, the wheels here are different to those on my example; being thinner, hard styrene (or a Bakelite material; it's not clear and I only handled it briefly). Otherwise this is identical to mine and carries the full Rafael Lipkin mark on the underside of the cab. The Bulldozer (like the tank) is unmarked.

The 'little man' is hidden by the axle, and photographing yellow can be as problematic as red, so I've had to stop this image down to the max, twice to get the MADE IN ENGLAND mark and LRL-logotype to show. I wonder if the hard-plastic wheels were produced across the channel to justify the 'Made in France' being printed on the box?

The winding handle (yellow) has broken, and the red thing is the exhaust-stack for the 'dozer, but of more interest in that the tool set is in two colours, the blue being possibly the colour of the vehicle in Ralston's book? The construction beast has a plug-in driver who may well be languishing in your 'unknown' zone?

I didn't think to see if they are two parts (driver and seat) but there look to be impossible undercuts for even a three or four-part mould, so it looks like they might have been heat-joined post manufacture?

I had previously shot this to show that the red tank (in need of wheels) I obtained at May's show (link) is covered on the box-art of the green tank, whether this meant there were sets with red transporter/AFV combo's or not I don't know, but a 'dirty-commie' combination is not beyond the imagination in the 1950/60's?

Note also that the labelling of the profile drawing is similar to the labelling of the 'French' box's artwork; they too, seem to have come from the same (British) printer!

The box carried a green one, and you can tell which one is in the box from the hole seen in the previous shot, which is punched through both side flaps and the closing-flap, to line-up and produce an open-window . . . or 'port-hole'!

T is for Two (Which Became Three!) - Space Transports

Also in the Really Useful Box (previous post) was this pair, and again I haven't the faintest idea where either of them came from, but they are a couple of crackers, one an ephemeral piece of tat never designed to survive more than a summer's day or two in the garden, the other a classic piece of US 'dime-store' plastic in a weird red colour which changes - depending on the light - from purple, to pink, to maroon and back again!

I'm guessing from the large'ish, clip-on canopy that this was a candy-container, or more-likely - from the size of the compartment - a single-pastille bubble-gum container? Scaled to a rough 20/25mm figure wise and manufactured in the style of earlier dime-store toys from Pyro, Kleeware and their ilk, it's a space-ship/vessel of sorts and shot in brittle styrene with additional metal axles / ethylene wheels.

The little glued-on, stand-off frame that holds the wheels clear of the body looks to be a generic moulding that would also fit a tank, armoured-car or civil vehicle, so there may have been a assortment of these?

Is it browny-red or heliotrope purple? This is really nice but I have no recollection of buying it, maybe at one the NEC Birmingham/BP-shows? Definitely a 'space-age' or concept car of the 1950's and similar to other space cars including the Kilgore one we saw again the other day.

I don't know if it was issued under the Wannatoys branding, but this seems to be a Dillon Beck original, marked Dillon Beck USA on the interior and having a DB number-plate, or more accurately 'licence-plate'! There used to be a lovely azure-blue 'Futurecar' somewhere on the Internet, but I can't find it now, also with the DB 'quality' (if you believe Nabisco!) triangle and the same red canopy, it was a bit smarter than mine and had no whitening glue-marks!

I nearly forgot this was sitting in Picasa . . . so T is for Three! This one is a Wannatoys branded one and we've seen it before in two colours, but I shot this on Adrian's stall ages ago and it's been waiting for a dime-store space post!

Sizer; the car is closer to 28mm/1:48th I fear, but the ship can be a single-seat 1:72nd, or snug, two-man 1:76th! In a galaxy far, far away, long, long ago, they had A-wings, B-wings and X-wings . . . among other wing types, I think this latest addition to my space-fleet must be a sandbag-wing!