J is for Just a Quick One! F is for Follow-up, T is for Two . . .

. . . Three . . . Four? We looked at this oddity here ages ago, can't remember when now, but I know I've highlighted the weirdness of a Pz.Kfw. II 'Luchs' (lynx) light-tank chassis on a M4 Sherman medium tank, however I was convinced mine had a broken driver (Matchbox Battle Kings piracy), so when I saw one in a charity shop days (or hours?) before the latest Lockdown . . .

. . . top left, I bought it. I got home to find a parcel from Chris Smith, which had another (top right), and they were different, so I dug-out the third (bottom-middle, to find the driver was fine!), and found more differences, not great, but they are there.

Chris's on the left here has the Hong Kong in a sort of 'postmark' cartouche, the Charity shop purchase has added carpet-wheels, while the old one is a hybrid of the two, sans wheels but with the same mark as the wheeled one.

Like I say, not great differences, but they confirm the evolutionary nature of such things, as we looked at previously with the pencil sharpener/tourist figurines. I have no idea which order they go in, so it's only for curiosity's sake . . . and 'completism'!

The current iteration of these common-enough tourist trinket/gift shop/museum novelty pencil sharpeners, as far as armour goes, is an M1 Abrams I believe, but there was also an M60 with an ERA (Explosive Reactive Armour) suite, and I've picked-up one of those at some point. Its running-gear is not much better to be honest, having more in common with those cheap Pioneer knock-offs of Matchbox 1-76 type die-casts.

The two together, they're 'box-scale', but might suit 1:100th scale war-gaming? I won't bother with branding on these; there are maybe 20+ boxings around the world, most of the main importers/jobbers and some odder firms more normally associated with dolls house accessories, games and such-like have also had a go, although Play Me in Spain (tag'able) may have been originator on some?

While the superstructures on my three are the same, when we get on to the canons (yeah . . . one day!), we'll see that there are different versions as well as variations within one version, with two or three different Mortars, Naval Guns, Catapults, Trebuchets or Battlement canons, so it's quite complicated!

Thanks to Chris for my third [different] M4 Sherman pencil sharpener!

Dr. is for Steve Hunter

Continuing the themes da jour - Dino-shelfies; we've seen these before, and it's more from TK Maxx from the other day, still from Geoworld, and still dinosaurs, may even have shelfied the same animals last time (quickly checks the dongle - no, it was some unpronounceable raptor-like thing!), but a reminder never hurt!

Putting my critics hat on I'd say the decoration is lazy on these otherwise quite nice sculpts, the bright colours on both being almost last-minute stab (or spray)-and-hope additions, particularly on the Dilong - stupid name = stupid colours!

These two are much better and the kerthunkersaur 'Polacanthus' is a rather fine variant of the family . . . in fact they are both all less common species than you normally get which is in their favour and helps forgive the red-blobs on the first pair!

That's it, Geoworld, Dr. Steve Hunter dino-shelfies, TK Maxx now!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Toyway - General

There wasn't much of any substance on the Toyway stand, but there was enough for three posts, so that's today's endeavour and we'll start with the bits and bobs and then look at a couple of things they are distributing for other people within the UK.

Divorced from Minicraft (who may have gone the way of all flesh?), Academy are still out there somewhere (Korea?) and producing the eclectic range of kits they were always partly known for, and it doesn't come more eclectic than a range of box-scale kits of Leonardo (he's not a real turtle Mr. President!) da Vinci's 'inventions'.

I use inverted-commas as some of these were only ever drawings, and where models exist, they tend to be either incomplete or disproving of the theory behind the original idea. That armoured car must be in someone's preferred scale . . . 54mm?

While half-out of shot you can see AFV and aircraft kits, a steam-pumping engine (I think?) and tools - under another brand - off to the right.

A rival range of die-cast aircraft in 1:72 scale from Aviation 72 are designed to give Corgi a run for their money. The Gazelle was always a favourite of mine; only went in one once, but you could (still can occasionally) tell them from kilometers away due to their high-pitched turbine whiney-whistling-wooshing! Sea Hawk above.

Tucano huh? One minute you're blowing them away, next minute you've got so many you may as well start using them. Don't cry for us Argentina 'cos we've got all your T1's! I know it's not that simple, but it's still funny! Folland Ger'nat for a Ger'nome!

De Havilland Tiger Moth, my father actually had one, although it was sold a while ago and spent most of the last forty-odd years in a yellow and blue stripy-number, but it looked like this when it was sold-off by the MOD in my childhood, I sat in it a few times, but never flew in it . . . sniff!

