About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 62-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Showing posts with label 1:Mixed Scales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1:Mixed Scales. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

S is for Sandown Park - Wild West

Picked up a few Wild West bits at the last Sandown Park shenanigans, nothing rare or valuable, but always things of interest, grist to the mill, gap fillers and collection enhancers/improvers - so let's have a look at the plunder!
 

While the Reamsa stuff in Sobres seems to be copies, I think these are original Comansi supplied product, the 60mm backwoodsman/pioneer/trapper being the same softish silicon-rubber as the late Thunderbirds/OVNI stuff, while the 50mm Lucky Luke is one of their sculpts too? Their relevance to the Battle of Manila being a moot point, but typical of these cheap, pocket-money, Montaplex novelty envelopes!
 
Rather damaged, but new colours for these 'styrene large-scale versions of the SIKU manufactured Euro-premiums - carried here, in the UK, by Betterwear, as a smaller range, in soft ''ethylene . The yellow being the same shade as the British issues, and both will join the dun, fawn and bronze, painted and unpainted sample, slowly gathering in a bag somewhere!
 
 
So clean I suspect another of the East German production, like the military chap we looked at a while ago, but I'm not clued-up enough on Elastolin composition to be sure, a nice clean figure though, along with a huge (100mm+) Hong Kong copy of something Spanish, I feel? 

A pair of HK copies of Britains (one Herald, one Swoppet), a speedwell/Trojan type and what I suspect is a Hilco 'from hollowcast', it's similar to a couple of the Johillco metal sculpts, and turns up quite often?
 
Mixed cowboy lot, I don't remember where these all came from (with previous and next two image contents), there must have been a mixed bag of them, possibly from Isaak, or Martin? Two Lone Star, a Crescent, a Supreme and three to be ID'd, along with a wagon driver.
 
Mid-quality swoppet knock-offs!
 
One of the Crescent ACW copies from Hong Kong, carried by Ideal in the US, more generic over here, this one has been repainted by the owner, from the look of it!

Monday, October 19, 2026

S is for Sandown Park - Animals

There's a lot of lose stuff to clear, from the last Sandown, from Peter Evans and from Adrian, and with the next Sandown Park show only three weeks away, I guess, I need to clear the last lot, sharpish! Here's the animal element of the last show's plunder!
 

A miniature set from Rado Industries, with both the Ri Toys tree-logo and a Laurie Toy moniker, having previously seen a Lucky Toy in Laurie graphics one might be tempted to think there's a connection between Lucky and Rado, but really it's just that Laurie were an importer/jobber, putting their name to various other peoples stuff, whether known or unknown. The beauty of these little sets (we've seen a long thin one before (in Linda graphics?), is that they help separate the Blue Box/Marx (Sunshine Series) stuff from the Ri Toys copies!
 

This was an excellent find, as it's only a year or two since I discovered this knock-off Muffin the Mule from Gantoy, courtesy of one of Chris Smith's donations to the blog. I now know there are other colours too, and the one from Chris didn't have the integral base of this one, nor signs of it's removal, so there's  two versions, but for now, box ticked!
 
The accompanying plants in the first image are from the Corgi Magic Roundabout playset.
 
Odds and sods to be sorted!
 
Dinosaur flats, with three British cereal premiums (left, Nabisco), and two Warner marked, German versions on the right. I believe there are French variants too, and with soft polyethylene re-hashes (seen here passim), some from the antipodes, quite a sub-section now!
 
More flats, with the white ones probably all from Europe, the Elephant (missing a gun or circus wagon?) marked Munsterland, the cat 'Carstanjen' and the puppy something unreadable, while the other two, coloured ones, are more capsule toy or cracker prize type fare.
 

These are from a board game, not unreasonably called the Donkey and the Carrot! From Spears Games, there's a red one missing from the line-up, and these are interesting as they may connect with the sheep we saw in the Shepard and his Dog game. There may also be a connection with all the Prior/AHM/Cullpit stuff (they are vinyl), and Arco (some Rae marked polyethylene animals seem to be the same as the Arco Noah's Ark stuff), so another useful find, toward future, more definitive posts.

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Q is for Question Time - Stretchers / Casualties

A couple of unknown items today, one I have half a clue on, the other is reportedly French, both posed with the hard-wearing, long--surviving, late production, PVC jobbie from Corgi.
 

So, Corgi on the left, the one in the middle seems to be a Lucky-like Hong Kong effort, in lightweight 'model kit' polystyrene, with the hollow-moulded casualty glued to the trolley-stretcher, but it is quite large, so maybe not Lucky, but one of the other Hong Kong plastic vehicle makers, which could mean more than one brand, as several of them were re-branded. Unusually for such a piece, there's no Hong Kong mark.
 
While the pair on the right who may or may not be missing separate stretchers or hospital beds are heavy lumps of what appears to be 'styrene, but could - especially if French - be some other polymer, in the cellulose, formaldehyde (Bakelight) or phenolic groups?
 
Also dug-out this, posed with the Starlux 25/30mm pup-tent, might also be French, but has been in the queue for a year or two, is also looking for an attribution, and is also quite a heavy, hard-plastic, and has a quite steep pillow angle, which may be a clue as to any casualty, possibly even the pair above, and while I don't think so (different polymer), equally I'm open to correction!
 
Can anyone help with these?

Friday, September 11, 2026

A is for Autumn Assortment - Gift Fair

Peter Evans, roving reporter in London, roved to Birmingham for the Autumn Gift fair, which I had hoped to attend, but Space, Time and Nathaniel waits for no man, and it wasn't going to happen, still, we do have these from Peter;
 
Possibly a bit big for war gaming, but in the garden the rules can change, they're only counters, when all's said and done! No figures though!
Variation on a theme, I don't think we've seen the packaging before, but we have seen the figures now, the ones with 'vignette' bases.
 