But these! These are branded to Toyway themselves and must be about 1:8th or 1:9th? They're Chopper's, Raleigh Chopper's; I would have stolen one if they weren't in a sealed Plexiglas case (they knew I was coming!), just too cool for the swing-park!

If you remember trying to change gear, finding you couldn't shift the 'shift-stick' looking down and then crashing into something you know what I'm talking about! Go [over the handlebars] Chopper!

TXA is for Madeupname Prehisterror!

Shelled out the princely sum of three quid in Poundland the other day; we buy this shite so you can too - they're really rather good and at two for a pound, worth a punt if you collect dinosaurs.

There are three pairs in what would appear to be an initial tranche (note the 'Series 01' in the bottom right-hand corner of the pack) from 'Total Extreme Action', certainly a phantom-brand; sharing a postcode with many other Poundland-exclusive 'brands'!

A medium small size of toy dinosaur and well decorated in at least four colours, some five, and - like pretty much all sets of dinosaurs - box-scale rather than a constant scale. The animals are moulded in a reasonably dense PVC-alike material.

There is no 'naming of the parts' so you have to guess the species, from top left to bottom right we seem to have a large raptor, tyrannosaur, generic kerthunkersaurus, dipp'y or bront', triceratops and spinosaur. And you can see the rule here is mouth open = five colours; mouth closed = four colours!

In-scale group-shot; these are nice models and four the money, you can't go wrong, although prehistoric-purists may want to tone-down the triceratops; that green makes him look more like an iced birthday-cake!

4D is for Tank Killer

I had an odd experience this week (just gone), on Monday there was a tray of eight different 'generic' clip-together aircraft models for a pound-each in the Blue Cross animal-charity shop, I bought one for the record - as it were - and thought little more about them, beyond the forming of an idea for the article you're reading, until the Wednesday - when the odd bit occurred.

This is the whole set, there was one of each in the tray, and they appeared to be new production (rather than a 'member of the public' donation), at a pound each it was worth a punt on one of them and I chose the AH-64 Apache.

Eight little boxes; each containing a bag of bits and a rudimentary instruction sheet. They seem to be about 1:100 (or box-scale?) and branded - as imports - on the blank panel to Candy Toys, who keep popping-up these days.

The bag of bits contains two small runners, one a frame-runner with transparent pieces and the other a branch-runner with the rotor blades, there's also a two-part stand and a handful of helicopter body-parts; both de-'sprued'.

More interesting is the fact that the bag is marked-up for 4D, but I suspect not the same 4D Master who was responsible for the PVC-type tank available from The Works a few years ago, the recent Kangaroo and other stuff seen around.

The packaging also usefully tells us what the model is made of; ABS (Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene); probably the rotors, and GPPS (General-purpose polystyrene) also known by the trade name Akurate; the green parts and transparencies.

They (4D) have been seen on various (antipodeans'?) Blogs issuing simplified, but useful AFV's in similar hard-plastic materials. Note: they are using the bags from Oker, also seen here at Small Scale World in relation to other brands/makers toy packaging!

It's a reasonable model, although a bit small, construction being similar to 4D Master (who they may be a part of, it's only a suspicion they're more clone'ish) and an excellent budget source of air-power for some of the modern 'corporate' gaming systems?

What was odd about it? On Wednesday the same tray appeared in the Scope charity shop, but with a price of £1.20p per set, that's another £1.60p per dispenser's contents which seemed a little greedy!

The Apache was still there so it wasn't a question of buying the remains of the tray from next-door but four and marking it up - obviously there's a batch of these doing the rounds of the charity community as some sort of corporate clearance/tax write-off; there's similar card-construction sets from PMS (one of the defunct 99p Stores' brands) in Help The Aged [Age Concern] at the moment, in both cases - get 'em before they're gone - I got a haunted house; with six figures!

K is for Kandytoys Kombat Kars Keep Koming

Title's a bit lame, then but they aren't all going to set the world alight!

Picked these up the other day (charity shop, but not the same one as the kandytoy pull-back 'plane!); we've looked at some of them before, we've looked at shelfies, we've looked at other brand-marks, so this is really just to get the pictures up here to be found with the others, which means there'll be some odd-looking tags if this is your first visit to the Blog, but otherwise and in any event . . .

. . . 'box scale' die-cast and plastic AFV's, some with a use in small-scale war-gaming, seen a lot in the last 5-7 years, carried by various brands, Chinese source unknown, but some pointers to Pioneer, or a group, busy mould-swapping - indeed; I'm coming round to the idea there are two sources with items from both being 'mixed-and-matched' in/for the orders of/by shippers/end users.

Here wearing Kandytoys moniker; I think the large multi-shelf, window-box set in Smyth's over Christmas was by them, but not with these among them, they are also sold individually and in 'single-shelf' window boxes (HTI).

So far the commonest in the range, these have been found in Poundland, 99p Stores (before their demise) and The Works as well as an independent and under several brand-marks on-line (Little Angel) and retail (Funtastic).

I haven't done comparisons with the others, as we had a long article in Rack Toy Month, and a couple of follow-ups, and they are the same toys as my samples just different colours (VAB-alike) or markings (Hummer), both seen previously on the  Alibaba page's of Avitalk, Kids Car and Little Angel's

The tank; it's even poorer in the flesh than it was looking in the press-photographs/shelfies! Not as common as the previous two vis-à-vis the various combinations seen, sometimes replaced by the better moulding of a Merkeva, but still seen in several lines.

However - at around 1:100 it may have a use in some of the current commercial AFV-based gaming systems around? It's the sort of up-armoured/upgraded/locally-modified M48/M60 you tend to find in those - what used to be called - 2nd world (now 'developing') countries aligned with NATO or the American 'sphere of influence' . . . not for much longer methinks!

These may have been in some of the boxed sets, but I haven't encountered them before and they seem to be newer additions to the wider range.

They are not to the same quality as the other ones we've seen associated with these lines before; the smaller 'Army Force' graphics one (also Kandy's; 'Pro Engine' line) and the larger Funtastic model, being more tinny in construction (like the Hummer) and rather stretched for bog-standard 6X6 trucks?

Also the tilt on the GS/Troop-carrier in this pair is not removable; as it is on the other two.

But the rather daft-looking, multi-rocket pack (harking-back to the toys of the 1950/60's is easy to remove, leaving you with a flat-bed to convert into something more useful!

They also have a 'sit-up-and-beg' look caused by the vehicle models being out-scaled by the wheels, which appears to tip the vehicles forward, even though the cabs are already too high!

H is for Hot-metal Hexing Heroes - Harry and Hermione

These were sent to the Blog in the late autumn by Brian B, and rather got left to one side by other things, but they will now fit here rather nicely; as today's Toy Show '18 report is also on Jada, who are the company behind these die-cast alloy figurines.

Harry Potter, who's not a potter but a wizard, and his classmate Hermione - did they ever get together? I've not read any of the books nor watched any of the movies, so apart from a couple of hours of part-one read by Stephen Fry (?) on Radio 4 at Easter many years ago - everything I know of the whole phenomena has come from the cultural affairs 'background' on everyday life and newspaper stories! Indeed the only bit I remember is the school-joining letters coming down the chimney by the sack-full and something called Quiddich!

Close-ups, they are rather nice and although bigger, call to mind the short lived series of 25mm Pocket Force die-casts from Monogram, if only because apart from them and a set of Micro-Machine types there haven't been many painted die-cast figures, and they all have a similar appearance, paint-wise.

A scaler, with Mr. Berke's trusted, practically adopted by the Blog (when I get mine out of storage I'll start using him too!), Crescent 'Berserker' making his first appearance for a while, not because he isn't doing his duty in various posts or material sent by Brian, but because there's been so much else on, and I lost the best part of a week to flu!

You can see that as an adult, Harry would scale-out at around 60/65mm, maybe even as much as 70mm, but that's not the whole story, and - as the berserker shows us - the kids are perfect for 54mm.

The back of the card, giving a listing of figures to look out for if you're tempted, 31 so far, will the line be extended - is the question?

To which the answer would appear to be yes - there's an extra [to the above list] Haggrid to start with - Disney, Marvel & DC and some Wwrestler thing also, already signed-in! With play-sets! I think from the description the play-sets are in plastics, but although they are in the catalogue, they weren't on show at the Toy Fair, so I couldn't see them . . . and everything in the above image has to treated with caution until it actually appears - retail.

However the answer to the scale questions is - 'Box Scale', all figures being about 48mm (50'ish with the base); all figures - whether adults, children, Haggrids or squeeky-voiced meeces - being the same height.

I don't know why they are calling them 'nano' either, that's got to be a degree or two below micro, itself below mini, so just the toy industry not following its own 'rules'! In my book these are barely, but closest to: mini-figures!