Kawong is a new name, so a new Tag! The stuff looks similar to the New Ray stuff (next shot), so fans of modern farm equipemnt can have a field day . . . field? Geddit? I'll get me coat . . . 
 
Just mentioned.
 
Dinosaurs, it seems you get a window-visible realistic dinosaur, and a dig-for-it skeleton, to match whichever Dino' is in the specific bag?
 
I think we've seen these before, but you can't have too many images of things!
All the above look to be from Padgett Brothers (A-to-Z) 
 
Definitely seen these before, I think several times, Tobar, House of Marbles and others, but we like a bit of paratrooper action here at Small Scale World!
 
Gotta get me one of these, preferably a Hugh? You don't always find a Hugh in these pre-personalised sets, but any company which does Anna and Annabelle, Ben and Benjamin, must surely do a Hugh? Also, note one of each colour are supplied with a blank lable (top of display), so you can write what you like - "Kiss my shiny metal arse"!
 

A Japanese merchandise store had a full range of Gashapon, including those which can be presented as Christmas baubles for placing on a tree (lower shot), although Peter noted "unfortunately, no Samurai". And many thanks to Peter for sending these over to the Blog.

A is for Autumn Assortment - Local

A few shelfies which were meant for Rack Toy Month, but missed it, as I had other stuff to post and ran out of month! And it's off to B&M for the first two, shot in June and July respectively, so availability may be dodgy now, they have quite a quick turnover on some stuff.
 
Somewhere between 25 and 54mm compatible, but I thought they’d be of interest to some, maybe for garden war-gaming, or as 'Market Garden' OP's! Shot at the end of June, this year.
 
A month later and I left these on the shelves, they were twelve-quid plus, for not a lot, and most of it slime or plaster? The skeletons will appear in mixed lots over time, and if they were in the 'dig' eggs, what was in the slime . . . four instantly rejectable novelty lumps of something?
 
These next four were shot the other week, in two garden centres and all should still be out there? These look like they come from the same factory as those glasslike resin Kodama we saw a few years ago;
 
https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/02/l-is-for-lets-ave-some-more.html
 
And, while 'mere' mini rubber ducks, a definite sub-branch of collecting!
 
In the same garden centre I saw these figural lip-balm tops, sadly the shot didn't take, but I failed to realise at the time! Again, not something I'm going to fill my pockets with, but nevertheless, they may well turn-up in mixed lots of figures in the years to come?
 
Legami are becoming  a regular here, and these seem to me to be a complete waste of human endeavour and resource. They 'protect' a couple of centimetres of a much longer cable, so protect nothing, and if fitted as shown, will only pull on the connection between USB and device?
 
Also Legami, and while I think we've seen several Sloths or Pandas as shelfies or actual collection entrants, I don't know if Koalas have featured yet? Both the last two were shot in Haskins near Alice Holt, not sure about the other two . . . possibly a Squires garden centre?
 
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PS - My reading list hasn't updated for at least 72-hours, and my link-list on the visible Blog, hasn't updated for over 24-hours, so you may have posted really interesting stuff, but I haven't a clue, something which has been getting worse for a few weeks now?! And with problems uploading images, recognised on the forums (reduce the size of the edit window, and drag-&-drop), it's clear Google is tinkering in the background, not in a nice way, and telling us fuck-all about it!

Saturday, August 29, 2026

R is for Roveing Reporter's Rack-toy Round-up #4

Some of you may have had a weird alert for a post you can't find, this is due to my being an Aspergic idiot, and wanting to have four posts between each of Brian's posts, forgetting I'd done four because of the 'help wanted' post, which now isn't wanted (don't know, don't care), so, yeah, 'Hyperspeed' will post again in a few hours!
 
In the meantime, Brian sent a last minute set of shelfies from Dollar General in the 'States, and it's about half stuff not generally found on the Blog (but you never know who's visiting, or why), and half, some useful stuff, and here it is;
 





Wot? No caps!
 


Above is the stuff of less ineterst to the Blog, although the Mickey is a solid, and Spiderman has a solid fan-base, whatever size or figure type, and it's always nice to see figures who aren't WASP's, if you know what I mean, and it's a growing trend, to be encouraged.
 
Looks like fun, although some passing little scrote has squidged his head-in!
 

Both solids, and with existing, even 'vintage' figures of both Sesame Street and The Muppets, from Schleich, Comics Spain (and others), and a couple of breakfast cereal producers, a whole sub-genre of figure collecting, and/or TV/Movie related stuff.
 
Lego-likey, and always like Lego-likey as it's not plagiarist, lying, expencive Lego! And it's always interesting to see how 'other bricks are available' producers design their mini-figures, here we have real waists/hips and ripped shoulders! These officers could easily arrest any Lego mini!
 
I've seen similar in B&M and elsewhere, but not something that's lighting-up my universe! Although I 'get it', and they are the collectables of the future.
 
This looks nice, and a 'solid'?
 
I've also seen these, we may have had shelfies in the past, these here are possibly more colourful than the ones I've seen in UK stores, and like those minis we saw the other day, are window-walkers, in that sticky, cold, very-soft, silicon type polymer.
 
Many thanks to Brian Berke as always, rack-toys to be found in Dollar General, now. The four post thing was accidental, but after two, it made sense (to someone on the spectrum!), to continue it for [self-imposed] compliance sake!